They say that over seventy per cent of America’s economy is based upon consumption.  Our days are filled with thousands of advertising messages trying to persuade us we’ll be happier if we choose a particular product.  Somewhere within the past few decades the skill of creating a desire moved to a more destructive message:  ‘You can’t be happy until you have this product.’  Today our restlessness has grown to such extreme levels that we can barely focus for more than a few seconds at a time.  The Rolling Stones’ lyric ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’ has grown to new levels of meaning.  Markets fluctuate up and down based on our consumption rates as news commentators seem to urge us to buy in support of our country’s welfare.

With this awareness as backdrop, I was struck by a recent sermon I heard from a local Lutheran minister.  His topic centered on the biblical line in Psalms 23, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”  He noted that this Psalm is the most requested for memorial services he’s conducted.  It carries the great wisdom that our peace and joy rest in the practice of faith, of cultivating gratitude for what we have.  Interestingly, this is the same truth the Buddha came to.  His great enlightenment said we must accept that life is filled with restlessness.  Our attachment to desires, grasping and wanting produces our suffering.  We can alleviate suffering by accepting what ‘is’, cultivating a practice of awareness to the moment and our release of ‘wanting’.  Our ability to do this requires great discipline and skill in the face of a culture that’s economically based on pushing ‘restlessness’.

We’re continually fighting to ‘be back there’ or ‘hoping to someday be over there’.  The anxiety we grow from not wanting to ‘be here now’ grows our stress.  One definition of stress is that it’s the gap between where you are and where you want to be.  Again, ‘wanting’ something different than what is produces our suffering.  Our remedy is found in deep, abiding faith.  It’s  the Ground of Being that holds our stability in the face of impermanence.  It’s a bigger hope that sustains when all our little hopes fall away.  It’s what remains when our beliefs are shattered.  It’s our greatest journey requiring the utmost in courage.  It’s that place where we make space, through prayer and meditation, to find the gift in what’s given.  This is not easy work and it doesn’t come naturally.

The poisons of greed and fear are unavoidable.  Deep faith that’s cultivated from the heart eventually comes to the experience of our interdependence.  ‘Not wanting’ lands us in joy for ‘this moment’.  We move past ‘craving’ a future heaven or a different life experience found in our yearning for ‘the good old days’.  We start questioning the harmful effects of hoarding massive amounts of wealth driven from unbridled greed.  We start a more mindful practice of consumption and competition, always first asking, “Who gets hurt?”.  Cultivation of ‘not wanting’ leads us to a richer quality of life that commands our awareness to ‘now’ as we steward a healthier future for those following us.

It takes deep fortitude to cultivate a practice of ‘not wanting’ in the face of rapid change.  Yet, ironically, it’s within our practice of gratitude for what ‘is’ that space opens to awareness of opportunity.

The practice of ‘not wanting’ is a practice.  It requires a commitment to ‘making space’ for regular prayer/meditation.  As we grow our awareness to the life and death found within each moment, we grow our courage to live more fully.  As we grasp for conditions ‘different’, filled with ‘wanting’, we grow our pain.  Our joy can be found in living the experience of the future within ‘this moment’.  This has been called the Isaiah Effect, this ‘feeling’ of prayer.  In contrast to petitioning prayer, filled with a ‘want’, our most joyful prayer is found in a deeper faith that ‘feels’ the prayer’s completion within the present moment.  This ‘feeling’ is so great that we have no choice but to give thanks to the Source, to the Divine, for the very gift of the experience, outside the abstract notions of time and space.  This is Big Hope.  This is Big Faith.  This is the truth in cultivating a practice of ‘not wanting’, of accepting the Buddha’s Noble Truths that life is suffering and restlessness and our peace and joy can be found in cultivating a practice of ‘not wanting’.

So how does this relate to the American Dream?  First, we come to recognize that we’re not entitled to anything.  All is gift.  If we’ve lived long enough and cultivated a practice of gratitude and ‘not wanting’, we eventually find the gift in the given, no matter what.  Somewhere in time the American Dream got turned upside down.  Our founders saw this land as a place for opportunity.  In the face of greed, oppression from massive accumulation of wealth and power from a few, and a deeper desire for freedom, pilgrims set off with deep courage to discover the gift of a new land.  The pilgrim spirit is one filled with awe and wonder found in the surprise of the moment.  There was a flexibility to meet new, rapidly changing conditions, with an open heart.  This was a deeply spiritual experience that moved from the heart in Big Faith.  It was an experience that understood the suffering of life and the need for courage cultivatied through a practice of ‘not wanting’.  It led to a spiritual groundwork that recognized the Divine in all.  It embraced indigenous cultures that also understood our sacred covenant to ‘be kind’ to one another.  It recognized the need for moderation and the power found in prayerful awareness to the ‘gift in the given’.

