52 Utopian Minutes – Non-Judgement

I had the distinct privilege of attending a talent show this past Friday evening. I must be truthful and state that I was not all juiced up about going to this talent show, however once I got there and allowed myself to be open the experience I was indeed honored to be there at that moment and for the next 52 minutes I was enthralled with the experience. As I sat in my seat, I noticed the venue was quickly turning into a sold out event (although this was a free show) and that there were soon no more seats to be had. I was grateful to be sitting in the second row from the stage. As we waited for the curtain to go up on this show, I queried my escort for the evening about this talent show. I did not see the likes of Paula, Simon or Randy and asked if this show was being judged, which I was told it wasn’t. I inquired further to find out that this talent show was not judged, nor were there any prizes or designation of first, second or third place. Now my interest was peaked!

I then heard someone say that there are never boo’s from the audience.

After being exposed to the likes of American Idol for the last few years, the thought of no one judging the talent, not even the audience seemed strange, yet wonderfully refreshing. Now I was excited about what I was about to witness, my spirit was elevated and I felt as light as a child at play as I awaited the show to begin.

Curtain went up and the host of the show came out on stage to introduce the first of many acts. The host had forgone the usual tuxedo and instead looked more like Bob Hope on the old USO tours, he wore a camouflaged bush hat, rolled up on each site, a colorful print button down shirt, khaki shorts and sneakers. I half expected him to start to roll out some one liners. He eloquently proceeded to welcome us and introduce the first act. There were singers and dancers, there were acts that played the guitar, there were solo acts and group acts and at the end of each act, no matter how bad or good it was, the audience would roar with applause, whistles, hoots and hollers  as if it was the best thing they had ever saw.

Each person who exited that stage did so with a big smile of satisfaction that there hours of practice had paid off and they had brought joy to that crowd of people for the few moments that they were on stage.

Not one single person who performed on that stage was judged! The room was filled with joy as the audience embraced every performer with love and respect and gave back to them so much love and so much encouragement.

As I sat there completely immersed in this utopian environment, I realized how blessed I was to be a part of the moment and a part of the larger whole. My awareness on how much we judge others was heightened by being in a place of complete non-judgment. My desire was that everyone should feel and take away from this talent show how wonderful and natural it felt not to judged and to allow all to simply “Be”.

May you approach everyone and everything today without judgment of what is good or bad, happy or sad, may you give yourself and others permission to “be” and may you and others be ensconced with and unconditional love and acceptance.

May you feel the beauty, love and joy that I felt at a 6^th grade talent show on a Friday evening and may you share the power and beauty of non judgment with all those who cross your path.

Juggling

As I was on my way to the park and lock where I park my car I observed a lady coming up the sidewalk, it looked like she had a rolled up newspaper in her hand. She stopped to ask me a question. I heard her ask “Do you get the Times?”  Thinking that I was be solicited for a newspaper subscription, I said “Yes I do” and proceed to continue walking. Well, I got about three steps away and I hear the woman say, “Well then what time is it?”  Realizing my mistake, I apologized and gave her the time. 

A number of things happened here, one I was in a hurry as I had been most of the day trying to successfully manage a number of tasks and roles and I did not take the time to really listen. Secondly, I made some rather broad assumptions based on visual cues and my not so astute assessment of the situation.

All in all a small burp on a rather hectic, yet joyful day. This incident did create awareness. I immediately became aware that I was going at too fast a pace and by doing so I had allowed myself not to fully engage with what was going on around me.

We all get busy from time to time and when we do we tend to become rushed and not as at tentative to the moment as we should be. Many of us live in a world of multi-tasking and shoulder multiple roles in our day life. The best analogy I have heard to describe multi-tasking is that of a juggler.

Picture a juggler, juggling multiple balls in the air, could be three balls, could b 20 balls. Each ball represents a task/responsibility. In this analogy there are three kinds of balls, even though there may be many balls in the air. Each ball that you, the juggler is juggling is wood, rubber or glass. When you are juggling wooden, rubber and glass balls each one has different consequences when dropped.

