You may have noticed a lack of blog posts here lately, but there is a good reason for this. As I have recently started a new blog called The Happy Monk - a little guidance on the path to liberation
However I may occasionally/rarely blog here but most of my time, effort and energy will be spent on maintaining and creating new content for my blog.
So, would you please be kind enough to change your bookmarks to the new website address: http://www.thehappymonk.net
Thank you!
“All intimate relationships—close friendships and good marriages—are based on continued and mutual forgiveness. You will always trespass upon your friend's sensibilities at one time or another, or your spouse's. The only question is, Will you forgive the other person? And more importantly, Will you forgive yourself? We have to deepen our understanding, make ourselves more equal to circumstances, more easy with what we have been given or not given. We must drink from the deep well of things as they are.”
David Whyte, “CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA – WORK AS A PILGRAMMAGE OF IDENTITY”
If life is a journey where are we headed? And if we can answer that, how de we get there? What path should I take?
When your standing on the crossroads of life you don’t know which way is necessarily the best for you. One road may mean happiness, another adventure, and yet another means safety and security. It takes heart to be alive in the world.
In his book, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity, David Whyte recounts a life-changing event at work. In a moment of exasperation he stuck his head into a meeting at work asking if anyone else had seen David. A stunned silence followed by laughter answered him. In that moment he knew he had been lost and the ensuing year was about reclaiming who he was and becoming a full-time poet. In a conversation that evening a friend said to him, “You must do something heartfelt, and you must do it soon.” It was a challenge to him to move out of his comfort zone and to do something with real meaning.
I have finally come to accept I don’t what to do. I am trying to let go and relax back into who I really am – this wise emptiness, this mysterious yet audible silence. I now realized that it is up to my deepest self, this fertile blankness, to create something – and hopefully something soon.
This is now in it’s hands and until that moment I had been resisting trying to let go, trying to figure out things for myself and it is clear that I can’t manage on my own. There is no alternative but to surrender to the One within me. This, after all, is what seeing is all about – awakening to one’s deepest being and surrendering to its guidance.
Are you trying to make sense out of life’s transitions? I'm currently in the middle of a transition and yet the destination is still unknown. Like myself, you’re probably been at the in-between stage more than a few times in your life – but you’re not seeing any results.
You keep asking yourself, “What should I do and how did I end up here?” Maybe your waiting for the next step in your life to appear and you’re feeling frustrated and stuck, like you're not making any progress fast enough.
What else can you do apart from a.) worrying b.) going over things in your head over and over, and c.) feeling like a hamster on a wheel?
It’s no surprise that my copy of Transitions by William Bridges is well thumbed and richly annotated for my own use.
Being in-between marriages or careers can take on a particularly painful and confusing when things are changing so profoundly. It as if we launched from a riverside dock to cross a landing on the opposite side – only to discover midstream that the landing was no longer there. (And then we looked back to the other shore, we saw that the dock we had left from had broken loose and was heading downstream.)
Life is a series of transitions whether it is personal, a job, marriage, dreams or physical challenges. It is a set of steps that take us from an ending, through a neutral period, then a new beginning.
One day everything seems to be coming apart; the next day, life goes on as usual, and we wonder whether we have been imagining it all.
Previously, I worked in customer services for a large telecommunications company. I thought my job was safe, secure and permanent. But, before I knew it the company announced a large round of redundancies.
Initially, I felt optimistic and hopeful about my future. As I had just started a new job, was only there for a few months and before I know it, I’m out of a job. But the job search has not been easy as I though it would be.
But recently, I felt as though I was just spinning my wheels. I thought I was doing all I could do, but nothing seemed to be working out, and that was frustrating. Now I was ready, I wanted something to happen immediately as I had took the time and put in effort! Something should have happened by now.
Not knowing what the future holds can make you feel like a hamster on a wheel. You find yourself constantly asking, What do I do now?"
Even though I’m unemployed, I’m trying to enjoy it – the uncertainty of it all. In one word, it’s about acceptance. Surrendering to the uncertainty – you’ve done your best and hopefully things will come together somehow.
