Hey watch your own compass! A spiritual journey.

Hey!  What the hell is that guy doing over there?  He looks like a real crumb bum that's up to no good!  And what about her?  The gal in the BMW, weaving in and out of traffic like she is some kind of big shot!  I can't stand big shots!  I love to compare myself to others, just to keep tabs on how I'm measuring up.  Am I good enough?  Am I making enough money?  Am I a better parallel parker then you?  God I hope so, even if no one else notices, it will make me so awesome.   Even in a yoga class, where I'm trying to get all spiritual and such, I'm comparing.  "You call THAT a downward facing dog?"  Or, "Sweet baby Buddha, that guy just went from crow to headstand flawlessly, I must be a real loser!"  Never mind that I have no idea how long he has been practicing or the fact that I'm about to do a face plant in ardha chandrasana because I'm watching someone else's practice, OUCH!

I seem to be addicted to watching other peoples practice, and what I mean by practice is their actual life.  That's what life is isn't it?  A practice?  We are all practicing getting good at this thing called life.  It's really just a series of standing up and falling down.  We all stand up, we all fall down, over and over again, until we learn, get our balance, move forward.  I guess part of my problem in my life practice would be watching someone else getting their balance, then critiquing them, or critiquing myself compared to them.   How do I measure up to what they are doing?  Am I better?  Worse?  Do I have a moral high ground?  Wont it feel great when I prove me right and them wrong.  I will feel good for a little while at least until I need another fix of being right like a junky.  The odd thing about this addiction of the ego is that you could never teach someone to swim by trying to describe the water to them. They have to experience it themselves.  And if it is true for them, it would also be true for me, I have to experience life, my life, not someone else's experience  of their life.

It would sort of be like being the pilot of your very own jet liner, and you have a series of very specialized destinations for you to get to in your life.  Each of these destination points is meant to be a place for you to grow and change and to become the best version of you.  So you pull out your maps, you make your plans, you chart your course, you take off into the wild blue yonder.  And you immediately start checking some other planes compass.  Not just one other plane, but EVERY other plane that crosses your path.  So you change course. "I'm not suppose to be going to Mexico City!  That guy over their is going to Paris!  I'm following him!"  Then the buzzer in your plane starts going off!  You're off course!  Turn back!  That buzzer sounds a lot like anxiety mixed with uncertainty, no?  But we can muscle past this turbulence, we can make it to Paris! We can meet that French girl that breaks our heart and leaves us with a huge credit card bill!  Oops. Back to Mexico City, where I was suppose to meet my Guru.  Oh well, fortunately the universe is more forgiving and patient then I am.  And opportunity doesn't just knock once, in fact it is always knocking, I just have a hard time hearing it over my "off course" buzzer sometimes.  To avoid as many French girl face plants as possible, I just have to watch MY compass, listen to MY inner buzzer, and fly my plane to end up exactly where I need to be when I need to be there.  And...wait a minute, did I just say that I'm a frick'n airline pilot!? Wooo Hooo!  Watch me go!

Ruts! Writers block and a spiritual journey.

Ugh!  I just can't think of anything creative to write!  I think and think and think and nothing comes out!  Actually stuff comes out but just not the stuff I want to think about!   I want to think of creative stuff and witty stuff and cool stuff!  I don't want to think of lame stuff like burritos and cat hair and sixth grade camp.  -Ugh! there it goes again, uncool random thoughts when all I'm trying to do is write.  I find myself in this comfy little rut quite often, not just when I want to be creative but anytime I want anything that doesn't come easy(ever really WANT a triple latte?  Starbucks on every corner my ass!).  Wanting to think, wanting to be creative, it seems as if every time I want to do something, or force the creative juices to flow I end up in that dry, dirty little furrow commonly known as a writer's block.

