We Are The Terrorists

There is a necessary reckoning, a collective grappling and grief, which accompanies the assassination of a powerful public figure like Ms. Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan.

And when a public figure is especially polarizing, as Ms. Bhutto was, it can be difficult to sort out the complex emotions that arise in the wake of an event such as this.

In the tender middle of every tragedy, however, is a profound opportunity for personal and collective evolution, a moment when all defenses are laid bare and essential questions rise to the fore. To see Bhutto’s death as an isolated act of cruelty by an evil group of terrorists, distant and separate from each of us, would be to miss a profound teaching moment.

We are all terrorists. Before you dismiss this out of hand, please take a closer look. The terrorist inside you wages acts of aggression on those you believe to oppress you. The dictator inside you declares martial law when it suits you. The suicide bomber martyrs you and wounds others in your attempts to be heard and to be right.

Global events are a mirror of aggressions taking place on a daily basis within each of us. This poses necessary and immediate questions: Who am I terrorizing? What part of myself or others am I assassinating?

It is our instinctual nature to polarize the world (and ourselves) into good and evil and then attempt to eradicate all evil from view – through repression and denial or through aggression and violence. Until we reconcile the violent parts of ourselves that we have dispelled into the shadow, we will continue to play out violent scenes on the world stage.

We have denied and discarded the unsavory bits of ourselves for so long, that we can no longer clearly see how we’re creating our troubled world. By definition, it is not easy to see that which is in the shadow. It is outside of our peripheral vision. It is our blind spot, the Achilles heal of the individual and of humanity. What we despise or deny we push deep into the dark recesses of the psyche, hoping it will be forever hidden there. But instead, contorted into all manner of gruesome expression that we no longer recognize as our own shadow, we confront these twisted and alienated bits of self over and over until they are reintegrated. Ms. Bhutto’s death is a painful illustration of our collective shadow.

Our small daily acts of aggression may seem like nothing compared to the brutal assassination of a revered public figure. But the collective consciousness is an assimilation of each of us. As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm. As long as we perpetuate the fracturing and fragmentation of disallowed parts of ourselves, stuffing our emotions and perpetuating a sense of shame and worthlessness even on a small scale, we will continue to create terrorists.

Why? Because operating from this fractured consciousness, we don’t have the wisdom or the capacity to create a world that fosters wholeness. If we are not whole, we cannot know or create a world that is whole. As such, there will always be disenfranchised, forgotten and expendable parts. Those expendable parts and expendable people will rise up to terrorize us.

In order to heal this schism, we must reconcile with the shadow. It will require us to collect up all the forgotten, orphaned, disowned, disgusting and estranged parts of ourselves…and bring them back home. All that we have denied and disdained must be held with equal love. Only then can we transmute the lower nature into higher forms. Integration of the poles of our experience is the path toward wholeness.

We are all necessary in this collective healing process, since “the only true battle is the one that rages inside” of us, says my friend Valerie Andrewlevich in her poem below. This battle requires a new kind of weapon: a fierce love and tireless compassion for ourselves and everyone around us. Valerie’s poem inspired me this week. I thought I would share it with you and as a humble offering to Ms. Bhutto and those who loved her.

The One True Battle (by Valerie Andrewlevich)

At the end of her epic,
She stands on the mountaintop
In her bare feet
Feels the cool hard rock
And the warm soft moss
Her spear in hand,
She reflects on her journey
Crossing the seven seas,
Vanquishing her enemies,
Encounters with dragons,
Affairs with tormented lovers.
She bows her head.
Gives a little nod in gratitude
For all this.
Then, all this begins to fade and melt away.
It is quiet,
Save for the soft wind blowing in the billowing trees
And the bird that calls through the thicket.
She realizes the only true battle is the one that rages inside her.
And that this will require a new kind of weapon.
She must cultivate deep, abiding love and compassion.
She lifts her head, turns her gaze to the horizon.
It is the beginning of a new kind of tale.