Today we’ve become very confused about the true spirit of America as we logically try to honor separation of church and state.  It’s left us with a culture lacking in moral conscience.  We find ourselves fighting the empty dogma of secular believers with fundamentalists filled with notions of their ‘rightness’.  Our attempts to impose belief from our ‘thoughts’ of ‘rightness’ fill our airwaves and politics with tremendous distraction from cultivating a practice of ‘not wanting’.  The pilgrim moves from the heart and Big Faith, with a deeper courage and curiosity to the mystery of life (and death).  The pilgrim spirit is not one of persuasion, driven from a desire to change another.  It’s driven from a deep spiritual place of reverence and respect for one another, recognizing the Divine in all things and all beings.  It recognizes our biggest command, “Be kind to one another, and at the least, try not to cause harm.”  Our health is found in cultivating joy through gratitude in the ‘gift of the given’, noting the antidote to greed, fear and ignoring as ‘awareness’, deepened through prayer and meditation.  I’m filled with expectant joy and gratitude for an America of opportunity, flexibility, curiosity, Big Faith, harmony and rhythm, gratitude, and kindness.  We’re a nation founded on kindness, moderation, and mindful consumption.  For me, this is what Occupy Wall Street is about,  a return to the pilgrim spirit of kindness and opportunity and a moral conscience that always first asks, “Where’s the harm (potential or present) in the thoughts, speech, and action we’re about to pursue?”  Our moral conscience can once again be found in the ancient Hawaiian mandate, “Best for all with harm to none.”

“The Lord is my shepherd.  I shall not want.”

4:6-7

King James Version (KJV)

4 Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice. 5 Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. 6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. 7And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Good News Translation (GNT)

6 Don’t worry about anything, but in all your prayers ask God for what you need, always asking him with a thankful heart.7 And God’s peace, which is far beyond human understanding, will keep your hearts and minds safe in union with Christ Jesus.

Life is difficult.  Our difficulties come from wanting conditions different from what they are in the face of change.  Our relief is found through prayer/meditation, embracing the moment’s gift outside our restless mind.

The greatest truth is deeply coming to see the nature of time.  We struggle with our restlessness, grasping for conditions to be what they were or what we hope them to be.  Yet, the Law of Impermanence continues to work, moment by moment, constantly in change.  We struggle to ‘fix things’ but change is movement, nothing fixed.  Pema Chodrin writes:

“As human beings we are as impermanent as everything else.  Every cell in the body is continuously changing.  Thoughts and emotions rise and fall away unceasingly.  When we’re thinking that we’re competent or that we’re hopeless—what are we basing it on?  On this fleeting moment?  On yesterday’s success or failure?  We cling to a fixed idea of who we are and it cripples us.  Nothing and no one is fixed.” p. 31 from The Pocket Pema Chodrin

So we’re repeatedly brought back to cultivating a greater appreciation for the gift of time (change).  This gift is opportunity.  Human beings are unique because of consciousness.  We have the capacity to reflect and this inevitably causes suffering/restlessness.  This reflection creates our illusion of separateness.  This separateness is fed by our greed (craving for more), fear (stagnation to move), and our ignoring the interdependent nature of life (ignorance).  We want to be at peace, free from greed and fear, yet consciousness is not capable of fully grasping the interdependent Source of Being.  So we suffer, since we can’t get rid of consciousness.  Yet, life works us and deeper reflection creates deeper suffering and pain that “gives you many chances to investigate the root of life and deepen your life in dharma.  That’s why the Buddha said that suffering is truth.”  (p. 48,  Each Moment is the Universe by Dainin Katagiri).

This suffering is our greatest teacher as we learn to be one with this truth itself.  Katagiri describes it as touching the truth that’s always present at the depth of your life and then ‘bouncing’.  He refers to this momentary realization of truth (suffering/nonduality) as deepening wisdom, that experience of no ego and emptiness.  It’s a wondrous feeling of profound knowing that’s impossible to stay with.  Poof!  Back to consciousness and the dualistic realm.  Yet, the wisdom from these fleeting moments, once touched, is what sustains Big Hope (faith).

Brother David Steindl Rast says, “Hope is what’s left when all your hopes are fallen by the way.  Faith is what’s left when your beliefs have been shown to not hold up.”  He references a poem by T.S. Elliot:

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion…

Brother David suggests we forever realize the surprise within the surprise, that there’s always more to be discovered.  Hope is what keeps us open to a fresh future, in awareness to wholehearted action to the present moment.  We touch the moment’s arrival, motivated through our suffering, only to bounce back to consciousness and dualism with a deeper faith for having touched it.

