Be Careful What You Ask For

Years ago a friend and mentor told me that every day he said a kind of prayer to know God's will for him. He said it with full earnestness, and then one day he was smacked right in the face with a challenge that was way bigger than he had ever imagined. It became his job but he told me, "Be careful what you ask for - you just might get it."

I have been asking for a way to learn how to stay vulnerable while doing the work for which I trained throughout my adult life. It turns out that there isn't really a way to learn it - like there is no step one then step two. Nor is there a way to just put one's big toe into the pool of vulnerability to test the water temperature. It appears to me that vulnerability, as a state of being, either is something you are
or you aren't. It's kind of like being pregnant - there is no such thing as somewhat pregnant. And my lesson of late is that it is the same with vulnerability. You either are or you are not.

So it has come to the point where I must jump into the deep end of the pool and decide to live this way. There is no other choice - I cannot turn back and and stay defended and closed any longer. It is no longer a choice I will make. And what has opened up the deep end to me is that I had to let go of the fear of "what will people think?" The answer came pretty clearly to me over the last few days of training in which I have been participating: They will think I am being vulnerable. And overall that is not such a bad thing.

Brene Brown says that vulnerability without boundaries is not vulnerability. It's stupidity! So it's not like choosing to be vulnerable and live life from a more transparent stand means walking around naked all day or through a tough neighborhood alone at night. It means creating safe places and conditions for vulnerability to live and pull us all together. And with that it means knowing that home and among friends are some of those places. At least it is where I am starting. And the more I practice that with the ones I love and trust, the more I am able to know how to bring it to life in the public world. Wish me luck!

Wings, What Wings

Though I have never asked a caterpillar or a chrysalis or a butterfly for that matter about the formation of their wings, I am quite certain that their development is a process that happens without the respective bug-phase's awareness - if said creatures can be said to have awareness at all.

What one may notice about the development of wings is probably akin to what one notices about the transformation through which they may be going. From the inside nothing seems to have changed - I am still the same man, still married to the same woman, and still struggling to lift my emotional body out of the swamp of sadness over my "losses" at it were. But what seems different is what others say to me. "You sound different."

"Really, in what way?"

"Oh I don't know - you seem different, more introspective, quieter." But I don't want to be quieter. I need to be my powerful self in order to deal with the clients I had - despite the fact that I am trying to bring out a different message. My new message is that coaching and leadership first must come from the heart, not the intention of a zealous ego. But more importantly, I have to walk the talk. I understand now what my teacher Richard Rohr means when he says "unless you allow yourself to be humiliated by life's trials, you can't understand the bigger life."

On "Losing it All"

The graduation address at ANTS this year was drawn from the book "The Things They Carried" that (among other themes) described the characters of the story by the objects they had with them in combat - from canteens to pictures and bibles. We tend so often to define ourselves and our lives through the things we have, the things we own or, perhaps more accurately the things that begin to own us. At least I do - that is until a few weeks ago when became apparent that all of those things were about to become dust, ashes, memories, and lost.

I just lost a very big gamble - a company for which we had borrowed a lot of money to launch. In failing, all of that investment was lost, flushed right down the proverbial toilet, and lost. Well not entirely lost inasmuch as I still remain accountable to repay the vast amount of money borrowed in the first place.  But what went down with that company was a set of dreams, hopes, vacations, and a whole lifestyle we had hoped on in our retirement. Gone. Poof! In a matter of just a few weeks all of that was no longer something that I had - and now is something that has me.

In my meditations I am looking for the release - looking for the sense of nothingness and freedom that having nothing and owing a lot carries with it. And I find that I am still carrying pictures of that lost dream tucked into the band of my helmet. I am still carrying stories of what I would do if... in my duffel bag. I am still carrying all those things with me into battle. I want desperately to let go and to step into the humility of this new naked life that has been thrust on me pretty much against my will. And to tell the truth, I am not there yet.