And what a perfect word for it, block.  I really do feel blocked.  Jammed.  Hindered.  But what is it that is doing all of this blocking, jamming up my creative flow?  Could it be the very thing I think I have to do which is to think?  But how would anything ever get created without me thinking of stuff?  Everything that got created was thought about first right?  The light bulb?  The wheel?  The clothes pen?  Stairway to Heaven(oooh yeeaah!)?  Well, funny you should ask(like how I included you?).  Einstein, you know, Al, he was quoted as saying, "No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it".  I suppose with that same line of thought one could say that nothing new can be created from an old way of thinking.  Or a current consciousness can't be imagined by using stored memory or old creativity.  Like the lightbulb  couldn't have been created by thinking of the technology that invented the wheel.   A whole new paradigm had to be opened up for the new creation.  Speaking of the light bulb,  Thomas Edison, and Einstein, along with many other creative people throughout the ages practiced some form of meditation that they credited as the spark for new ideas.  So, it's actually a matter of NO thinking that will get us out of this self imposed jam, not more thinking!

Busy beaver, that's me! Busy with all of my thoughts, all my wonderful old ideas from the storeroom of my mind.  I use these thought logs to dam up and block me from any sort of real creativity that is bouncing around in the universe, just waiting for an open mind to settle into.  Light bulbs and wheels and Stairway to Heaven(oooh yeeeah!) can't share the stage in your mind with hairball, fabric softener, meatballs.   My mind has to be an open receiver for fresh, new, creative ideas.   Next time I'm all blocked up with my lame thoughts, I have to just walk away, literally.  Walk through nature, go for a swim, take a break from whatever it is I am trying to think my way into creating.   Meditate, take a nap even, anything but THINK.  Wanting something would imply that I don't have something in the first place, and the universe loves nothing more than to affirm my beliefs.   Just BE, be creative, or be the space where creativity can manifest within me.  From this state I can crawl out of my little rut and create!  I'm taking the burrito with me though.

BE the traffic. A spiritual journey.

Why is there always so much dang traffic on the freeway???   And why are there always so many people cramming up the subway on my morning commute??   Furthermore, why doesn't my muffin top look as delicious as the muffin tops in the display case at my neighborhood bakery??   It never fails, "what IS" is almost always in conflict with my opinion of what should be.   Especially traffic, and lines, being put on hold or anything else that takes up MY time.   My times is very valuable, much more valuable then your time, of course.   And if I decide to leave my house a half an hour later then I should to get to my destination on time, you in the green Prius, yeah you, you're somehow responsible for my frustration and anxiety!!  Sound reasonable?  Well, not really, but it most certainly sounds familiar.

I have to admit, I have gotten a bit better at all this patience stuff.  It takes a little more planning, a little more accountability, a little more acceptance.  But this little installment goes a long way towards a stressless lifestyle, which me likes.  Waking up morning after morning and expecting that there isn't going to be any traffic in Los Angeles on my morning commute gets a little bit absurd after a while.  And although I absolutely love absurd, at some point I had to accept the folly in all this and ditch my ridiculous expectation.  An expectation is after all just a future resentment, and who wants to resent all of their fellow commuters every morning?  I mean we are all in the same boat, or cars, or wait, no boats, yeah boats traveling along in the current of the city, like a river that flows through a majestic forested wilderness.   L.A. has been referred to as The Jungle before, Stupid Axl!  I loved that band!

This imagery makes my morning commute a smidgen more pleasant.  Just me in my dingy floating down the river of life.  Flowing along with all the other commuters heading down our separate paths but all leading eventually to the same destination.  Of course there are going to be a couple of sharp rocks on the 405 river, and maybe a few whirlpools on the 110/101 delta, but nothing I can't skillfully navigate.   How skillfully I navigate the beautiful inner city water ways all depends on how aware I am, how present I am with the natural flow.  I have to BE the river.  I AM the traffic.  Part of it, not separate from it.  How can I be mad at me?  I'm an awesome dude and an fantastic dingy captain!  And all good river boat captains plan, they take responsibility, they leave on time and they remain wary of any possible storms that may hinder their journey.  But most of all they remain calm in the most stressful situations, they breath and focus on the moment, flowing with the river, flowing with life, at peace.  After all, it is my time right?  I should be able to spend it exactly the way that I choose.

You are what you consume....A spiritual journey.