The beauty of the book is that it is not just a manual on ‘how to cope’, but gets us to see that the process on disorganization, death and renewal is a fundamental nature and theme of mythology. The cycle is natural and admitting it makes it much easier to deal with it. Whenever a significant change hits me, I always turn to this book.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is in the midst of a transition.
I really like this video as Steve Jobs talks about passion and truly love what you're doing. As I’ve always struggled with work and career issues – they seem to be the largest unresolved issues in my life right now.
“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect then looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever – because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path, and that will make all the difference “
Richard Rose gave me the best description of the attitude one should take. He said not to approach isolation as challenging God or the universe for an answer. Don't draw a circle in the sand and say you won't come out until you are enlightened. Instead, and this is my interpretation, work as hard as you can and be thankful for whatever happens
~ Shawn Nevins
God Is All
I have now come to a stage of realization in which I see that God is walking in every human form and manifesting himself himself alike through the sage and the sinner, the virtuous and the vicious. Therefore when I meet different people I say to myself, “God in the form of a saint, God in the form of a sinner, God in the form of the righteous, God in the form of the un-righteous.”
God Is Within You
Do you know what I see? I see God as all. Men and other creatures appear to me only as hollow forms. moving their heads, hands and feet but within is God himself.
Perseverance In Your Search
There are pearls in the deep sea, but one must hazard all to find them. If diving once does not bring you pearls, you need not therefore conclude that the sea is without them. Dive again and again, you are sure to be rewarded in the end. So it is with finding God. If your first attempt proves fruitless, do not lose heart. Persevere in your efforts. You are sure to realize Him at last.
Surrender And Trust
Trust completely in God. What are you to do when you are placed in the world? Give up everything to Him, resign yourself to him, and there will be no trouble for you. Then you will come to realize that everything is done by his will.
Love Of God Is Essential
Unalloyed love of God is essential and all else is unreal.
Years ago, there were lots and lots of seeking. It was like this: before and during spiritual seeking, I wasn’t badly suffering or in pain or unhappy with my life. It was a deep sense of loneliness, alienation, lack of fulfillment, and a strong yearning from the heart and mind to know, “What is this all about? What is the purpose of life? What happens after? What are all these mystical truths that are spoken of? Where is fulfillment found?”
Meditation arises spontaneously when our inner life can no longer remain still, when it begins to rumble and dream, revolt and excite us to awaken.
Complete surrender is another name for liberation. So complete surrender does require that you have no desire of your own, that God’s desire alone is your own and that you have no desire of your own.
Surrender to him and abide by his will whether he appears or vanishes; await his pleasure. If you ask him to do as you please, that is not surrender but a command to him. You can’t have him obey you and yet think that you have surrendered. He alone knows what is best for you. Leave everything up to him. He is the the burden; you no longer have any cares.
The real does not die, the unreal never lived. Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment.
The real you is timeless and beyond birth and death.
The body will survive as long as it is needed. It is
not important that it should live long.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
from his book, “I AM THAT”
See that you don’t know what to do about anything. Bear the discomfort, a new kind of pain, of not knowing and refuse to ask anyone else or even talk to them about it. Just go about your day and be interested in doing what you are doing while you are doing it. Keep coming back home. Watch! This is the answer. Stick with it. Dare to trust God to work it out for you.
All problems can be transformed into a spiritual practice. Feel yourself becoming invisible, as it were without the solidity of a material body. Now allow the noise of whatever causes you irritation, anger and frustration to pass right through you.
The countless job rejections, the car alarm, the dog barking, the children screaming, the traffic jam, not getting the job after all that preparation. Instead of resisting and continually telling yourself “this should not be happening to me, why me?” Just let it be, let everything just pass through you.
The ‘law of attraction’ is like attracts like. It simply says that you attract into your life whatever you think about. This applies to everything, regardless of how insignificant the thing might be. Anything from a global empire to a empty parking space can be achieved far more easily if you visualize a successful outcome from the start.
Don’t believe me? Try this exercise.
Pick something you do regularly and find an absolute nightmare. Then before you do whatever this thing is again start visualizing a successful outcome.
Let’s say that usually when you go shopping in your car you find it impossible to find a parking space. But this time, before you even get into your car, start seeing that empty car parking space.
