So your friend does something you were not expecting.
Where’s the surprise?
Archive for the ‘Innocence’ Category
Life’s just like that
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010Shhh
Thursday, March 11th, 2010I wondered for years why if TW was so effective nobody was as “advanced” as KT was even though there’s now been people doing TW for decades. One day I understood that we were all chasing the end of the rainbow. That day I “graduated.” It was a quiet ceremony. Nobody was informed. I did not receive a special certificate. If I had to put what I learned that day into words it would read like this:
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It doesn’t end.
It’s just not a problem that it doesn’t end.
That’s the freedom.
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The most amazing thing I learned that day was just how much I was like everyone else:
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I
I’m just as fucked up as the man next door,
I just don’t beat myself up about it as much as he does.
That’s the enlightenment I know.
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And sometimes
I notice he beats himself up much less than I do.
Those days he is the enlightened one
and I’m proud to call him
Teacher.
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II
Deep forgiveness for our apparent imperfections.
Deep compassion for our apparent flaws.
A knowing that it’s okay to be just like this.
Even as I try to be a better man with time.
Perfection and Imperfection in perfect harmony.
That is the enlightenment that I know.
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III
Anything that I can compare myself to
Is imagined.
Why would that be a fair standard of comparison?
Better to spend my time appreciating
How much of a good friend
I can be to myself.
Spiritual advice to follow on odd days
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
- Trust your own inner intelligence above anything else.
- Periodically consider points of view different from your own as a matter of practice, and
- Give yourself extended periods of time every now and then where you completely rest from thinking about spiritual stuff in any way. Devote that time to things you love to do like riding a bike, baking cookies, being with people you care about, living your life.
Living in Babel
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
Sometimes people think they know what I mean
when I write what I write
on this blog.
How curious!
Gotta love my life!
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
“She is perfect”
…
Keep thinking that.
That’s going to be your demise.
My students give me advice
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
I polled my students from the Spring quarter. Day in and day out for ten weeks I shared myself with them, and so they learned about me things I often don’t know myself. I wanted to know what that is, so I asked them. This is what they said:
Eduardo, your life will be better if you:
• Wore more color
• Go to the movies more
• Meet new people
• Ride a bike
• Go to the gym
• Find a girlfriend
• Go sky diving
• Spend more time with your daughter
• Go on vacation to a new place
• Give breaks during class and watch a funny YouTube video with us every day
• Take time to appreciate the good stuff in your life
• Join the Cal Poly Arab music ensemble
• Didn’t spread yourself too thin
• Work less and go chase women around instead
• Remember to eat lunch every day
• Were more organized
• Didn’t dress so fly
• Could do a one-arm pushup
• Ditched class to go to the beach
• Used your knowledge to get rich instead of teaching at a public university
• Shared more of those weird analogies you use in class with everyone
• Took your students on a field trip
• Shared more about your life outside of work with your students
• Got a puppy
• Played video games
• Swindled kids out of their lunch money
• Listened to all the LP’s of the Velvet Underground on vinyl
• Pick up the guitar
• Take a good vacation and relax
• Dye your hair green
• Went cliff jumping
• Do not watch those mind altering videos your friend from London sends you
• Bring fruit to class
• Listen to Basshunter or global deejays
• Don’t make things too complicated
• You spent less time reflecting on the intricacies of relationships and more time on relaxing
• Follow the advice you give your students regarding the value of questioning your stressful thoughts.
Once more, from my students I learn that I still have a lot to learn.
A Color Theory of Freedom (and of those who point the way)
Monday, June 15th, 2009
I
The spiritual search is like color Blue thinking it’s best to be White.
We call White being ‘enlightened’ in the human world.
So Blue goes on retreat and fasts and reads self help books and goes to therapy, basically attempting to clean all of the blueness from itself in the belief that once all trace of blue is gone, what’s left underneath is the White that represents what it truly is, what it wants to spend all its time as.
II
From what we know about colors, this is absurd.
White is not a ‘real’ color. White is a composite of colors from the electromagnetic spectrum.
Now, while engaged on genuine spiritual inquiry, Blue will be invited to learn about itself from the thoughts it has about all of the other colors. Blue learns that it is like Red, sometimes, and that it is like Purple, sometimes. Blue may go deeper and learn that it was identifying with its manifestations more than with what originated them. It may learn that its truer nature is that of radiation, that different colors are simply radiation being emitted at different wavelengths (If you take radiation that appears blue and increase its wavelength it will now appear red, if you decrease it’s wavelength it will now appear purple, and so on).
III
Blue may learn that it was seeing itself literally in a very limited light and of the futility of trying to strip itself of all blueness. Better to own your own blueness, your own purpleness, your own redness, and so on. All colors have their uses.
Even as these realizations may take place for Blue, it never really ‘transmutates’ to ‘White: ‘White (Enlightenment) is a myth.’ The radiation that ‘Blue‘ is may lose it’s identification with ‘Blueness‘ and then be fully able to see itself as showing up as all wavelengths, and one can call that a ‘truer’ Enlightement, but what’s really important is to be in touch with the fact that one shows up as blue, sometimes, red, sometimes, and so on. And that’s the part that is really important: to be in touch with how one is showing up this moment and to have intimacy with that. And the reason why that is what matters is because, right now, that’s all one’s got. All the rest is a story.
IV
This little model helps me explain people’s disillusionment with their spiritual teachers. In the same way we, as spiritual seekers, long to be White we want our teachers to be White, so that we have somebody in our life who we believe can show us the way. But n o b o d y is White.
‘White‘ is a story.
A spiritual master is somebody who is in touch with all her colors, AND who owns them when he or she shows up as that, and that equanimity with all colors is as White as it gets. When we don’t understand this and our teacher begins to show his or her blue and red and purple sides, we’re disillusioned. We attack them in our minds or write blog posts about them. We separate from them and I know that’s not wise because it all feels like pain. I know that because I’ve done it. It all stems from a basic confusion about what enlightenment is and is not, and about the deeper meaning of purity. The simple way to begin to clear up that confusion is to literally recognize that ‘Enlightenment is not what you think.’
This prompted me to write a little poem, which I dedicated to my friend Michelle Kassinger. We had a good time the other day talking about the matters that eventually became the ingredients for this post. Here it is.
Working on it
I am aware of the colors I wear today
I am aware that those colors are not all that I am.
Allowing those insights to percolate right through my actions
So that I may live a life of balance
That’s the enlightenment that I know.
You can do it!
Friday, February 13th, 2009
Don’t just taste the food
-Bathe in it.
Another Name for Joy
Friday, February 6th, 2009
There is a Freedom regardless of conditions.
Even as I’m covered with mud, I taste it.
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When people ask me
Wanting to know what that’s like
I tell them that it’s like when they go for a walk with a dear friend
And share from the heart.
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It’s exactly like that.
On the edge of growing up
Thursday, January 15th, 2009
But not there yet.