Having touched this peace, can we move past greed, fear and ignorance?  Is there a place where all this suffering stops?  While many religious traditions portray a time moment where change stops, a lasting state of nirvana or heavenly paradise, the Law of Impermanence can’t conceive of ‘stopped time’.  The Law of Codependent Origination can’t conceive of ‘separateness’ or ‘aloneness’.  Stillness in prayer/meditation seems to deepen the truth of these laws, providing an abiding faith…a Big Hope.  Now, each moment is seen as birth/death constantly working.  Katagiri writes:

Just like everything that exists in the phenomenal world, your suffering is a being that arises from the original nature of existence, and every moment it returns to its source.  So when you see suffering, all you have to do is accept it and offer your body and mind to ultimate existence.  Then you and suffering return to emptiness and there is freedom from suffering.    p. 51, Each Moment is the Universe

This practice is what gives us the courage to embrace uncertainty, to smash past the notions of ‘fixed’ things and certainty, tasting the surprise in each arising moment.  It’s where we find our motivation to experience wonder and awe, to find the gift in the given.

The illusion is that others don’t suffer.  We somehow think accumulation of material goods or worldly achievements will stop suffering.  We polarize, separating ourselves in reflection that causes much unnecessary suffering and pain.  Yet, cultivating a deeper stability gives us courage to open, to move as water, in a deeper caring for one another.  This practice gives us greater awareness to the thoughts, emotions and actions that come up through our moment to moment living.  Either they serve to reduce suffering, hold stillness in no harm, or increase suffering.  Either they are kind or unkind.  Either they hold wisdom in the truth of the Law of Impermanence and Codependent Origination or they ignore them.  Up and down.  Rise and fall.  Poof!  Consciousness and emptiness, forever at play in a deepening practice.

Cultivating a sustaining felt sense of joy is hard work.  No doubt, we all have our predispositions for holding a joyful attitude.  Yet, as we move through life, experiencing deeper suffering, the work becomes more challenging.  I’m extremely inspired by the person over ninety years old who still carries a joyful air with eternal possibility.  At ninety, you’ve seen most of your friends and family shed their bodies.  You’ve experienced a wide variety of injury and disease.  You’ve watched your body entropy over the years and you’ve felt the diminishing attitude our culture promotes toward the elderly.  And yet, somehow these people sustain a smile on their face that encourages me toward disciplined ‘joy practice’.

I’ve heard it said that if you’re body is still breathing, you’ve still got more than 50% working, no matter how bad off you are.  Now that’s something to be grateful for.  Gratitude is a major component to cultivating joy.  Our real work is to make space to find the gift in the given.  An attitude of joy is one of no complaint.  It’s putting attention to the fullness of life rather than what’s lacking.  It’s recognizing that we’re entitled to nothing and therefore, should take nothing for granted.  All is gift.  This is perhaps most difficult when dealing with perceived enemies, unexpected illness or injury, and ultimately, death.  And dealing with the inevitability of shedding our own bodies is perhaps the best way to cultivate the shear awe and wonder of the next arising moment while being served in these bodies.  I cultivate joy when I’m prepared to let this body go tomorrow, yet stewarding it to live beyond ninety.  This really brings me to life.  It’s what motivates me to wake to this next arising moment.  When we lose our long term vision we lose our awareness to death.  Finding hope in death, we find meaning in life.  This awareness of shedding the body should not really be about fear, but about the inspiration to appreciate life, aiming to meet death without regret. It wakes me to the truth of what life is about, this appreciation practice that yields sustaining joy, no matter what.

So how about the contrast between ‘joy’ and ‘enjoy’?  Joy is sustainable with regular practice.  Enjoyment is not.  When seeking enjoyment or pleasure, as soon as we have the experience we were grasping for, we’re filled immediately with a vacuum, a restless that produces guilt or desire for more.  Joy practice brings us to deeper and deeper conditions of well-being.  We can face conditions that don’t turn out as expected and find the gifted surprise.  We can stand tall in the face of those who aim to hurt us and hold love for them as our brother or sister.  An ever present awareness of our death is the greatest teacher in helping us to take care of life in the best way.  There’s a deeper realization that the only thing that’s permanent is change.  Consequently, in addition to gratitude, patience and awareness practice is central to our sustained joy.  With a strong joy practice, I’m less inclined to cave to my ego’s desire to react to another.  In the ’60’s I was livid with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara for decisions made with regard to the Vietnam War.  He later produced an academy award winning documentary called The Fog of War. His mind opened to see the incorrect assumptions that were made, assumptions that cost fifty-eight thousand young American lives.  Sen. Robert Bird was against the civil rights movement, only to later change as a key ambassador to equal rights and peace.  I would hope that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will some day open to the tremendous harm done from incorrect assumptions made in our military engagement in the Middle East.  None of us is immune from causing harm in our reactive judgments.  Yet, when we practice patience with a non-reactive mind, our decisions and actions will cause less harm.  I’m sure we can all think back to those moments where a little pause, a dedicated ‘joy practice’, would have produced a kinder response.  It really carries the qualities of prayer as described by Brother David Steindl-Rast:

“What is it that makes prayers prayer?  When we try to put into words what the secret might be, words like mindfulness, full alertness, and wholehearted attention suggest themselves.” from Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer.  p. 42