Joy Is The Reason For The Season

'Tis the season to be jolly, right? With all the hustle and bustle of the holidays, we often forget to take time to enjoy. We are so busy with gifts and guests and galas, we overlook the essential spirit of the season.

How can we stay unruffled by the holiday chaos and truly celebrate this magical time of year? I offer these suggestions for making your transition into 2008 a joyous one:

Don't Wait, Be Happy: Deep in the subconscious, most people believe joy is something that must be attained or earned. Once you complete the next project, close the next deal, get through the holidays or "pull your life together," happiness will be the result. Your permanent happiness is waiting just around the next corner.

Consider instead: Joy is your birthright, your essential nature. Joy is ever-present. Joy is without beginning or end. The yogis teach that 'sat-cit-ananda,' or 'Being-Consciousness-Bliss' is the core nature of the Self. Bliss is not the result of success, wealth, or achieving your goals -- it is the very essence of who you are. It is available right here, right now, without restriction.

Sounds great in theory, you say, but what if you're not feeling so joyful?

Relax the Need to "Fix" Things: Pleasure and pain are undeniable human experiences, but your attachment to pleasure and resistance to pain blocks your joy. If you need things to change to be happy, know you're heading down the path to suffering. Stop. Breathe. Relax. Release your impulse to "fix" things. Let everything be OK just as it is...and feel the tiny flicker of joy that arises within that spaciousness.

Practice this state of allowing with your loved ones during the holidays. If you feel stressed or triggered by a family member ask yourself, "What if they never change...EVER? Will you go on resisting (and suffering) for the rest of your life? Rather than trying to change others, simply practice staying present with whatever is arising in this moment.

Reconnect with Your Joy: If you need additional assistance re-connecting with your natural joyful state, consider the words of Buddhist teacher Thich Naht Hahn, "Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy." In other words, you can use your imagination, memory, or simple somatic gestures (like a smile), to bring you into a joyful state.

By recalling special moments such as tucking your kids into bed, watching a glorious sunset, roasting marshmallows over a campfire, or snuggling with your beloved, you evoke a natural expansion of being. Whenever you notice yourself constricting in fear or doubt, use your special memories or somatic gestures to bring you back into this open state. Eventually, as you practice this technique, you will be able to access joy instantaneously.

A small word of caution: Opening to joy is not the same as renouncing sorrow or pain. When you are truly available to joy, you are also available to hold less pleasant emotions with equanimity and grace. By celebrating all of it, you honor the full unfolding of life.

Kahlil Gibran expressed this simultaneity of opposites: "Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?"

Don't Confuse Pleasure for Joy: Pleasure is a fleeting experience that has a beginning and an end. You enter a new relationship and you feel dreamy, then you end the relationship and feel devastated. You earn your performance bonus this year and feel invincible, but miss it next year and feel resentful. Don't confuse pleasure for joy. Your fluctuating emotions are conditional. Joy is unconditional. Eternal joy comes with the dissolution of the ego self, which constantly grasps for personal pleasure. By letting go of transient pleasure and resting instead in the joy of the eternal present, you can be in ecstasy in every moment.

Joy is Your Power to Create: Joy is a supreme energy or power from which your entire worldly experience is manifested. Joy is the nectar that enlivens you. Your joy breathes you, walks you, dances you. It is the very impulse of the Divine within you. You cannot experience abundance, nor share it with the world, without first living your joy. Why is that? When you are constricted in fear or doubt or struggle, closed off from joy, it's a sure sign that your ego has taken the reigns. The ego-self is a finite identity with limited creative capacity. When you open instead to the infinite creative potential of the universal Self, you can manifest freely with ease and grace, and with joy as the abiding experience.

Offer Your Joy in Service: Your joy is a powerful light that brightens the world. It has a unique pattern, a unique vibration that cannot be replicated in any other person. If you suppress your joy, it will be lost to all. You have no right to silence it, or deny it, or shrink away from it. While joy requires no particular words or exchange, you might feel compelled to express it in some way. Eleanor Roosevelt is quoted as saying, "Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give." How will you offer your happiness to the world?