Yesterday I laid on the floor in a crucifix position, praying for God to take my ego away.  "Go ahead - rip it out of my chest," I shouted out to the air that might be listening. And the only response I heard was a whisper that seemed to say, "When you are ready, you'll let go of it. It is the only thing standing between you and me."  Damn it, God, why do you have to be so right! Why don't you just let me wrestle you like your boy Israel instead of messing with my mind? Beat me fair and square instead of making it my job to surrender!

Then again, maybe that is what this losing it all is about. Being beaten at my own game.

Emotional Processing

My personal trek into the unknown is beginning to reshape my understanding of human emotions and how we precess emotional matter.  In fact that last sentence is the problem most of us (myself included) seem to have about emotions.  We think we can process or understand our emotions - that they are messengers for what we are to do.   You know; see a bear charging us, run away; see an attractive person, move toward, etc. And while that may work to some extent, what I am learning is that we have gotten it backwards.  We do not process our emotions (or at least we should not try to process them), emotions process us.

I am not talking here about the pretense of indecision reflected in a person's saying, "I don't know how I feel about suchandso," or "Let me see how I feel about it." Those "emotions" are more often than not the result of cognitive processes; of the "I think therefore I feel" type of thinking.  What I am talking about, on the other hand, is the occurrence of a deeply felt emotion that comes upon us.  Take for example the experience of love or grief or the welling up of whatever moves us to tears in the presence of the indefinable.

We need to learn how to resist the urge to analyze what those mean and begin to let them do their work on us. To say that emotions move us may be more accurate that we first think.  What happens when we allow an emotion to work its magic on us is that it begins to transform our very being from the inside out. And our "normal" reaction to that transformation is to quickly avoid it, run away from it or do something about it.  Transformation is never pleasant - it is often more like pulling yourself inside out through your belly button!  But when we allow an emotion to work us, that is exactly what is possible.

Lovers may feel the love but may too often move to capture the object of their love instead of letting it grow them in new and unthought of ways. The former is an act of narcissism (not love) where the latter is transformative. Similarly suffering causes a knee-jerk reaction of doing whatever will stifle the suffering. And yet nothing will reinvent us like suffering. This is not to be confused with victimhood. There are times when suffering must be ended for the safety of the victim.  But when our ego takes charge (a bad habit it engages in for most of our waking hours), and it is our ego need that wants to end the suffering or claim the reward at having loved so well, then we are denying our emotions the power that is uniquely theirs. Ego is the enemy of transformation.

Most of the time allowing emotions the opportunity of doing the inner work feels like sitting in a pool of muck - all damp and smelly and dirty. What's worse is that emotions do not work on us in any linear fashion (step 1, 2, 3) as our logical egos would have it.  It is sporadic, coming and going in waves of differing times and intervals.  And it is not over until it is over.  As if that is not enough bad news for your ego, get this: once you start this work, there is no way out except through it. And a nasty corollary to that is that any part that you skip will come back to kick you in the butt when you least expect it.

But there is good news. On the other end, there is a rainbow of new opportunities and insights that were never visible through your ego-controlled lenses. New worlds and new ways of being wait for those willing to let themselves be sucked through the vortex of emotion-driven transformation. Be patient with yourself and gentle with your emotions. It is hard work, but the rewards are worth it.

Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

As I sit here and contemplate what course or courses I wish to take in seminary as I return (yet again) in the fall, I am faced with a huge dilemma: to what end? I have often contended I study religion for sport! I love it and literally nothing fascinates me more than the question of what people (myself included) believe in. They are among the strongest held and most polarizing beliefs we have. And yet it feels like I need to have a reason. Actually - truth be told - I want to have a reason.

I am now 63 and officially retired from full-time consulting - my livelihood of the past three decades - and yet I am still hungry. I continually ask myself if I have done what I was sent here to do. And I do not know the answer.  I know (because I have been told) that I am among the best psychometrists in the business. I love cracking the code of a diagnostic test and seeing it come to life for my client. It is my gift and I have used it well over the years.

But men of my age are not supposed to be asking "is that all?"  We are told to be content with life and what we have accomplished by now. And I am - - sort of.  But there is this nagging voice in my head and churning in the pit of my stomach that continually point me toward spirituality and some form of ministry - not church-based ministry, but the kind of ministry that assists, guides and helps others struggling with their spirituality as I continually do.