Let’s say in juggling as in life, something will eventually drop, especially as we take more on. If we drop the rubber ball, it’s no real problem because the rubber ball will simply bounce and we will be able to pick it up in mid-air and continue juggling all of the balls without much impact at all. If we drop a wooden ball, the impact is a little greater because when the wooden ball hits the floor it hits with a thud and just sits there. We have to then stop juggling all the other balls long enough to pick the wooden ball up and get all the balls back in the air. If we drop a glass ball, then the impact is much more severe, because when the glass ball hits the ground it shatters into many pieces and if we can replace the glass ball, which often we can’t, it is going to take a great deal more time to find a new glass ball and get all of the other balls back in the air.

The key is to know what the glass balls in our life are and know that we can afford to occasionally drop the wooden and rubber balls.

It is important that we give ourselves permission not to be everything to everybody and to excuse ourselves when we do drop the occasional ball or when we have to put all the balls aside with the understanding that the balls in a very true sense our an illusion of our reality and that in the long run, we will not be judged by how many balls we kept in the air.

Juggle the balls in your life with love and with the understanding that the balls are your creation, thus you can make choices to how each ball impacts your life.

 

Following Too Closely

Have you ever been following someone into a room or following a car in front of you and found yourself tripping over something or having a near accident? Most people have experienced this situation. It’s kind of like the picture of the lemmings following each other over the edge of a cliff. The lemmings are following each other so closely that they don’t see the edge of the cliff until it’s too late. Of course we humans think that we are far superior to the lemmings and would never do such a silly thing, however in reality we tend to model lemming behavior quite often in our life.

Following someone or something too closely often blinds us to our own way. As we navigate along our spiritual path we do look for teachers, as we should, for there are many teachers along are path waiting with lessons to impart upon us.  Often times we may come across a very dynamic teacher who we resonate with in an intimate way.  These teachers touch our heart and our soul in such a way that we find being around them and following their teachings help to elevate us to a new level.  Sometimes we may become so engrossed in this person’s teachings that we may even become obsessive in our following of their teachings. This obsession is akin to the obsession of a new love affair when you find yourself continually talking about that new person in your life to the point of nausea.

As in any relationship, when we follow so closely our vision becomes somewhat obscured and we miss seeing many things that lie in front of us. We tend to lose the ability to see both the positive and negative opportunities around us because we are following too closely. In many ways we become very much like a lemming, following closely and losing our vision of what lies in front of us.

When we follow too closely it is very understandable that at some point we may trip and fall or worse. This is why I think it is important in every thing we do to not follow too closely and to be aware that we must give ourselves some space in order to see.

Our path is not without pitfalls and it is critical that we maintain a reasonable distance from whatever, whoever we are following so that we may be open to all that is available to us.

Just like we are instructed to do when driving, in our spiritual journey we are well advised to maintain a safe following distance.

Ask yourself today, am I following anyone or anything too closely? If the answer is yes, then your awareness will help to create the distance which will provide you with vision to navigate your path and not the path of someone else.

 

 

Are You Bored?

When is the last time you were bored? I recall as a child growing up, one of the most foolish things you could do was to say aloud that you were bored. My parents did not believe in boredom. They were hard working lower middle class Americans who did not get the concept of being bored. They could not understand with all of the modern amenities, 3 channels on TV, radio, books, etc how even on a cold rainy day one could have the audacity to say they were bored. If you did make the rookie mistake of saying you were bored or that you even appeared to be bored than you would be given some chore to do which was surely designed to teach you not to be bored. With this attitude that my parents held, I quickly found ways not to be bored. I found many ways to entertain myself as I grew up.

To this day, I still cringe when I hear someone exclaim that they are bored.  I just can’t imagine how anyone could possibly be bored, yet it does seem to happen. It may happen even more now than it ever has before. Why, one may ask, do people become bored? 

We have become a culture of doers; many feel that they constantly must be doing something and/or that they must be entertained at the same time.  We do live in an interesting time where we as a society are constantly “doing”. The sad thing is that when we do take some time or accidentally find time where we are not doing; we often become agitated, not knowing what to do with ourselves

Boredom is simply the state of believing that we should be doing something else, usually something we perceive is better than what we are doing at the moment.