Sustained joy is the result of focused attention and wonderment.  Awareness and patience produce an open mindedness that receives sustained surprise.  Filled with wonderment and awe for the gift of the given, we meet the universe with eyes wide open.  Joy practice opens the closed mind as we cultivate our wholeness in the prayer response.  Brother David relates it to the eyes wind open of children.  He speaks of prayerfulness as that which keeps the child alive in us:

“And the child within us never loses the talent to look with the eyes of the heart, to combine concentration with wonderment, and so to pray without ceasing.”  p. 46

He goes on to say that this is very difficult work, cultivating the mindfulness, gratefulness and prayerfulness we have come to experience in those whole hearted moments.  Yet, it’s because of those whole-hearted, being moments that we know where to aim for deeper maintenance.  He speaks to the notion of this as practice:

“But for once we have managed to do it, we know at least that we can do it, and how it is done.  The rest is a matter of practice, of doing it over and over again, until it becomes second nature.”  p. 49

So the core elements of this practice are awareness, patience, stilling the thinking mind, and cultivating the whole heart response.  Brother David says we can’t be mindful without being grateful.  He also says that joy is a necessary consequence of gratitude.  He goes on to say that it’s a great ‘full’ response that comes from the heart, from the realm of being where we are one with all.

Some practices that facilitate the whole hearted prayerful response are listed below.

Breathing

Pausing in no thought

Going deeper through disciplined practice

Kindness to others (so they suffer less)

Gratitude, finding the surprise in the gift of the given

Patience, stilling the separating, judgmental mind

Cultivating the open, non-reactive mind

Touching our doing with wholehearted being

So, to cultivate joy through joy practice, practice full attention to the breath and go deeper in seeing how everything changes.  From this gratitude for the gift of the arising moment comes deeper mindfulness and further awareness to our interconnection with all things.

It’s also helpful to examine our regular breathing.  Is it peaceful, harmonic and rhythmical?  Does it come from the belly or the chest?  Can we develop greater awareness to the separating nature of our linguistic thoughts?  Through meditation, can we extend the ‘no thought’ moment, can we release our attachment to repeating thoughts, and can we experience a deeper stillness?  With mindfulness and gratitude comes a sense of wonder where kindness grows.  The natural desire to reduce others’ suffering is watered and judgments, competition and the separating mind diminishes.  The mind opens in wonder to accept how little we know, with frequent use of, “I just don’t know.”  The destructive nature of the closed mind and the phrase, “I know that” is revealed.  The grasping to be ‘right’ diminishes as the childlike curious heart opens to an expanding universe.

In the prayerful response, there’s a deep felt sense that all is supported, even when it may seem the floor has given way.  This sense of Big Belonging transcends the separating nature of race, sex, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, economic status, etc.  The mindful, nonjudgmental, open mind is the mind that can sustain joy.

Yes, we all meet despair everyday.  Feelings of not being enough, not having enough and not doing enough creep in repeatedly from our competitive, consumptive culture.  I can only hope that whoever reads this finds some relieve through the implementation of joy practice.  It takes practice, courage and discipline and is no less demanding than any spiritual pursuit.  May you break open this practice and find wonderment and awe as the closed mind yields to the open mind, once again letting the sun shine in.

We’re excited for our last performance of the year at Washington Square Bar and Grill in White Bear Lake.  It’s a celebration in honor of the season of light, the arrival of winter, and the swing of sun/earth alignment to longer days.  So come on out for the best pre-Christmas party in town.  9pm-midnite.

In life, we can face the moment or try to dodge it.  We can commit to being ‘here, now’ or we can try to ignore the moment.  Our restless mind is continually pulling us from ‘being here’.  We can be caught in thoughts of the past or we can be consumed with disturbing thoughts of the future.  Neither holding grudges/guilt or cultivating worry seem to be helpful to our health.  Yet, most of us spend much of our time caught in thoughts of what’s been or what we expect to be.  In spiritual wisdom we’ve seen that the best way we can release from the pain of the past or the worry of the future is to simply settle fully into taking care of the present moment.  Several practices advise breathing with 100% attention to help us align to the moment’s arising.  When fully surrendered into the moment, beyond our attachments to past and future, our actions can be described as ‘in the flow’, ‘in harmony’, ‘in the zone’, etc.  We can actually measure the body’s vibration at a higher frequency.  The cells of the body experience less stress.  In fact, some have defined ‘stress’ as the distance from where you ‘are’ to where you want to be.  Surrendering in full attention to the next arising breath may perhaps be the most effective means for reducing stress, the leading cause of our dis-ease.  We can resist this moment or we can allow it.  We can fight or we can flow.  We can push or we can solidly stand in our truth without need to ‘fix’ or ‘change’ another.  The paradox is how we find our fullness through our emptiness.  An attitude of ‘c’est la vie’ does not mean ‘I don’t care’.  I think it means to stand in full acceptance of what life’s presenting in this moment.  My purpose is to meet it fully, in discovery of it’s gift, no matter what.  This is our acknowledgment to the fullness of life.  Rather than falling to the temptation of complaint, we open in affirmation to the wonder.