When I was a lad, any time I brought some scalawag friend over to my house and my mom didn't get a good vibe off of them, she would say, "Show me your friends and I'll show you who you are!"  At the time I wasn't really sure what she was talking about.  Now I'm quite sure that she was trying to get me to ditch the loser before his bad habits rubbed off on me.  This was a sweet gesture, mom was trying to look after her darling, angelic, innocent boy, ha!  The only problem with this line of thinking was that my mom held the belief that outside sources were causing the corruption of her otherwise saintly son and not the scalawag that existed inside of me.  She also used to exclaim, "You are what you eat!" as she fed me copious amounts of Lays potato chips and Ragu spaghetti sauce.  At the time I wasn't clear what this one meant either, although I was a bit saucy in my youth, I don't believe that's what mom meant at all.

As I got older, and a teensy bit wiser,  I started to pay closer attention to what I was doing to, or putting into my body.  Actually it's probably more accurate to say that I was forced to pay attention to what I had done to my body.  All the "good times"  of my teens and twenties!  The back yard football games without pads, the booze, the cigarettes, the sofa surfing, it all started to take it's toll and I could feel it in every joint by my mid thirties, ugh, fun hurts.  With a renewed sense of responsibility for this rig that carries my soul around, I started to eat better, read labels, research nutrition, exercise, do yoga and meditate.  At first this was a struggle and I wasn't consistent, but over time I started to look better and feel better, and think differently about life and what direction I wanted to move in.  The whole. "you are what you eat thing", started to sink in a little bit, it made sense to me on a deeper level.  Clean healthy food made for a clean healthy body, and this body is my platform  to perform in this life.  This body is my stage where I'm the front man and it's my turn to rock it, this is pretty hard to do when the floor is cluttered with Twinkies,  and soda cans and hamburger wrappers, at least not for the type of tune I want to sing.

There was also something even bigger and better that changed in my life when I started to change my eating, physical activity and my thinking.  The scalawags started to disappear from my life.  This was a bummer at first because how was I going to make it without all the degenerate losers that owed me money??? Oh, wait, no this type of change is actually really rad.  There was some empty space there where the old "friends" existed, but then some new super cool friends started to show up. Yogis, and athletes, and meditators and healthy eaters and positive thinkers!  Mom! look! look who I am!  Or look who I've become.  My mom was right, not to brag, but my friends now are super rad, creative funny, cool, available, lovable, well some of them are scalawags but just a little.  All I had to do was change what I eat, and what I thought, and how I spent my time, and who I spent my time with.  I guess "you are what you eat" is a partial truth, maybe "I am what I CONSUME" would be a better mantra to live life by.  What I eat, drink, breath, think, read, watch, say, where and who I spend my time with, it all builds a new me holistically, a new kind of consumer.  Some of my friends still have tattoos, but I think mom would be proud of who her little spiritual consumer chose to become.

Do bears worry in the woods? A spiritual journey.

Have you ever woken up at 3 am in a cold sweat worried that your rent was going to be late? Or maybe that the project you have due at work wont be finished on time? Or that no one will ever love you? Or that you're about to run out of toilet paper, or you don't have any clean underwear, or if that gopher keeps digging holes in your front yard your whole house will fall into a sink hole??? Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm, don't you just love that tasty anxiety? There are so many wonderful things to worry about, its really hard to choose just one. In fact, a lot of the time I don't choose at all. Many times I have found myself in just a general state of worry, nothing to be concerned with really, just hedging my bets, putting a little worry away in the anxiety bank account for a future date just in case I can't find something legit to worry about later on. This all gets very tiring putting all of this energy towards future events that may or may not happen, not to mention the lack of sleep from all those 3 am wake up calls. I know I'm not the only one, I've had many friends and family tell me that they were worried about something quite often. Whether it be a dentist appointment, a date, loss of a job, geopolitical events, the list goes on and on of all the future things we focus our energy on. But why? I ask myself if worrying about anything has ever changed any future event in my life for the better or the worst? Has it ever even motivated me to change? And even if it did, was I in a clear enough state to make a good decision if I was feeling anxious?