Boredom than is quite simply a pattern of thoughts. We choose to be bored.  We never have to feel bored and when we do find ourselves slipping into what we would refer to as boredom than it is up to us to recognize this state of thought for what it is and choose to make a shift in our perception.

Are you bored with your relationship?

Are you bored with work?

Are you bored with your self?

If you find you are bored with any aspect of your life, then you must ask yourself why? How can you change you thoughts, which will change your actions to remove the boredom?

Many of the modern inventions, washing machines, microwave ovens, cell phones, computers, etc that were designed to lessen the amount of time we are doing the daily chores of life and give us more free time in the end seems to have only given us more time to do more things in a day. Most people have learned to cram more into a day rather than learn how to relax and take some time off from always being in a “doing” mode.

Truth is we like to “do”, we like to be busy. Many like to be in constant state of doing rather than be in a state of being, for many fear the state of simply being. Many fear that if they took the time to simply “be” than they might discover something about themselves that they would rather avoid when the reality is that in self discovery we may in deed find things about ourselves that are not what we want to find, however I know that those things are less than 1% of who we are and the other 99% of what we will find within ourselves will be so powerful that the negatives we find will be quickly discarded.

Once you shift your perspective, you will find that you will relish the times in your day where you have a few minutes. You can use this time to meditate, to go sit on a park bench and let the sun warm your face, to recall all that you have to be grateful for, to sit and people watch, etc. To “Be” is and incredible state of being. One which is critical to our continued growth. It is of great importance that in a way we find the time to be “bored” for this time can be used in many powerful ways.

 

Birthday’s – A Celebration of Life

Last night I was at a birthday party for two people and this event got me to thinking about how we celebrate birthdays in traditional American culture. We traditionally give cards, gifts and share in birthday cake and song. When we are children, birthday parties are a very big deal and we look forward to them with great anticipation of the gifts we will receive and the cake we will enjoy.  As we grow older, birthdays tend to lose their appeal. The celebration of ones birthday if anything is usually more subdued unless it is some sort of milestone, such as turning 40, 60 etc. Most people don’t look forward to their birthday with must enthusiasm, as a matter of fact, many don’t even want the world to acknowledge that they are another year older. For many a birthday is simply a reminder that they are growing older and may even become a melancholy time as they remember all of the things they have not done that they promised themselves they would.  For these people, a birthday is simply a stark reminder that time on this earth is running out. All of which brings me to my point, there is a better way to celebrate our birthday.

What is a birthday? Quite simply it is the anniversary of the day that we exited the womb and became a card carrying, oxygen breathing member of the human family. Our birthday celebration should be a celebration of our life! Now you may say, well isn’t that what we do? In a way yes, however very rarely do we express it that way. We throw a party, eat cake, read some prefabricated cards and open gifts; however we rarely say what we are doing.

I would like you to think of a funeral for a moment. At a funeral there is often a eulogy given in which the deceased persons life is reviewed and we are reminded of how great they were, the impact they had on their family and community, etc. This is great, however, how much greater would it be if the person was alive to hear all of the loving and wonderful things his/her family and friends had to say about them? Now, take this thought back to a birthday celebration and place it in context with the annual celebration of life. The birthday celebration is the perfect time for family and friends to come together and speak about the life of the person’s birthday which is being celebrated. This is an excellent opportunity to express how loved they are, the impact that they have on each persons life, etc. The power of doing this would be amazing! Can you imagine what it would do for a person to hear aloud that their friends and family are gathered together to celebrate their life and to acknowledge who they are and the impact they have on everyone! Talk about positive reinforcement! Yeah!

At the next birthday celebration that you are involved in, take a moment to reflect on the significance of the birthday celebration and encourage each person to verbalize their love, respect for the birthday person and to speak of the impact they have had on them and others. By doing this, you will create a birthday celebration that will never be forgotten and you may start a new tradition.

 On a side note, I know that many people from many cultures read my writings. I encourage everyone to share their cultures celebration of a person’s birthday.