This moment that’s coming up can not be escaped.  We’ve been placed here for a purpose…to experience the beauty of ‘this’ arising moment.  Even in the most difficult of places, beauty is continually asking to be seen.  Our work is to make space to see the gift in the given.  The challenge is to live in the present moment and ‘be’ of it, to not get caught in thinking ‘this is my moment’.  It’s our opportunity to ‘be’…to simply ‘be’…to ‘just be’.  It’s our opportunity to help reduce the restlessness, the suffering that comes from attachment.  Our work is to continually move from fight to peace, even when under attack.  We’re constantly being asked to chose peace with the world the way it ‘is’.  This is about accepting what’s in front of us in full awareness.  It’s not about pushing peace.  This is deep forgiveness practice.  It’s a deep vow that says the unkindness stops with me.  It means letting go grudges against those who may have been unkind to us.  It means we change the cultural conversation norm of complaint and we make forgiveness normal.  It means we open our minds, navigating the world with more grace and flexibility.

This practice is not about compromise or reconciliation.  It’s the deeper heart cleansing itself and re-opening to life.  For sure, there are certain people and situations we’re best to avoid.  There are certain situations and people to nurture, just like there’s good food and bad food.  Yet, for me ‘c’est la vie’ is holding what other’s may have done in a more gentle way.  It’s not condoning harmful actions.  It’s not forgetting the wake (karma) of our life’s actions.  It just allows us to make peace with our life when we don’t get what we want.  It’s the capacity to come into our integrity, to make peace, when parts don’t work the way we wanted them to.  What’s the alternative?  To resist what is.  To hang on.  To think we can change what ‘is’.

Fred Luskin has perhaps done more research on the benefits of forgiveness practice than anyone.  His prescription for teaching forgiveness involves the following directives:

1. In life, there’s a sense of not noticing the blessings so we put our attention to what’s unpleasant.  Become more aware of your thoughts. Practice gratitude.
2. Be willing to separate out the content of your story from the story you tell.  It’s too easy to get lost in the story.  We can’t change the content, but we can change the process.  We always come back to the truth question, “Is what you’re doing working for you?  Is it helping you reach lasting satisfaction?”
3. When listening to another, it’s helpful to actively listen with the following structural suggestion, “I hear this is what you wanted _________, and you got ______________.  I empathize that you didn’t get what you wanted.”
4. Forgiveness requires a certain grieving process.  The powerlessness has to be grieved.  We have to cultivate compassion and softness for our vulnerability.  We recognize the pain that grew from putting our trust in someone to only find it wasn’t reciprocated.  We grow an inner release, depersonalizing it as just part of the human experience… ‘c’est la vie’.  Can we sit in softness to our human experience?  Can I calm the whiner in me, still the mind, and use a deeper awareness to determine what processes are waking me and which ones are keeping me asleep?  Can I make a vow to let go the ones that aren’t working?  Do I have the courage and willingness to try other options?  Luskin says we don’t have to know exactly what will work, but a curious, open mind is necessary to break from the quick sand that’s holding us back.
5. Breath work is central to helping us break the chains of our wounding.  Even practicing just 30-40 seconds can help break the habit of the ‘victim’ mind.  Thich Nhat Hanh has an exercise where with each breath in we affirm life with ‘Yes’, each breath out, expressing gratitude with ‘Thank you’, acknowledging the very opportunity to participate in this next arising moment.  The process helps us move from the grasping mind of intellect to the rising and falling belly, eventually landing in the precious heart, cultivating our healing, our return to wholeness.  Luskin suggests we breath into the heart, give thanks, and ask for a gentler solution.
6. This step may be the most difficult.  Luskin says we eventually come to a vow to not talk about our suffering in a way that will disturb us or others.  Until we’ve truly met a place of forgiveness, of what Hawaiians call pono (balance), we vow to hold silence.  We commit to only tell our story from a position of benefits and insights gained from the betrayal.  The aim is to create a story that doesn’t limit one to a victim story.  The final part of this forgiveness practice is captured in the story we tell.  We can’t blame anyone for what comes out of our mouth.

I’ve had my share of receiving others’ unkindness.  I’m fallen into the powerlessness of victim thinking.  I’ve seen the wasted energy put to trying to change what ‘is’, to ‘make things right’.  I’ve seen people gravitate away from me when I’ve slipped back into ‘my story’, losing track of my real purpose: to tell the story from insight for the purpose of easing others’ suffering.

The journey is filled with challenges to resist the moment or face it’s wonder in awareness.  For me, ‘c’est la vie’ is about the lasting commitment to stand strong in truth, to fully meet the moment with an open mind and a full heart, in recognition to the wonder and beauty of the moment’s opportunity.  It’s about cultivating an attitude of gratitude, of ‘no complaint, no complaint’.  It’s about raising the vibration, acceptance, and letting our natural light shine brightly, even when things turn out differently than expected.