 And what is worrying anyway? Why do we humans do it in the first place? I've noticed that with me, I almost become enveloped in the worry, I actually became it. My awareness was so focused on whatever it is I was worrying about that I became the anxiety itself. Like a dark cloud or a fog that I can't seem to find my way out of. A fog bank is a horrible place to be if you're trying to solve a problem. From inside the fog bank it is impossible to see if there is even a problem that needs solving. Recently, through my practice of meditation and breathing exercises, I started to create a little space in-between me and the worry. Sort of like blowing away a little bit of the fog to make a clearing so I can see some space; so I can see the problem itself. Little by little and with some patience I started to be able to create more and more space and less and less fog. I started to reside more within the space, with awareness. And the problem that was worrying started to become more of a little smoke ball rather then a huge fog bank. I also started to see that all of the things that I was worrying about were in the future, none of them were happening right now. In reality, the right NOW was pretty awesome, I was snuggled up in my warm bed. And even if there were an overdue electric bill, or a burrowing gopher, or some impending doom under my pillow, what would or could I do about it right here and now in the middle of the night? With this awareness my worries or anxiety started to lose its power and dissipate, like a cloud past a mountain top.

 Now, on occasion, when old man anxiety nudges me out of my slumber, I breath, create some space, come back to present, and like a bear I go back to my nightly hibernation under my comforter. Ah to be a bear, to be any species other then a human, not a worry in the world. Only we humans are conditioned to focus on the future, to worry about what might or what might not happen. And what a colossal waste of this incredible time we have here on this planet. The rose doesn't fret if it's not going to get enough sun light next week, the dolphin never worries that it may run out of water to swim in, the bear doesn't worry that it's not going to get enough salmon to eat before winter, the salmon doesn't even worry that it will get eaten by the bear on its journey up stream. Of course I don't know for sure that other species don't worry, it's just that I've never seen a tulip pacing the floor biting it's peddle tips concerned whether the soil will have enough nutrients for it to bloom. It all sounds pretty silly when put into this context, but silly is a pretty accurate description of most things humans do when they are in an unconscious state. When I started practicing separating myself from the anxiety and the worry, the effort created more freedom, energy and aliveness. There is more of a clarity to my choices. More of a proactive attitude toward problem solving and prioritization. And way more energy to experience reality right now just as it is. There is a big lesson for us in observing nature. All of nature flows and exist and thrives without worry, all of nature except for us. I think it's high time we join the party, or picnic, or jamboree or whatever it is bears do in the woods.

Will you be the manure to my rose? A spiritual journey.

Have you ever had your heart broken?   Ugh, sucks mucho!  How about an "unexpected" bill just when you saved up enough money for those new hot pants you've been eye ball'n?  Or a pet that past away?  Or a cell mate named Bubba?  Yikes!  Hope thats a no on the last one!  We all have experienced some kind of loss that is very painful to be on the receiving end of.  When it happens it sometimes doesn't seem like there is a light at the end of the tunnel or that there is any value or purpose to the pain.   A lot of times you'll hear banal comments by friends and family like, "everything happens for a reason", or "don't worry, better times are right around the corner for you" or "lets have a drink and forget your sorrows!"  or maybe even, "Be strong!".   But, are we really suppose to "be strong"?  What's wrong with being weak?  Or at least vulnerable?  Maybe we are merely conditioned that those feelings are icky and should be avoided at all costs.  And what about this "everything happens for a good reason" mumbo jumbo?  No one ever tells you what that reason is and rarely do they have a solid example to share that they experienced this "good reason".

I know that for me, I've had plenty of craptacular things happen in my life.   Most of which I never saw the good reason that these things were happening, not even in the long term.  I would just lick my wounds, "be strong", commiserate with friends, and eventually just forget about the painful situation.  Then maybe another situation would happen, similar, but not the same, or so I thought.  There were "different" players,  it was a different time, somewhat different circumstances, but very similar heartbreak or loss.  Then I would repeat the cycle, take all the fantastic advice from friends and family, never really questioning its validity, and move on down the road.  Then one day I got sick and tired, sick and tired of excepting lame comments like, "time heals all wounds", I know statements like this are they are meant well, but really?  I had plenty of scratches that hadn't heeled up proper, and I was fix'n ta change all that!