Self Abuse

We hear much about child abuse, spouse abuse, abuse against women, etc; however we rarely talk about self abuse.  Self abuse comes in many forms however we don’t call it self abuse, we call it by many other names. Many forms of self abuse our obvious, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, cutting, etc. Notice we never allude to the fact that we are abusing our self, we always say that we are abusing something external to us. Self abuse is insidious in its nature. Most people do not go out of their way to abuse themselves. There are some who consciously choose to abuse themselves because they don’t feel worthy or because they believe there is some form of religious atonement in self abuse.

The rule of thumb however is that we don’t consciously abuse ourselves. Yet, the reality is that many people abuse themselves quite often, some may even do it out of habit. The self abuse of which I speak today is not necessarily physical abuse of one’s self, however the mental abuse we inflict upon our self may in fact be the catalyst for abusing ones self physically. No, what I speak of now is an abuse that goes on within our mind.

In the realm of our mind lives a voice or if you will, a couple of voices. One voice is that of the divine, the voice of our spirit, our soul. This voice is a loving voice. It is the voice which speaks to who we truly are, it is the voice that guides us with a loving touch, and it is the voice which speaks the truth even when we don’t want to acknowledge the truth. For most, this is also the voice which is not the most popular voice, it often runs counter to our culture, it often is the voice of reason that we disregard because we don’t choose to live within reason, and we choose to follow the other voice.

The other voice is the ego. This voice is loud and somewhat obnoxious. The ego voice often drowns out the voice of our spirit. It often literally shouts down the spirit voice in order to have its way. The ego voice recognizes its true weakness and is insecure. This insecurity drives it to be in control as much as it can be and will do anything to have control even if that means harming its host. See, the ego is cunning, however in the long term not very wise. The ego voice is shortsighted and does not see that by demanding to be in control at any cost that it may and often will destroy its host.

The ego voice is the one that creates the illusion that we are separate from source. It tells us that we are alone and that we must always be taking care of number Uno, our self. The ego voice is very suspect of other people, distrustful and is very judgmental of not only others but of it’s host. The ego voice is the one that tells you things like “you don’t need other people” or that you don’t look good enough or that you are not smart enough or that in some way you are not worthy of happiness. It is the ego voice which abuses us, it is the voice that often tells us that we are not worthy of love or that we do not have the ability or deserve to succeed and achieve our hearts desires.

I liken the spirit voice and the ego voice to the old cartoons where you would see an angel sitting on one shoulder of a person and the devil on the other.

The ego is there, encouraging us to do what we want, all the while mis-leading us to doing what it wants, while the spirit is there whispering into our ear what we know is true, even though it may not match what we perceive as what we really want, which in the end turns out to be an illusion.

We abuse ourselves through following the ego voice. We quickly and simply forget our greatness. By no means am I suggesting that other people don’t contribute to us feeling beat up and abused, however what I do know is that we can only be mentally beat up and abused if  we choose to listen to our ego voice and allow ourselves to believe and accept the abuse of others. In the end, it is our self which allows the abuse to happen.

Today, I want you to listen to the voice that plays in your mind. What do you hear? Are you calling yourself stupid, a dumbass, ugly, etc? Are you beating yourself up over something that you did? Are you degrading yourself because someone else said something hurtful or excluded you in some way?

Choose to silence the ego voice, choose to say no, I don’t believe that about myself and that I am not worthy of saying demeaning things to myself ever! Find your spiritual voice and listen to it, allow that voice to take the forefront of your mind and end the self abuse, even if that abuse is mild.

While listening to your self and creating a higher awareness, you will be wise to listen to those around you and notice how many people will verbalize their ego voice by calling themselves names, like stupid, loser, etc, especially when they make what they perceive as a mistake.

Finding Yourself In the Crowd

I have been traveling this week and as I stood in the security check point line at the airport I observed how many people there were and how easy it is for us to become lost in the crowd. Each of the people whom I observed were traveling, they were all moving along the line like cattle as they awaited their turn to pass through security. It is in a crowd of strangers like this that I see how easy it is to fade into the crowd, to become invisible, to feel as though you may be insignificant to a degree.