After suffering the agony of WWI, the US Congress set aside 11/11 as a day of pause.  In 1938 it was designated Armistice Day, a day to lay down arms in pause to reflect upon the loss and grief from war.  The pause was later dedicated to the loss of veterans, but this should not take away our insight to the suffering that comes from alienation and separation.

We live in a media that thrives on conflict, fear and greed.  We daily ignore the fact that we’re all inter-related, all One.  Science and ancient wisdom have repeatedly shown how everything affects everything and everything changes.  In honor to those no longer in their physical bodies, to those now here, and to those yet to manifest in body, can we take some time today to reflect upon what we have in common?  Can we pause from our need to be ‘right’, from our insecurity and desire to persuade others, and from our continual pull to fight what ‘is’?  Can we just take a few deep breaths in affirmation to the gift of life?  Can we take a few moments to wish everyone less suffering?  Can we take a few moments to touch the Divine, to touch peace?  This is all Matti Stapanek was asking when he wrote the following after the 9/11 tragedy:

For Our World

We need to stop.
Just stop.
Stop for a moment
Before anybody
Says or does anything
That may hurt anyone else.
We need to be silent.
Just silent.
Silent for a moment
Before we forever lose
The blessing of songs
That grow in our hearts.
We need to notice.
Just notice.
Notice for a moment
Before the future slips away
Into ashes and dust of humility.
Stop, be silent, and notice
In so many ways, we are the same.
Our differences are unique treasures.
We have, we are, a mosaic of gifts
To nurture, to offer, to accept.
We need to be.
Just be.
Be for a moment
Kind and gentle, innocent and trusting,
Like children and lambs,
Never judging or vengeful
Like the judging and vengeful.
And now, let us pray,
Differently, yet together,
Before there is no earth, no life,
No chance for peace.

Mattie J.T. Stepanek
September 11, 2001

Mattie was eleven when he wrote this.  He fully understood the real meaning of Armistice Day.  He left his body three years later after dedicating his life to helping others reduce their suffering.  He left us filled with One-der.  May you experience healing this special day of Oneness, 11/11/11.

Just as the moon is full, may your day be filled with ‘One-der full’ moments.

In celebration of One, taking pause from the pain of notions of two.

To heal, to be whole, from the pain of two.

Yoga…to yoke…to be in union, connected.

Armistice…to lay down arms, opening hearts in faith, hope, and love.

Tomorrow marks a shifting moment.  There’s an opportunity to deepen in our notions of ‘two’ or deepen our awareness of One.  We can expand our circle of belonging or diminish it.  We can sharpen our sword or open our arms.  We can be carried away by repeating thoughts from the head or touch the Divine from the heart.  This is not a day to try to persuade another that we’re ‘right’.  It’s not a day to try to ‘fix’ things.  It’s a day to pause, to quiet the mind and find the love that’s available.  This experience of One (Love) is who we are.  It’s an exquisite balance of head and heart, offering tremendous ability to manifest.

This is a time to step out of what’s happening in front of us in a way where we can see it.  Moving into this Witness mind, the more we move into a broader dimension (One, the Ultimate) of our collective experience.  Moving beyond the physical and beyond emotion, there’s an allowing of the energy of the world to pass through us, to reveal it, without us getting caught, wounded, or conditioned by it.  Some have called this the ‘aha’ mind, looking at the trauma in the world as Witness.  The culture would have us deepen our sleep, caught in the realm of the relative, material, dualistic world.  It would have us deepen in greed, fear and our ignorance to the power of One.  In One, we deepen to our real purpose…to experience the beauty of this moment, in all its beauty.  Even in the most difficult of places, beauty is continually asking to be seen.  There’s a tremendous challenge to not claim ownership of this moment.  It’s just the instant opportunity to participate in the ground of Being, outside notions of separation.

This is a day to recognize the peace that comes from One and the pain/suffering that comes from notions of two.  It’s recognizing real healing and wholeness through connection, deepening our awareness to our lack of ease (dis-ease) that comes from the mind struggling with alienation, with smaller circles of belonging.

A major question for us this day is, “Where does my sense of belonging stop?”  Just as a circle has no sides, the feeling of One has no barriers.  This making of peace is a dire need of the human condition, even when traveling through difficult times.  We’re constantly being asked to make peace with the world the way it “is”.  It means we hold our judgment of others, we send energy aimed to reduce their suffering, and it means the unkindness stops with us.  In troubled times, we’re asking how we can take our life as its actually unfolded to grow kindness rather than to use it as an excuse to be unkind?  It’s not asking to forget the betrayal, but to re-open the heart to life, to One.  It’s not a time to condone bad actions, but to hold the person who did them in a more gentle way.  In the realm of the Absolute we’re not only mirrored through our enemy, it’s more like a hologram.  There is no division.  We all carry seeds of greed, fear and ignorance.  We all carry seeds of compassion, gratitude, and forgiveness.  Whether caught in the trance of “not enough” or in the realm of “great fullness”, we ultimately come to ask the question of efficacy, “Is it working for you?”