Struggling with spirituality is not the best term but I have no other.  I do not mean by that phrase the kind of struggles that search for a belief or an understanding of god or experiences of the sacred and divine. Struggling with deep spirituality comes from a deep and profound connection with the divine that walks and talks with that power (sometimes figuratively but often literally) yet has no clue of what to do with and because of that connection.

Carolyn Myss says that I might have to be content living at the end of my little cul-de-sac in life bringing my light to that street.  She says that maybe that is all that is required of ones spiritual connection - just to be a light in the world. Period. Nothing else. No other reason. End of story. And it is my ego that wants to make something significant out of what I feel. Maybe.

But as I head back to the hill this fall, I will be looking for a way to shine in other corners, on other streets, in other ways. And I still have not a single clue. God wants us on god's terms, in god's service, not ours, not mine. So again I have to surrender will. Again I have to seek understanding. Again I have to see if there are others who feel like this - because I know there is no denomination I have yet explored that describes the truth I feel and experience.

How can I feel so connected and yet so lost?

Vive La Difference

Who are we as humans? What is it that makes us hate others who are not just like us? I remember in my undergraduate years taking a course from the famous social psychologist, Carolyn Sharif. She and her husband Musafer Sharif (forgive me if I have spelled it incorrectly) conducted this great study of teenage boys called the Robber's Cave Study that I think was the foundation for some of the scenes in The Lord of The Flies. The net of the study was that is was regular behavior to define one's own group by the "out-grouping" of another. In other words, we are who we are because we are not "them." And so social scientists since the 50's and the Robber's Cave study had a way of describing what we do to each other. Read that as in "it is normal and regular to do that." Hey that is no news. Humans have killed off the "other" for as long as we have had tribes. But does it make it right or normal? I think not and in fact I am getting sick and tired of reading justifications of outgroupings whether they are based in biblical mistranslations or out of context quotations or hocus pocus bullshit made up by some egocentric narcissist too terrified of his own shadow to step into the light on his own. Well I am tired of it. What is straight or gay or whatever anyway? Who decided that mattered in determining your humanness? When I was a junior in college (that is a loooong time ago) I had a room mate who was gay (still is). And how he explained it to me was asking me if I decided to be 6'3". I said of course not, I just grew that way. Well, he said, I never decided to be gay, I just grew that way. (Thanks Peter, I still love you for all you taught me.) States and churches are falling into sides around same-sex marriages as if it is their right to legislate how tall a person should be to be considered a person. Cut me a break. It is not our decision! It is up to each individual to act on and become all he or she is meant to be irrespective of the local norms and mores of the dominant group. Despite what the Sharifs observed, it is neither right or normal to place a moral judgment on another because he or she is not like you and your group. That kind of clique behavior is as distasteful in adulthood as it was in junior high school, only the adults in question should have outgrown it! It is time we grow up as a society and face the fact that the human experience is not a unified or singular experience. Being human has about six billion different ways of manifesting and each one is as great and beautiful as the next. Thank god you are unique, and that the person next to you is unique and that I am not you. We need to stop bonding about how we are the same and rejoice in and bond around our array of differences. The human experience is a wide rainbow of colors and the boundaries are indistinguishable yet ubiquitous. I don't want to be you and you should not want to be me. So why do people think that someone else should have the same preferences as you and I do. I really don't know when it was that I knew I liked girls, but I do remember that it was after I had my boy experiences. We boys loved each other. We were inseparable and we learned about sex from each other, told tales to each other, gaped at our dad's Playboys together, and we were tighter than anything. Then one day, I noticed that girls smelled different, sounded different and I was uncontrollably attracted. I did not choose that. I just was. My room mate did not choose to stay with his boys, he just did. There is nothing more to it than that. Two of us manifesting two of the six billion ways to be a human. Praise god for that! And for god's sake, cut the crap about making differences wrong. It is what is right about being human - we are all uniquely different. Amen, amen, let it be so.

Systematic Theology

Wow - It has been a while since I posted here, though admittedly most of these are more like my talking out loud than postings with the intent of generating tons of responses!