When we are in our familiar environment, we are usually with people we know, and people who know us, family, co-workers, etc. To some extent these familiar people know our story and we know their’s.  It’s different in a crowd of strangers. We don’t know each others story, we can only observe and imagine what each person’s story may be.  We can also choose to fade into the background and become the observer.  When we are in a crowd like this, other than cultural expectation of behavior there are no real expectations. We can be who ever we want to be without feeling that we have to live up to or down to anyone

Else’s expectations of us. This in a way is a very liberating feeling if you stop long enough to “be”. When you do this, you become the observer, you become very free. Heck, for all anyone knows, you could be “Bond, James Bond”, ha or anyone else you may feel like being at the moment. The reality is you can truly be your authentic self.

I encourage anyone who wants to practice simply “being” to go somewhere that you can become lost in the crowd, a stranger among our family of humanity and simply “be”. There is an incredible opportunity in doing this.

Today, my flight was delayed by 3 hours. I could choose to be upset over something that is entirely out of my control  or I can choose as I did to simply “be” and realize the blessing of these three hours to “be” and to enjoy an incredible time, to enjoy the “now” of my life!

I am full of joy!

Have You Fallen in Love Lately?

Have you fallen in love lately? If you are in a relationship, when was the last time you “fell in love”? Now falling in love and loving somebody are two different things for most people. Often times when we first are with someone, we feel that spark, which gets fanned into a flame and before you know it that flame turns into a bonfire of emotions which we refer to as “falling in love”. The state of being of falling in love is one of the most incredible experiences we have in life.  Our whole state of being changes and in many ways our daily life changes as does our perspective. Things that normally would agitate us seem trivial when we are falling in love. The world seems brighter, we seem to walk with an extra skip in our step and life feels great. Of course as our relationship matures this feeling of elation is replaced with a more mature feeling of love and we begin to settle into a loving, warm and secure relationship. Life begins to resume normalcy and our state of being, while still in love with the other person, returns to a similar and familiar level as we go through our day to day life. This is a natural progression of a long term relationship. We are still in love, however life and our state of being do normalize to a large extent.  The euphoria that we initially felt fades and is replaced with a warm and loving knowing as we plan our life together. In a solid relationship, this change is understood and accepted, which is healthy for each person and the  relationship.  We call this “being in love”.

Being in love is a wonderful state of being. The downfall for many people when they have been in this state for an extended period of time is that one of both partners begin to take each other for granted. It is easy to do, daily life is hectic for most people, work, bills, plans, children, school, etc have a way of taking over our life to the point where we unintentionally neglect our relationship. We may even have moments where we long to feel like we did at the beginning of the relationship when we were “falling in love”.  

Falling in love does not have to be a one time event in a relationship. Many people feel there is some unwritten rule that falling in love is a one time event that happens at the beginning of the relationship. This is a fallacy, we have the ability to choose our state of being. In this case we have the ability to fall in love again. We can fall in love with the person we are with as many times as we desire to. We can fall in love every morning as we tenderly rouse each other from sleep or every night as we hold each other as we dream. Falling in love is action, it is a verb and it is only our thoughts which limit us or allow us to experience the euphoria of falling in love.

I believe falling in love over and over again is a critical component of a successful long term relationship. We can have the feeling of falling in love again and again if we take actions to make it happen, if we look through the eyes of love as the love of our life putters around the house, as we watch them laugh, smile and even cry. When we are in love with someone, it is simply a matter of looking for reasons to fall in love all over again. We can initiate falling in love again simply with the looks we give our partner, the words we say and the simple things we do for them. These actions do not have to be over the top, we do not have to rush out and buy flowers or candy or expensive jewelry. We didn’t fall in love the first time because of things that we bought, we fell in love because of the simple things, the way we looked at each other, the extra phone call we made or the simple touch as we passed each other in the kitchen.

If you are in a long term romantic relationship, I encourage you to meditate on these thoughts, meditate on your love for the other person and to fall in love all over again! You will be amazed at how great you will feel and how you will strengthen and revitalize your relationship!