Today’s Occupy Wall Street movement is doing just that.  It’s asking if monetary/corporate influence in our politics is working or not?  It’s not saying that making money is bad.  It’s asking if it’s bad when making money harms others.  It’s asking if making policy decisions that cause great harm to others is working.  And perhaps the greatest question to the extremely wealthy .01 of the 1%, “Is your hoarding really working to bring you lasting peace and happiness?”  The social trance would have us believe there’s a point of material accumulation and achievement where we no longer suffer. Yet, the more they accumulate the less secure they seem, the more ‘dis-ease’ they reveal.

The healing of America and the international community will come when  more and more wake to compassion for all.  Our real purpose is to waken others to One for the purpose of reducing suffering.  For sure, throughout the day we move in and out of Oneness consciousness.  Fear, greed and our ignoring of One happens.  Yet, in holding our human vulnerability with compassion and softness, we water the seeds of faith, hope and love.  We reach our own armistice moment, a pause in the battle with Other.  This compassion involves an inner release.  Can I sit in softness to my own experience?  Can I calm the complaining mind in me?  When the problems seem big, can I get bigger than the problems?  Can I breath deeply, opening for a greater solution?  Can I acknowledge the fullness of life and step from feeling like a victim?  When tempted to enter into whining, can I open and acknowledge wonder and mystery?

Armistice Day was established in 1938, a day to lay down our arms, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month (11/11).  In the realm of the Ultimate, it’s a day to recognize our One, our Divinity, our non-dual nature.  It’s a day to rest from fighting, persuading, arguing, and debating others.  It’s a time to enter the Witness mind, to open our hearts instead of closing our minds, to cultivate the sincere energy that penetrates all, to connect rather than separate, to wake from the social trance of two, to touch the silence of One in full gratitude for the opportunity to Be.  With this polished heart we desire the best well being for one another.  With this wanting of the best, we know we have to let go.  It means we touch love in the face of impermanence.  It’s realizing the One exists only in this moment, the Present.  It’s a quiet mind and a peaceful heart.  It’s a moment of no struggle, a moment without effort.  Again, it’s the experience of looking for who you are.

This 11/11/11, may you suffer less.

May you be in peace

May you be healed from all resentment

May you awaken

May you be happy

May you be in love (One) now

The non-dualistic traditions speak to the interconnection of all things, to the illusion of ‘other’.  Even when we get to the core of most religions, the proponents advised us to love one another as ourselves, even our perceived enemies.  Our suffering is fueled by the illusion that we’re separate.  We end up violating the spiritual mandates when this illusion is fed by fear, greed and our ignoring of (ignorance) this interconnectedness.  This was perhaps best captured in the sobering times after World War I when America made its strong commitment to strive for world peace.

The United States Congress passed a resolution seven years after the end of the war, on June 4, 1926, requesting that President Calvin Coolidge issue a proclamation to observe November 11 with appropriate ceremonies.  An Act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U.S. Code, Sec. 87a) approved May 13, 1938, made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday; “a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as ‘Armistice Day’.”  The word armistice is a noun designating a state of peace agreed to between opponents so they can discuss peace terms.

Given this is the 11th year in the new millennium, there’s special significance to this event.  It’s an opportunity to shine the light brighter on the non-dual.  It’s a time to pause in honor to the whole heart, to the mystery of life and the opportunity to be.  It’s a time to humble ourselves to the mystery of life, surrendering our notions of ‘right’, our anger and our desire to persuade, and our apparent addictions to control. It’s a time to ask if we want peace or control.  It’s a time to reflect on the cause of our restlessness.  It’s a moment to cultivate the ‘feeling’ of spiritual security, holding a space of silence, minimizing words, allowing some healing from the pain of past violence.

The word ‘heal’ roots from ‘to become whole’.  No doubt, we move in and out of the feeling of Being One as we move through the material world.  Some wounds run deeper than others.  Yet, in the end, our complete healing can by definition only come when we return to ‘wholeness’, to One.

For several years I was mystified by how many times it was 11:11 or 1:11 when I looked at a time piece.  When Internet search engines were developed I learned I wasn’t alone.  Thousands of others have had this experience and they attribute it to being a reminder to One.  I’ve had some inexplainable experiences directing me to participate with sound in this event.

I’m not forecasting anything with this day.  It’s just a time where we can all say a prayer for one another, sincerely hoping there’s less suffering as we wake up to our interconnection, our non-twoness.  It’s realizing that when I wish you peace from the restless mind, my mind quiets.  It’s realizing that my healing is interdependent to your healing.  It’s hearing the spiritual masters saying we’re inseparable, no matter how hard we push the illusion of two.