This semester I am in a class called Systematic Theology - subtitled perhaps "how does all of this stuff hang out together in your head or heart?" I have to admit it is kicking my butt mostly because it is forcing me to put in writing that which I have gotten away with not having cleanly defined for most of my adult life. Topics like: What is the nature of humanity? If you believe in a god, what is it that you actually believe? And the big one for me is if I call myself a Christian (on the days that I do call myself that) then what is it that defines my Christianity?

It requires first and foremost a starting point: would that be god or humanity? Since I cannot ever comprehend fully god as the fullness and source of all is-ness everywhere, I have to start with humanity. It led me on a path of recognizing that we only can know anything in our own language and limited through our own experience. So certainly whatever I may claim to understand is most certainly NOT god. It is only my experience of god, and at that, it is still limited to the antecedent referent list of tools, experience, vocabulary and imagery that my history, ethnicity, gender, society, economics (etc, etc) has afforded me.

All I can come to then is that this (all of this world, this universe, this life) is but a mere reflection of god - not god nor even full evidence of godliness - just "reflections as in a mirror" as Paul wrote. And to be certain the point of view from which I see that reflection is not the one from which you (any of you) see your version. But theology courses want you to come down with a theory or a theology (literally some god words or god logic) that you could espouse.

Hey, I am working on it!

Finding Hope

It is my considered opinion that most of us do not know what true hope is but rather that we move with what might be considered a false hope. We hope in what we have and what we know or can imagine. We hope in some prepackaged design of "something better." We hope in a heaven - and we hope there is no hell. We hope to win the lottery, and for happily ever after marriages.

But what is hope itself? The dictionary says hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best. I think that is wishful thinking.


So for right now I am trying on a new type of hope. I am working with a hope that does not know what things "should" be or have an idea of what turning out for the best might look like. Maybe it borders more in the realm of trust. I trust that god (or infinite wisdom or universe or whatever you may wish to call it) is infinitely smarter and more powerful than I and that how things are working out is more likely according to some process far larger than I can comprehend. And I place my hope in its care.

To say I have hope is - for now - to say I trust that whatever happens, occurs for a reason and is my invitation to come along with it. Hope should not resist what is in deference to something one's ego has decided would be better. Hope is a state of being found in living in gratitude for everything just as it is - and loving every bit of it as the rich stuff of life. At least I hope so!

Rethinking Church

I love my daughter! It's not just that she is a brilliant scholar and theologian; it's that she is an explorer - or maybe she is a guide to my own exploring. Whatever! In any case she recently noted that she was rethinking church (and truthfully, I really don't know what she was referring specifically to). But it got me thinking. Yea, church - the whole concept and set of practices we hold about church - needs a radical make over.
I am thinking that we need to turn it literally inside out. Let's just look at three simple aspects of church. First of all, what if we stopped thinking about going to church all together - I mean stopped thinking that it is some place we go. Because when we go inside the church building, we have entered into an exclusion of others - we have walls around us that hold us inside all safe and sound (not even noticing that in doing so we are walling others out). So what if we start letting church to come into us in a way that turns us outward, that tears down the walls and propels us outward toward others? What if?
And what if we stopped thinking of prayer as something that we do or even chose to do but rather that we got prayed. Richard Rohr says "prayer happened and we were there!" For years I have been thinking more like life lives us and that we are in service to the greater life force that flows through us. Well prayer is just like that. Prayer is our attempt to get out of the way and let the spirit of the divine flow through us and out into the world. What if we started getting prayed?
Then what if we stopped thinking that god was out there - as in anywhere other than everywhere, including every cell of you and me and everything everywhere? How might we act if there was no heaven apart from earth, no place to get to if we got it right? How would we act if we only had right now and recognized that we are inseparable from one another but were actually all entwined as one great living whole?
I want to be that church - that re-thought church!

Net Intimacy

There is - I think - a deep human longing for intimacy. However, given today's fractured society where everyone bustles along with ear buds plugged in or cell phones lodged between ear and shoulder, it seems we are even less connected than ever. I noted the look on a passenger in a car the other day as her driver chatted away to someone else while toodling along the highway - it was sad! Families are scattered from Michigan to Maine and Boston to Boca and often neighbors don't even know each others' names.