It isn't actually time that heels wounds, time really doesn't do anything.   It's what you do IN the time that actually heels the wounds.  More accurately it really isn't all that much about doing or heeling either.  It's about sitting and growing.  It's about being present in the hurt or the loss or the sadness or the anger.  It's about feeling all of those things in there entirety and allowing them to express themselves, allow them to deliver the message that you need to hear/feel.  I was so conditioned to "toughen up" or to believe that "big boys don't cry" or to "be strong" that I would suppress those feelings.  I falsely gave them a meaning of being "bad" or "weak" or "scary".  In doing this I doomed myself to feel them again in a greater intensity.  Now I'm not saying that if you allow yourself to feel these emotions that nothing bad will happen to you again, but when it does, you will have grown, gotten stronger and wiser.  You'll not only become closer and more compassionate to yourself, you will be more present and available to friends and family that need someone to just BE there and LISTEN when times are tough for them.  I see now that some of these rotten things that pop up in life aren't really all that rotten, that's just a meaning I gave the events.  But once I start to consider them as more of a compost to life, a necessary, value giving part of my growth, it lessons the blow a bit.  I still hurt, I still get angry, but I feel it a little more fully, I pay attention to the message or the lesson that is in it for me.  Everything does happen for a reason, it happens to fertilize us.   Like manure to a rose, without which nothing would ever grow.

What do you believe? A spiritual journey.

What's my motivation here?   Scratch that, better question, how does one find their motivation?  How do we pry ourselves off the couch and do stuff, take action, live la vida loca?  A lot of folks suffer from this malady, present company fo sho!  It can be very frustrating, especially when you have a strong inkling that something fun or desirable should be done.  You look out the window as you shove another handful of Doritos in your face and see all the other kids doing stuff and wonder to yourself, "where do they get all their energy?"  "what motivates people?"  "how can I create that kind of excitement in my life?"  And then, goose egg, no answers come to mind for that query so it's back to the Price is Right.  I suppose maybe I wasn't meant to achieve anything.   I mean without underachievers, we wouldn't know what overachieves are right?  I'm just playing my part in the universe, and I'm damn good at it!

I spent quite a lot of time pondering questions like this.  I wasn't really just sitting around watching Bob Barker giver away cheap furniture to tourist from Iowa.   I actually had a job and friends and some hobbies, but I wasn't living full tilt.  I was sort of living in acceptance, sort of.  You see, I think there is some confusion about acceptance, it doesn't mean complacency which I think I was mistaking acceptance for.  Looking at my life, not being completely happy about certain parts of it, not being sure what would motivate me into action for change, and then just saying that I accepted this situation because it just is.
This is the quagmire I allowed myself to get stuck in, a helpless victim subject to fate.  But am I a victim?  Is anyone really a victim of their circumstance?  And what exactly is fate?  It's been proven that 95% of all of our decisions are made at the subconscious level.  Harvard business school professor Gerald Zaltman uses this statistic in his book, The Subconscious Mind of the Consumer.  So we aren't even aware of having made 95% of our decisions.   The subconscious beliefs that are at the root of these decisions are what many of us confuse as our fate.  A more proactive  approach would be to accept the situation, be grateful for what you do have, then take an internal look at what I can change.  What is it that I am unaware of that's causing this lack of motivation?  What is in this abyss of beliefs, this 95% that I keep calling my fate?

You see, it really isn't that I don't have any motivation, or that I am a procrastinator or that I need to find something or add something to me.  I'm also not doomed to some lame fate that got doled out by some jerky universal bureaucrat in charge of making some peoples lives cool and other peoples lives crappy, I'm not a victim!!
What really needs to be done, maybe the most important thing we can do while we're experiencing this life, is to make an internal journey.   Become friends with my subconscious.  Ask it what I must believe about myself in order to be experiencing this lack of motivation, or love, or relationships or employment, or whatever else maybe my perceived dilemma.  Lack of motivation or "being" a procrastinator is something I'm doing, it isn't me.   My reason for doing things or not doing things is based on my beliefs.  Remove the subconscious beliefs that say "I'm  unworthy", "I'm a failure", "nothing I do is good enough" and there I will find my natural motivation.  Clear away all of the garbage that is not me, and I don't need to find anything, I just flow in the river of life.   What's my motivation?  To know thy self, sans all the limiting beliefs that separate me from what I'm already naturally here for:  To BE life.