May we carry Big Hope this 11/11/11.

May we suffer less.

May we move to healing.

May we touch joy and gratitude from the ground of our Being

May we lay down our arms

May we find our Whole Heart

May we find a deeper Tone

May we rest in the peace of knowing we can never be alone, never separate.

Cultivating deep abiding in:

Just here.

Just this.

As opposed to the suffering in:

Just there.

Just that.

We need to express what we feel we are, our beauty.

And, yet, we don’t know who we are.  Ahhh, the mystery.

Love is what’s found in the space between generosity and gratitude.

People ask, “So why meditate?”

One answer is, “To cultivate the influence of the Ultimate.”  It’s in contrast to our continual focus on the material.

Meditation is not trying to get away from thought, but aiming to enter thoughtlessness.

Meditation is letting go the thought we’re separate, cultivating the deeper feeling we’re connected, we belong, and we’re never alone.

The paradox in practicing mindfulness is that the mind aims to be mind empty rather than mind full.

Thinking still happens after liberation, but there’s no one listening.  It’s simple, ordinary, and stunning.  Everything arises as new.

Under the influence of greed, fear and ignorance or compassion, forgiveness and gratitude?  In the later, winning is nothing,  but being your best is everything.  Just aim to be your best expression with harm to none.

We’re pushed hard to be good competitors and good consumers.  Yet, we’re ultimately damaged by the spirit of competition when it’s the extreme grasping at another’s loss.  This precious moment is all there is.  We may temporarily feel better for winning over another, but it’s not long lasting.

“Best” as defined by 100% attention is a moment to moment thing.  This takes a lot of pressure off.

We’ve been trained from fear to meet basic survival needs often at the expense and harm to others.  Whether in family, school, work, religion, community, state, nation or planet, the notion of ‘win’ is illusion costing us real lasting peace.

A strong desire to be “better” may be the comparative that prevents you from full attention, from being your best.

If you want to be your best, surround yourself with others who want to be their best.

When the mind leaves awareness (the Ground of Being), obstacles appear.

“If your mind leaves the sound of the horn, obstacles appear”  Trumpet teacher,  William Adam

When the mind leaves the posture, obstacles appear.

When the mind leaves the breath, obstacles appear.

When the mind leaves the tone, obstacles appear.

Conformity is overrated.  Precision and education is underrated.  In conformity, depth sacrifices to approval.

In the end, all we really want (and need) is one another’s awareness.  So let’s ‘wake up’ to one another.

I have my experience and you have yours.  Mine can never be yours and yours can never be mine.  The illusion/delusion is that I can make mine yours.

I can never have your experience, but deep listening and empathy helps me approach it.

The greatest addiction of all (intoxicant) is the notion of ‘me’.

Resonance happens.  The idea of ‘me’ drops away.  The illusion of the individual is exposed.  Nothing’s pushed and boundlessness happens.

The art of wholehearted aging, living and dying doesn’t know thought, words or the intellect.  The heart abides in the feeling of the Ultimate.

Settle the mind into silence and then you’ll experience Reality.

Good music may come from the subconscious or unconscious, but definitely not from the self conscious.

Graceful aging involves a soft approach where we let the eyes surrender the details of entropy and we go deeper meeting the surprise of each arising moment.  ‘

Deeper doesn’t mean more.  More doesn’t mean deeper.  More is not necessary.  Deeper is.

Not taking things for granted moves us to appreciation, awareness, and gratitude, eventually landing in joy.

Let’s drop the notion of political party.   Can we just have a conversation about the stewardship of family, community, nation and planet outside notions of being ‘right’?

Do you want to feel all right?  Then give up the thought that you’re right.

Be humbled by the notion that we’re entitled to nothing.  Be joyful in gratitude for the gift of what’s given.

In pursuit of answering just where you belong, how far will you go?  And what are you a member of?  How do you belong?

The illusion (delusion) is that things stop.

I’ve arrived!  Now what?  Everything is still moving (changing).  Nothing stopped.

Beware (fear, greed and ignorance) or Be Aware (love, forgiveness, gratitude)

Come on Peace.  Grab a piece of me.

The antidote to the pain of greed is generosity and simplicity.  So where do we find sustaining joy?  It comes from the felt sense of fullness, never from the felt sense of lack-ness.

To really appreciate full, it helps to know empty.  To really appreciate life, it helps to face and know death.

The is no audience, just the fear of judgment.  So be played to your fullest.

Judgment is an obstacle to love.  The brain can’t create and criticize at the same time.

Don’t become obedient to the child.  Become obedient to dedicated stewardship of the child’s welfare, health and education.

Not this moment? Yes, this moment.

From the intellectual development of the illusion of object permanence, we start our training in desiring a different moment.

Rockets of desire seldom launch when there’s a sense of yearning (restlessness).  We must first carry our gratitude and depth of awareness for what is so we can open and make space for the new.