If you are not in a current relationship, I suggest that you practice falling in love with yourself and with those who are close to you, parents, children, friends, etc. Falling in love is not limited to romantic love. Watch a mother and her child as the child grows up and you will often see the mother falling in love over and over again with her child over the years.

Fall in love today!

Re-write Your Story!

“There are some things one can only

 achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction”

•  Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924) Novelist and short story writer

We often become so ingrained in our own story that we lose perspective of all of our choices. One of the biggest choices one can make is to re-write our story. Rewriting our story often times takes courage. See, we know are story so well, that it is hard to imagine our story being different. We often fear that if we change our story that we may lose our identity. Of course this is our ego talking; it is our fragile ego which fears any re-writing of our story. See, our ego is in many ways the editor of our story. The ego believes what it believes about us because of the story that it tells. We hear ourselves telling our story all of the time. We may say defining things about ourselves, such as I am not a good dancer, I have two left feet, I am not very coordinated. I do not have much compassion because I was not openly loved as a child. I fear this or that, etc. We say all kinds of things that have become the defining details of our story which in turn has come to define us.

Franz Kafka suggests that to re-write our story, to force ourselves to awaken we sometimes have to take a deliberate leap in the opposite direction. Even if the opposite direction is not the best direction for us, the action is needed to jar us out of our predictable, safe, comfortable routine.

Think about who you say you are. Do you say things that define who you are? Is there a voice in your head that you hear saying things to you like, “why are you attempting to do this, you know that you are not athletic, no mechanically inclined, not coordinated, etc. This voice is your ego, it knows your story inside and out and it will let you know when you are stepping outside of the framework of your story and attempt to reel you back in by reminding you of your story and by placing some fear, uncertainty and doubt in your mind about what you would like to do.

The next time you hear this inner voice attempt to talk you out of something you would like to do, simply say to yourself, I am re-writing my story and I am not shackled by the story my ego clings on to.

Imagine all the things you could do if you simply choose to re-write your story, to make your self the hero instead of the loser or the routine person. You will amaze yourself when you re-write your story.

Today is the day to start! Listen to your inner voice and when it attempts to tell your story in same old way is has be told to you, remind your ego who is in charge and take creative license and write the story you want to write! Do this with love and you will be amazed at the changes that you will create in your life!

The Dance of Knowledge and Wisdom

“We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet”

- Margaret Mead, 1901-1978, American Cultural Anthropologist

If Margaret Mead thought this back then can you imagine her reaction to all that has changed in the last 30 years and how her statement is even truer today then it was back then.

We do live in amazingly fast time in regards to knowledge. Often it seems that what we learn today is obsolete before we can apply our newly obtained knowledge. This compounds the problem of our antiquated education systems which continue to teach information which often is outdated and of very little practical use in the work a day world.

The interesting thing is that as we accelerate at break neck speeds in knowledge, we labor along in wisdom. Intellectually we may know more, however knowing more does not always give us the keys to wisdom and it does not bring much sustained happiness. What we do know is that as many feel that they are growing in knowledge they also hunger more for wisdom. They hunger to know that which we have removed ourselves from, that which we have hidden from view, that which we have anesthetize ourselves from with the illusion that we will find the answers we seek in our ever increasing knowledge base.

The truth is that many hide behind knowledge because they fear the wisdom, they fear that they will see that there life is an illusion of sorts, a house of cards if you will and to truly know that which intuitively they seek and know would crumble their story. This is why even though so many hunger for wisdom why they don’t take that leap and achieve the wisdom for which they hunger.  Wisdom is both full of elation and it can also be scary because it often forces us to rewrite our story, it often shakes us out of what we feel is comfortable.

Please understand that I love knowledge, I am a knowledge junkie in many ways. I believe knowledge is powerful and our continuous education is very important. With that being said I have met many highly educated people who seem to lack the basic wisdoms of life.

As in all things there must be a balance and to achieve a balance we must live in the present and hone our awareness.

My thought for myself and for all is that we have the courage to be wise and with that wisdom be loving in all of our thoughts, words and actions.

Seek knowledge my friend, for that is part of your purpose here, however do it with wisdom and always apply your wisdom with love!