So we turn to Facebook! I have noted with growing alarm the number of intimate details that have been revealed on people's FB page - arguments with lovers and spouses, pain and grief over life situations and all nature of political, moral and ethical views. Not that it is inappropriate to express one's views, au contraire! I am happy people can express views and have a language for their feelings. What concerns me is that those same people (or me too) might not have an intimate friend to sit beside, or whose shoulder they might weep upon, or with whom they secretly confide a new, budding love. Have we lost that?

There are times the all three of us will be in the home office all working away on our respective computers - and not saying a word to each other! OOOO! The family that 'nets together, gets together! When I notice it (not always because I am focused on work, or my son on his homework), I try to interrupt the separation and bring us all into conversation. But I worry about others, about the strange mixture of aloneness and the loss of boundaries that exposes one's innermost self to the passing public. I fear that my 11 year-old son might grow up thinking that he is having a relationship with someone because they txt each other and that he is expressing himself because he has an array of emoticons! And I wonder if the Amish might not be so strange afer all! Reports show that suicide rates, though quadrupling in our society are lowest and staying put among the Amish and among cultures with lower technology.

And of course, as I write this, I think I had better call a close friend and talk about it!

It's Just Perfect!

Last week I gave a lecture at the Sloan Business School of MIT on the topic of rapid assimilation into a leadership or management position. Throughout the talk I fielded questions on disharmony and disagreements - the thought being that if one has done a good job selecting and interviewing, there should be a lowered probability of problems. At one point I even asked the audience how many people had the experience of being hired for a job and finding out after the fact that either the job had radically changed or that there were some deep dark, and untold secrets that had not been revealed during the interviewing process (nearly all the hands went up).

Ignoring the irrational expectation that a company should reveal its warts prior to your becoming an insider, the really big problem that lies at the base of this discussion is a belief that a perfect world is one in which all live in harmony. As far as I can tell that belief is the single most destructive belief in the world. It certainly has been the source of more marital problems than any other belief! It just isn't how things are. We are each unique in our being and in our understanding of our world view. Just as no two fingerprints are the same, no two personalities are the same. That is the fun part of life. I wouldn't want to marry someone just like me (how boring is that?) and it would almost feeling like talking to myself were I to work with someone just like me.

Believing that we should have no disagreements also stifles creativity. Nothing really creative can come from agreeing with each other. But in disagreeing - and doing so vehemently - we are forced to find a new solution. The more invested we are in the two poles of a disagreement, the greater our creativity has to be. Our inability to engage in disagreements is further exacerbated by our not knowing how to disagree, debate, and find solutions without taking things personally. Our society - the ME society - has taught us that everything is about us. "If you like my clothes, you must like me" translates into "if you don't like my ideas, you must hate me." And now I can tweet you with what I am doing at any given instant. C’mon: Do we really think that our lives are so important that anyone would be interested in knowing that it is time to take a shower or that you are standing in line at the Stop and Shop? I hate to be so blunt, but we need to get over it! Life is not about you – your life is not about you. Life is to be lived in service to and relationship with others. And relationship is all about working out the differences.

I don’t know if my audience heard the message, but the answer to “what if you and your boss disagree?” and “what if the mentor you have is at odds with the person you report to?” was, and still is, forever, “work it out!” That is the stuff of life, and that is just perfect!

On Becoming an Elder

Well, it's official: I am now 60 years of age. It doesn't feel any different - really. Oh there are things like I can't life a refrigerator anymore and a solid day of construction makes me ache all over, but other than a few aches and pains, my mind still thinks I am something like 48, to pick an arbitrarily stupid figure.

But this number comes with some titles and labels, the main one of which that I would like to adopt is "elder." Now being or becoming an elder carries some trappings with it. For example, it is precisely twice the age we swore never to trust anyone older than, back in the 60's. It probably looks a tad silly for an elder to be rocking out to AC/DC, so my view of myself as a rocker may need some alterations. But most formally, an elder ought to be a mentor, not to anyone specifically, but to society and people in general.

