Mystical Moments

When we talk about true mystical experience, it seems as though the general thought is that anyone who has a genuine connection with the divine floats about in some kind of mystical state 24/7. However none of the mystics ever seem to report it that way. What is more the case is that they (and we) have scattered mystical moments; small glimpses of what that connection looks and feels like. It is here one moment and slips away as soon as we try to latch on to it and hold it as our own.

Actually the term mysticism and mystical were not even part of our language until the 15th century, so the early "mystics" did not even refer to themselves or their experiences as mystical. They were simply trying to be present in the moment.  But as the church tried more and more to make god and spirituality more other-worldly, they pushed the experience of the divine into the realm of the non-human - and we have been trying to get it back ever since.

Truth is: mystical moments happen all the time but because we tend to be looking elsewhere for the big kahuna "aha" experience, we don't recognize them. You know what they are: a baby's smile, catching another person eye-to-eye, sunsets and sunrises, a rose blooming or a crocus poking its way through the last snow, and so many more. In fact every instant there is another moment that is mystical and transcendant. and when you start to see them, life itself becomes more beautiful and precious.

The trick in the whole mystical experience is to be awake and aware enough to notice what is happening in the now. And each time we forget that life is filled with these mystical moments, we slide back into our routines of worrying about the future or wishing away the past. Dan Millman wrote a book once called No Ordinary Moments which really captures this understanding.  But we don't need near death experiences to wake us up - we need only to wake up. Then you'll see why the so called "mystics" lived quite ordinary lives - but were filled by the abundance of mystical moments they allowed themselves to experience in every moment. So coming back to the beginning of this thought stream, if we are actually capable of being present I suppose we could enjoy a mystical life.  The problem, as Ram Dass said, is to Be Here Now!

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!

Gifts

Least anyone reading my last entry (On Becoming An Elder) think me a depressive or negatively-oriented person, let me just add that life itself is a gift. Everything about is a gift - especially the present (time)! But do we really earn gifts or are they given, just because the giver wants to give? I think the latter, whether the giver is life, the cosmos, god, your best friend or a family member. Gifts are given, not earned.

Whizzing past 60 at relatively break-neck speed, celebrating its passage in living color, with family and a great many friends, but in celebration of life is how I would have wanted it - and befitting my attitude on life and living. This is all a gift. So much of my experience in life - the greatest percentage by far and away - is just given to me as a gift. I delight in every moment and even in retrospect have fully embraced the few lumps and bumps of my own screw-ups.

So if these gifts are not of my doing but the lessons of my failures are, then I can only lay claim to those. Oh sure - did I actually DO the accomplishments? Yes, I ran the Boston Marathon, yes I hiked the Himalayas, yes, I have DONE so many things of which I am proud. But these occur to me as the gifts of my privileged life - the gifts I have been given. Without the gift, they would not have been nearly as possible. So, yes, I did something with the gifts I was given. And when I messed up the opportunity - the gift - I learned, and grew, and gained. The gift never lost its giving properties.

So I seem to have talked myself into a corner here. Life is a gift (but only when I/we receive and do something with it), the lessons of failure, were sourced from a gift, that I could only receive after I got the lesson. So I either have to claim it all as mine, (given to me to do with and/or fumble as best I can), or recognizing them all as gifts, step back and be thankful for the abundance of gifts I have been given.

On Gratitude

It does not take wizard level perception to notice that we just celebrated the high feast of gluttony and consumption. And by mocking it please know that I am not taking your inventory - but mine. We baked, we cooked, we uncorked wines and even smoked a very nice cigar outside in the waning afternoon sunlight - and yes we said "thanks" over a sumptuous meal with friends and family. It was wonderful and filling, and for it all I am grateful.

But I have been practicing a different level of spiritual awareness of late - one that looks to find faith when there is no reason to believe, and one that celebrates gratitude when there in nothing on the plate in front of me. And I must admit with chagrin that I find this discipline very difficult. I am privileged. I am gifted with abundance - affluence, really (on a world scale what would be called wealth). I am blessed with a life without pain or threat of daily violence. In short, I am not challenged.

How then can I claim to develop and advance my faith? How can I exercise true gratitude? Do I really want to pray for this all to be stripped away? (No freaking way!!) Do I really want to volunteer for the Job experience? (Hell no!) And yet, devoid of these litmus tests of faith and gratitude, I am but a clanging gong or a noisy cymbal.


I have been contemplating the idea of going on a fast - like a five day or seven day fast. But then even that occurs to me as a luxury that I enjoy. Like I can even "choose" to go on a fast, the hardest part of which is that I can choose to break it at any point. There are those who can choose neither - whether to fast (as it most often occurs with the regularity of a neighbors visit) or to end the fast (as if they even know when the next hunk of bread (forget about a meal) is going to come. So fasting just seems like some arrogant, elitist Uncle Tom-ism to me.

All I really want and pray for is to know my god more completely, to strip away all that stands between me and my maker and source. It is just a quest, my quest, and for all of the challenges in trying to fulfill that quest..
...I am most grateful.
Happy Gratitude Day

Breathing

I have a friend who is tremendously giving. The only problem is that she is not too terrific at taking in compliments or receiving gifts from others. So i wonder about her health. Giving without receiving is a lot like exhaling without inhaling - eventually you will pass out from lack of oxygen. And by the way, the opposite is also true - all receiving with no giving is like inhaling but never exhaling; eventually the build up of carbon dioxide will cause you to pass out as well.

So what we really have to pay attention to is breathing god's abundance. We can not do one without the other. It is not better to give than receive - nor is it better to receive than to give. Life and the abundance of the creator are like the air we breathe - to be taken in and given out, in full and measured balance.

My Lutheran stoic heritage would have me believe that I am to be self sacrificing and self-effacing. I should feel guilty for even asking for help but should never turn another's request away. But that is not the breath of life god meant for us to share. Isn't it funny how distorted we have made the gifting of the almighty.

Giving and reciving - like inhaling and exhaling - are the basic elements of life. Do both or suffer the consequences of losing consciousness!

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).