During this holiday season, with the warmth of family and loved ones all around, take stock not only in what you have to be joyful for, but how you serve the world through your joy.

And when you are wearied from all your holiday shopping, remember this: Love is the greatest gift, joy the most valuable currency. As Mother Theresa expressed beautifully, "A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love."

Celebrating the Spirit of the Season

As I sat down to write this week’s column, I turned on the stereo and scrolled to my play-list of Christmas songs.

Joy to the World
Hark the Herald Angels Sing
O Come All Ye Faithful

These holiday hymns celebrate the birth of a new spirit on earth. “The Lord has come! The Savior is born!” they proclaim. A divine messenger has been born on earth.

More than simply a messenger, Jesus Christ represents the physical expression of a greater universal pattern – the cosmic Christ, or Christ-consciousness – a universal archetype for eternal, awakened Being. Jesus, the man, was the perfected embodiment of this greater pattern. His life was an unwavering example of a self-realized master manifesting the divine will on the earth. Regardless of your religious or personal beliefs, it seems appropriate to celebrate Jesus not simply as a great teacher or prophet, but as the very embodiment of this greater cosmic principle.

When Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” (John 14:6), it was an exaltation of this Christ-consciousness that he spoke, not a reference to his individual personality. In fact, Jesus rarely referred to himself as a person or indicated that any individual personality was at work. Instead, he always gave praise to ‘Him that sent me’, proclaiming the greater divine force for which he was speaking, the Supreme consciousness, Creator, Source or God.

By awakening Christ-consciousness, Jesus taught that all human beings are equally the sons and daughters of God, just as He was the son of God. Through His example, Jesus demonstrated how enlightened consciousness can be expressed in all of us. He beckoned us toward divinity. The scribes and Pharisees attempted to stone him one day for this teaching, to which He responded:

“I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God.” And then Jesus reminded them of the verse in the Psalms: “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, You are gods’?” (John 10:30-34)

Jesus invites us to give up our limited, individual consciousness, and become one with universal spirit. Our mission in this human laboratory is to become open vessels for Christ-consciousness, recognizing our unity with universal presence. Jesus was not the only one to teach this. Enlightened masters of many faiths -- the Buddha, Krishna, the great yogis – have brought us this message.

The power of Christ-consciousness operating in the physical realm is immense. Jesus performed miracle after miracle. “If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:20) Jesus was very direct in this teaching – if you open with faith to the greater Christ-consciousness, you can do anything. You can create miracles as I create miracles, you can become enlightened as I am enlightened, you can embody God on this earth.

Not only can you create miracles, but “Whoever believes in me will have eternal life.” (John 5:24, 11:25-26) With the dawning of Christ-consciousness comes the recognition of the eternal, infinite, unbounded nature of spirit. We have always been, and will always be, one with the universal presence.

With this expanded perception comes also a deeper understanding of Jesus’ statement that the “Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” (Luke 17:20-21) Heaven is an internal state of awakened consciousness. Heaven is recognition of oneness with the divine. The celebration and exaltation of our hymns recognizes that with the birth of Jesus came the birth of Heaven on Earth for those committed to awakening Christ-consciousness within them.

Many enlightened ones already live this reality. With the realization of Christ-consciousness, they have entered the Kingdom of Heaven, here and now.

For the rest of us, this season and the celebration of Christ’s birth are an invitation to invoke the Christ-consciousness within us…to remember the deeper divine presence…to beckon us home to the kingdom…the Kingdom of Heaven that we are all awakening together here on earth.

Might as Well Face It, You’re Addicted to Thought

“Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, echoing a great many philosophers, poets and mystics throughout history who have espoused the virtues of silence. Yet, in our modern lives, we make very little time for quiet.

Question: Why don’t you spend more time in silence?

Answer: Because you are addicted to thinking.

On average, your waking mind thinks roughly 60,000 thoughts per day. Much of this thinking is relatively inconsequential chatter – “I hope it doesn’t rain this weekend…has the mail come yet?...my knee hurts…I don’t like this shirt…Hey, that guy just changed lanes without signaling…shoot, I forgot to call Mary...I’m running late again…what if I can’t find a parking spot?” Your consciousness is flooded with the incessant prattling of the mind.