So what is it that I have to give? On what do I offer my mentoring? All I really have to claim solely as my own are these scars - wounds from various battles - and lessons taken from really screwing up royally. But, you see, that is the wisdom of aging. We don't really learn much from our successes. We simply note it and say something like, "Cool, that worked!" But our failures - wow - we ponder them; we slice and dice and analyze them until we figure out where we went wrong and use the pain of the failure to make certain that the lesson sinks in so that we don't repeat the same mistake.

Several years ago I wrote an op-ed piece on what I called the "Shadow Resume" - the compilation, not of all our good accomplishments, but of our lessons taken from the crash-and-burn failures. That is what I have to offer today - I survived all of those tough, painful, don't-want-to-do-that again stuff. Perhaps it is all any of us really can lay claim to.

Undoing the Self

I think for the most part, developmental theories have it all wrong. Most believe that the tasks of growing, developing and maturing are learning what it is that we can accomplish and do with our lives. And while to an extent that is true, we make a critical error in assuming that is who we really are. As infants we make this discovery that we can grab and manipulate the things of our world. So as we grow we layer on that basic belief that the more we can do and control the more a unique individual we become. This, the theorists claim, goes on throughout our stages of establishment and generativity to a point when we can no longer sustain that level of output identified with our self concept. Thus in later years we are told we enter a period of decline and begin preparing to die! Erikson even says that we either get that as a level of acceptance or we fall into despair.

But what if our task as mature adults is not simplification and decline but one of recognition of the essence of who we really are? The complexity of the veil, the disguise we have concocted and used as the projected (false) self through all of those years, begins to unravel and be exposed for what it really is. Wisdom begins to recognize all of the actions and accomplishments as delusions and begins to detach from them in an effort to rediscover the true self that is already, and has always been, there. Simultaneously we begin to uncover the in-dwelling god that as well has been there all this time, from whom we have succeeded in distancing ourselves through all or our doing.

However, because we have such an investment in the idol we have constructed out of our accomplishments, this transition often does not happen without some significant disruption of the self, or more accurately, of the ego. Thus many only come to this realization after a near death experience, after a debilitating injury, after the body begins to fail. In the sadness that may fall into despairing over the lost trappings of our youth, we turn inward to contemplate (some for the first time) who we really are if we are not our doing-ness and our accomplishments. The great sages have been preaching this message for eons – that we are not what we do but how we are that matters. (part II to follow)

Words Fail Emotions

There is a fundamental problem we have as humans and that is that we invented words and then made the mistake of letting them become the feeble container of what we really meant. Though poets can write volumes in just a few short lines of well-chosen words, somewhere around the space of emotions, words just fail.

I am certain that if you look up the word "love" in a dictionary it would say something like "a warm fuzzy feeling about some person or thing." And I am equally certain that such a definition doesn't enter the neighborhood of the length and depth and breadth of the actual feeling I have for my wife or my children. That definition (or any definition) doesn't have the color, depth, vibrancy, history, pain, joy, pleasure, and myriad other dimensions that my love has at any nanosecond.

And grief, I believe, is more complex.

I was reading my daughter's blog as she prepared to eulogize her step-dad Jon Choate, and let the half dozen other responses from friends and family sink in, really touch my inner being, as I read through them. And I am in awe at the texture and dimensions of grief/love that abound in and through all of that discussion. That we humans are capable of such love and only then open to such pain and loss is beyond miraculous. It is stunningly beautiful. There are no words when smiles and tears and love and pain all embrace each other simultaneously. There is only being.

My friend Bill had a daughter born 18 years ago so severely handicapped that she never walked, talked or even fed herself. Faced with the option of institutionalizing her, Bill and his wife decided to love her for as long as she lived. That commitment ended last weekend as Rebecca finally slipped into death. Though there were so many times it felt like a burden, Bill never stopped loving and caring. And now he still cannot stop. He doesn't know how or where or what it looks like. Grief has that depth of love in it that only lovers and parents and real risk-takers know.