When I was told about this technique. I thought it was crazy. I mean, how could it be possible to conjure up a car parking space by just thinking about it? To my amazement it worked. I couldn't believe how easy it was to find that space.
There’s nothing magical about it. It simply is that we achieve what we expect to get. So if we start out with a negative view about something, usually we’ll have a bad experience and prove ourselves right. Maybe that’s why I’m not getting any job offers at the minute.
When you start visualizing success, all sorts of positive changes come about. Instead of looking for all the reasons as to why we should be unhappy, we concentrate on the possibilities and our subconscious begins to work in actively seeking out ways of achieving what we want.
The bottom line is – you are what you think! Think negatively, and you’ll be a negative person. On the other hand, start visualizing successful outcomes in everything you do and you’ll start seeing powerful, positive changes in your life.
If you try this and it doesn’t work the first time then don’t give up. It may take time and be prepared to suspend and resist your inbuilt cynicism.
The word God is a concept. When the name is uttered, a mental image is created, perhaps an old man with a white beard, but still a mental representation of something or someone outside you.
Neither God or any other word describe the reality beyond the word, the only question is it a help or a hindrance in enabling you to experience that towards which it points. Does it point beyond itself to the transcendental reality, or does it lend itself too easily to becoming no more than an idea in your head you believe in, a mental idol?
One of the most powerful spiritual practices is to meditate deeply on the morality of physical forms, including your own. This is called: Die before you die. Go into it deeply. Your physical form is dissolving, is no more. Then a moment comes when all mind-forms or thoughts also die. Yet your true nature is still here – the divine presence that you are. Radiant, fully awake. Nothing that was real ever died, only forms and illusions. The realization of this deathless dimension is your true nature.
Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time.
Non forgiveness is often towards yourself or another person, but it may just as well towards any situation or condition – past, present, or future – that your mind refuses to accept. There can also be non forgiveness with regards to the future. This is the mind’s refusal to accept uncertainty, to accept that the future is ultimately beyond our control. So forgiveness is to relinquish and so to let go of grief.
It happens naturally once you realize that your grievance serves no purpose except to strengthen a false sense of self. So, forgiveness is to offer no resistance to life – to allow life to live through you.
Eckhart Tolle
from his book, “The Power Of Now”,p.100
“It was said also, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: but I say unto you, that every one that putteth away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, maketh her an adulteress; and whosoever shall marry her when she is put away committeth adultery.” [Matt. 5:31-32].
Jesus is concerned with the tendency to run away from problems. As long as we take the way of escapism, the problems we run away from will continually come up in a new guise ate every turning of the road. Here he uses the theme of marriage and divorce as an example.
Marriage is not the gateway through which two people in love enter into a land where they “live happily ever after.” Happiness in marriage is a conquest and not a a bequest. Marriage is a license by which two people, who have seen the greater possibilities in each other, may work to bring forth these possibilities. In essence, it is a laboratory of individual enfoldment.
Marriage can only succeed when both parties see something of the divine in one another. If you cannot see beyond the appearance in another person, then you do not really love him or her. And so true love is basically spiritual perception, an in-sight into innate divinity.
If you look very closely at your problems, you will discover a very interesting little detail: in the midst of every problem is the person to whom it is happening. And that person is you, or from your perspective it is “I”.
Take a moment to make a short list of your problems, your struggles, your difficulties. Notice that as you write them down, there is the central theme running through them that they are happening to you. They are your problems. And that is why you call them "problems" in the first place!
All these problems and struggles are, right this minute, happening to many other people throughout the world. There are even not so pleasant things happening to others that are not happening to you. And those things don't bother you in the least. Why? Because they aren't happening to you!
Adyashanti likes to say, "No self, no problem." And it is true. Without "me" at the center, there is literally no problem. You can see that clearly when you look at an issue that does effect you in any way. But it is even more astounding when you realize that the "self" that you thought you were doesn't exist. There is no separate self, no "me," and when that is fully realized, you literally have no problems.
Every time you get a glimpse of the startling reality of no self, you find for a moment your freedom. No self = no problems. You may be busy, you may have lots to do, but problems? Nope. What a blessing!