Many of you are aware of this merciless monologue. For others, the monologue is so familiar, so imbedded in the background noise of your experience, that you’ve never really noticed it. Take a moment to notice now. If you close your eyes and witness the activity of your mind for one minute, you’ll observe the myriad thoughts it generates. If you are like most, your mind will distract you from the exercise before the minute is through.

Encountering the untrained mind is a bit like encountering a neighbor’s barking dog. It is the nature of the dog to bark. While the racket might annoy or anger you, your emotional reaction will have little bearing on the dog’s behavior. Similarly, it is the nature of the mind to think thoughts. Training and practice can quiet the barking mind for a time, but ultimately you must go a step further. Surrender your attachment thinking altogether. This doesn’t mean you’ll never have another thought, but you won’t be unnecessarily identified with it. You are not your thoughts. You are eternal, witnessing presence. You are the conscious awareness beyond thought -- infinite, universal, timeless.

The Tibetan Buddhists have a beautiful expression for this, “Thoughts are your guests. They check in and check out.” Thoughts are transient. You are eternal. Break your addiction to identifying your limited thoughts as “you”. Even if the mind barks, you need not be fooled or disturbed.

In many traditions, this identification with the thinking mind is recognized as a primary source of human suffering. Why? Because each thought is finite – an incomplete packet of information, by its very nature not infinite. The process of defining makes you finite. Absorption in the process of thinking takes you out of the infinite realm and drops you into finite experience with its struggles and hardships.

The Old Testament describes the root of this condition in the story of “The Fall”. Adam and Eve were instructed not to eat the fruit of knowledge. Once they ate, “they knew” -- they fell from a field of omniscient divinity, to the realm of limited, incomplete perception. Before knowing, they experienced divine union and unbounded joy. After knowing, they experienced division and discontent.

Oh, how I wish the instructions could have been clearer, “If you eat the fruit of knowledge, your powers of understanding will become finite. You will initiate the intellection process. Your experience will shift from unity to separation and suffering.” A little more explicit warning could have been helpful!

With “the Fall” began this human experience of duality, the severance of the knower from the known, the perceiver from the perceived, the subject from the object. After eating the fruit of knowledge, Adam and Eve fell, embarrassed and self-conscious, from a unity experience into the human experience of parceled knowledge and separate self.

And so our ages-old addiction began…

Now, for those of you who identify with the power of your intellect, you may be feeling a bit nervous right now. You may quite like your addiction! But consider that your attachment to thought as your identity keeps you in bondage. By claiming a finite identity, you are unable to experience your infinite identity, the vast, immortal splendor of the Self.

“Once the attention of an individual lifetime is mysteriously and sacredly turned toward reunion with God or Self or Source, the mind is only in the way,” says author and spiritual teacher Gangagi. “The only obstacle to realizing the truth of who you are is thinking who you are.”

Your mission here, if you choose to accept it, is to return from the human experience of unconscious mind chatter back to the divine experience of cosmic intelligence. By moving from thinking into silence, whether through prayer, meditation, yoga or other practices, you transcend the innate, perceptual limitations of the thinking mind, collapsing duality and opening to universal omniscience.

“This is not a dead zone, but a zone of intense energy where whatever needs to be done expresses itself as a complete visualization,” says Paramahamsa Nithyananda. It is the realm of instantaneous, holistic understanding – quite different from the linear, logic-based system which is the basis for the intellect.

So where do we go from here?

As any good 12-step program will tell you, the first step toward recovery is to acknowledge your problem. As a culture, we are far from admitting our attachment to the habituated activity of the logical mind…and even farther still from surrendering our much-loved addiction.

However, many, many of you, in your quiet moments, have experienced the intense, vibrant energy of the inner realms, of Source or Self. The mission is not only possible, but potentially instantaneous. I honor your work and encourage your continued journey into the silence.

The Truth That Cannot Be Told

The opening line of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching is this: The Tao that can be told of is not the Absolute Tao.