I am proud and honored to be part of a family that so easily and openly expresses emotion, and who so fully risk loving. And with all of our words, we don't even come close to what we know each other to be feeling. I love you guys!

Meeting The Challenge

"Nature does not do bailouts!" I was reading a recent article by Al Gore (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122584367114799137.html) where I came across that line. It is so true, and it is what has been bothering me about this whole damned fiasco since the beginning of the discussions. It is the drug mentality all over again! We live in a society that has come to expect a quick fix for any ailment that besets us. More Valium, Prozac and Xanax are prescribed and used in America than all other over the counter and prescribed drugs totaled. We have an industry built on surgical procedures to alter obesity. We want instant gratification, instant solutions, and, yes, bailouts.

Sorry, that isn't how it works! Development and maturity are the result of meeting challenges and adapting our childish need for "having it our way" into some other way that lives in harmony with the world. It is critically important for us to learn to live life on life's terms, not ours, and that seems to be where the train derailed some years ago. Part of the science that started engineering our planet in an effort to provide for improvements and cures grew into a larger-than-life Frankensteinian monster that now stomps about out of our control. We (collectively) learned that we don't have to suffer and that generalized into anything that might be even the slightest bit disconcerting. Continuing down this line, we will atrophy our ability to create any true solutions and adapt to our surroundings, and that just reads like a bad sci-fi novel.

It is time that we reverse the trend and face the music. Meeting this challenge (market correction) head-on for the truth it teaches us won't be easy. Our "problems" carry a truth - a lesson - in them that is important to capture and which is conveniently stepped over when we get bailed out. Overspending, gluttony, consumption, leveraged credit all are lies, the consequences of which we have to face. And there is always a consequence, you don't get away with anything - even though you think you can. Life does not work that way! This is hard, it is not easy to meet such challenges head on, but bones become brittle and porous if they don't carry a load, muscles weaken and shrink it they aren't exercised, and minds go senile if they aren't sufficiently challenged. The consequences of a bailout may be more severe down the road than those of sticking our faces in the mess and working through the painful process of dealing and adapting. But the result of the latter is nature's way, and life's process of healthy living.

Abundant Life

First of all, thanks to my Pastor for his sermon last week (noting the true definition of the "abundant" life that is our birthright) and to my magical eldest daughter, Pastor B, for her notes from a recent trip back to the barrios of Ecuador which re-frame once again my understanding of abundance and scarcity.


So here is the question: Why is it that those who have the most (wealth, toys, land, holdings) suffer most from a feeling of scarcity and wanting, while those with so little are so giving and seem so willing to share ALL that they have? Isn't that backwards? Doesn't that strike you as, if not impossible, at the very least improbable? But that is the truth. And it is the core message of the sacred texts. Give it away and you have more. More what? Simple: more abundance.

Then what is this abundance and this so-called abundant life. It is a freedom - freedom from the addictions of the ego and its petty righteousness around things and symbols. The ego, it would seem, needs to count and to measure. It needs to believe that it means something. But ego, like Kubrick's computer HAL, is a tool gone bad. The mind is an organ of the human body designed to make sense out of nonsense, to make order out of chaos. That's its sole purpose. But along the way it begins to distinguish (in its task of ordering things) self from other, and in doing so begins to count. "I have more of this than he does." "I am not the same as he." "I am different, special, unique, and therefore uniquely loved by my maker." OOO-yeah, I slipped that last one in there as a sucker punch. See that's where it goes of the deep end. And we cannot seem to call it back at that point, "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that!"

And so god points us to the poor among us, to the children among us, to the widowed, outcast, disenfranchised; to those who HAVE nothing, as the examples of how and where to access abundance. That is not a non sequitur. It is simply that devoid of the entrapments of stuff, spiritually-inclined people are able to access an abundance of the meaning and meaningful stuff of life - love, aesthetics, charity, compassion. They are able to "get it" because their identity is not so wrapped up in the structures and counting of their ego. As a matter of record, I would contend that their egos have been relatively smashed. All-in-all not a bad thing.

How then do we access this abundant life? It may not be, as Jesus instructed the rich man, to sell of all our possessions and give the proceeds to the poor, unless, of course (as was the case with the rich man) our identity is all wrapped up in that stuff. But can you become, as the Buddha instructed, detached from it? What would you or I need to do to get us to the point of smashed ego-function, and live free from any - ANY - attachment to the stuff and the accomplishments and the numbers in life? Most importantly, how do I teach my son that value (I am confident both adult daughters live there)?

Abundant life is a discipline - a way of being - that practices detachment to stuff and acts with charity in all times and places. It is not a state one can achieve (yes, that would be ego talking again) - it is only a path, a discipline that eventually shapes the mind and soul. Freedom is the state of being that results from the discipline of abundant living. Freedom from counting, freedom from worry, freedom from scarcity, freedom from oppression (can you dig that? - you cannot oppress a man who is ego-less, you cannot take anything from one who holds on to nothing).

Do You Suffer Enough

The Buddha says that it is suffering that moves us to change toward enlightenment and I must agree. I have written about pain before (Purposeful Pain, 7/14/08) but that is purely on an individual level and of the nature that prevents me from further hurting myself. What I am thinking of now is actual suffering and grief.


On a personal level the suffering in the dark night of the soul is the place where we discover real faith and hope. In truth, it cannot exist anywhere else. Seriously, what kind of faith is it if you have all the evidence in the world that god has provided for you. That is evidence. Faith is only evident when there is doubt, or as Carolyn Myss is fond of saying, "In order to have faith you need to have an experience that demands you find it." So a real purpose of our pain suffering and doubt is that it forces us to develop deep faith and the endurance of a distance runner.


But in the transformational journey, the waves of darkness keep coming. (Oh you thought it was over and that the lesson was learned - wrong!) Each time we dip into the dark night, another layer of ego is stripped away, and another door or window to the world is opened. We gradually evolve from self centered living to allocentric living - other centered. The Buddha calls these outer layers of consciousness a movement toward oneness. As the illusion of separateness is eroded by spiritual suffering (sometimes it is more like being ripped away), our consciousness opens to the global experience of what it means to be human. 'I' becomes 'we' and the limited awareness of one's "sheltered" thin slice of humanity widens to include many others. This is good and right, right?

Wrong! Not good! Because with this awareness comes the suffering of 3-4 billion of the world's population. Not spiritual suffering alone: not just hunger - but starvation; not just sickness - but plague; not just pain - but torture. Human suffering is the awareness of the transformed soul. And what can we do with that level of awareness? The answer is not in turning away, or in numbing our brains with drugs and alcohol. No, the answer is, feel it, let it course through your body and rip out the last vestiges of an ego that thinks it has the power to solve the problem, and then sit with the grief! (O, fun, sign me up for that ride!)

The price of admission to the transformation ride is awareness - disturbing, painful, awareness. The kind that wakes you up at 3AM in the question of, "What am I going to do today that works toward the side of justice and mercy?" And so I sit here with the question (I have gotten used to living in the question) wondering at what point will the suffering be so unbearable that I chuck the roles I currently have and take greater action; global action. At what point will I no longer be able to silence the voice that wants to scream out at the profitability machine, "Enough!" When will I have suffered enough for that? Do you suffer enough?

Back in the Saddle

Well I have been out of pocket for some time tryinng to figure out what to say and do in this space. Many of my old postings had been written as an expression of creative writing - and often a tad lengthy. I do not know what works in the blogosphere but am here to find out.

Like everything I experience, life is not in the knowing but in living into the not knowing. Faith, says Carolyn Myss, is a by-rpoduct of living: "in order to have faith, you have to have a challenge that requires you find it." I think that is so true for everything.

I have a friend who is about to give up on his relationship with a magnificent woman, because, as he puts it, he is not ready, and he does not know who he really is. I told him today that, unfortunately, you only find out the end of the story on the last page and then it is too late to have a relationship, because the last sentence on that page is "you die." Life is the process of figuring things out one event at a time and relationship is what happens when two people try to do that while living into the answers together.

I love the messy unpredictable part of life - Rumi would call it succulent and juicy! He's right.