Master Lao Tzu knew that truth cannot be captured in words, so he opened his only book with this cautionary message. Be alert. I’m going to convey some teachings to you, but don’t become attached to the teachings and don’t be fooled. Anything that can be spoken is not the truth. The real truth rests in the wordless, in silence.

Lao Tzu spent ninety years in silence. He refused to speak or write. Instead, he simply lived among his students, sitting with them, “being” with them and transmitting his wisdom through direct experience. His basic tenet was that truth cannot be taught. Language cannot convey real knowledge because words and thoughts are limited constructs -- partial, fragmented and finite. The infinite cannot be expressed in terms of the finite.

The Great Masters throughout history shared this understanding -- no matter how many words you use, words can never approximate the truth. Yet, in an age when we continue to fight over whose religious doctrine is superior, we seem to have conveniently overlooked this teaching.

The Tao that can be told of is not the Absolute Tao.

Jesus was asked the question, “What is the truth?” He declined to answer. He let his silence speak instead. Truth is timeless. Truth is beyond all description. It cannot be conveyed. The moment you attempt to convey truth in words, it is no longer true – the very saying corrupts it.

In Hinduism, Siva does not speak because he is free of all concepts. Human ignorance is the result of word-bound ideas. The finite nature of thoughts and words keeps us from realizing the splendor of Siva-consciousness inherent within us. When the mind stops, thinking stops, words stop, only then can we experience true intelligence and freedom.

The Buddha described this experience as emptiness or nirvana. Nirvana is void, nothingness. Truth is content-free. It is realized when the mind dies, the ego dies, and there is no experience whatsoever. How can you experience something that doesn’t exist? There will be no “you” – the duality of experiencer and experience disappears. The only thing present is absence. While the use of paradox may bring us closer to understanding, still the words are inadequate.

“Maximum communication takes place when I am silent with you,” says Dattatreya Siva Baba. “Silence knows everything. It is whole. When I use words, I must come to a lower level and communicate a lower knowledge. Speaking introduces ignorance. Silence is omniscient.”

He adds, “Why do you go on ‘blah-blahing’ for the Huffington Post? The truth cannot be told.”

Why can’t the truth be told? Why can’t it be expressed?

First, because true knowledge can only be discovered in silence. Nothing that can be reached only in silence, in wordlessness, can then be brought with fidelity into words. You reach truth through emptiness, no-mind. If as a necessary condition the mind must drop to access truth, then the mind cannot be a vehicle for its conveyance. As Osho writes, “Mind cannot understand truth, mind cannot realize truth, so how can mind express it?”

Second, truth is an experience, not a concept. You could describe the exquisite beauty of a Beathoven concerto to a deaf person, yet your description could not substitute for the experience. The same with truth. The deaf man could become a master in music theory, learning composition and the science of sound, but the music would still allude him. In your finest description, you can convey something about music, but not music itself. Music cannot be communicated. Similarly, truth cannot be communicated…only known through experience in silence.

So, then, what is the purpose of our great religious texts and writings? The Koran, Bible, Torah, Upanishads. We have long held them as truth but now see that, while they may say something about truth, they cannot communicate truth itself.

The Tao that can be told of is not the Absolute Tao.

Scriptures and teachings are a beacon, a guiding light, calling us into silence. Alone in the dark cave of our ignorance, the teachings are the first spark of light that illumines our way, igniting a desire to know. Osho also wrote, “Truth cannot be said, but in the effort of saying it, a desire can arise in the listener to know that which cannot be expressed.”

You are hungry to know. Face it -- you are not ecstatic and fulfilled. You are ravenous with hunger. When you long for the experience of truth, words cannot satisfy. So you have denied your hunger, suppressed it for fear it might consume you. But the great masters know, in their attempt to share something about the truth, they activate your appetite to experience it directly. They give you a taste. Something is moved inside of you. The inquiry is started.

Your own hunger leads you into the silence, beckons you into your Self.

When you are ready, you dissolve into the silence of no-mind…the direct experience of the truth that cannot be told.