Church of the Churchless

This Is It. Great movie. Terrific philosophy.

"This Is It." My wife and I saw the movie last night. Marvelous. Michael Jackson as never known before.

I mean, I knew he was a supremely talented dancer and singer.

But as a person... I threw him into my weird tortured artist category. Watching him in real life as he rehearsed his "This Is It" show reveals a Michael Jackson who comes off first and foremost as a supremely nice guy.

Courteous, soft-spoken, gentle, harmonious, humorous, balanced.

That's my take on the movie. Then there's This Is It, the philosophy. Which is reflected throughout the film. Jackson and the other people in the film obviously are into It full bore. 

At the beginning of the movie, one of the male dancers chosen for the production talked about how Michael Jackson had been a lifelong role model, how he dreamed of meeting up with him one day. And now, he had.

"This is it," he said.

Religions would have us believe otherwise. This world, this moment, this here-and-now, supposedly is an illusion (Eastern view) or a way stop before the final destination of heaven/hell (Western view).

Well, maybe.

But if we're always looking to be some place other than where we are, how are we ever going to feel at home? If we're continually seeking different food from what is right in front of us, won't we always be hungry?

Before we left for the movie theater I went on an early November Oregon dog walk around a nearby lake. 

I hadn't seen "This Is It" yet. But all the way around the lake I kept feeling, this is it. There's nothing more wonderful than this. I'm rooted in reality, right here, right now.

Some large oaks are along the shore. This one likely is over 200 years old.

It's said a lot, wordlessly, even when no one was around to get the message.

Seeing it silhouetted against the darkening sky, I felt like I heard the tree.

Or maybe it was me.

No matter.

"This is it" sounds the same, no matter who speaks it. Silently or in words.

Walking a little further, some other trees had more to say.

There's the sun. And there is us.

Aren't we beautiful together? We obscure some of the sunset. The sunset illuminates us.

We're partners in reality. Background and foreground. Near and far. Energy and matter. Light and dark.

 Turning a lake corner, I saw two "It's." One was a reflection of the other.

I guess you could say one was more real.

Or, not.

Sometimes our saying doesn't have much to do with reality, though sometimes it does.

I don't like the idea of dying. Life is so lively for me, I want it to keep on doing what it does best: living.

But this fallen leaf seemed just fine with how things are.

It was just a speck in the big lake picture. Yet it had a great view of the water.

By the time I got to the dock and picnic area, the light was fading from the sky.

One day it's going to fade from me also.

At that moment, that seemed OK.

Fading, I mean.

There's a beauty to brightness. But sunsets are appealing as well.

 

"Yes, this is it," I thought. Time to head home and get ready to go to "This Is It."

Of course, I was already there.

Halloween churchless cheers and jeers

Well, I've got to start off my Halloween cheering with a big shout-out to the Oregon Ducks football team, who crushed fifth-ranked USC tonight in Eugene -- an hour's drive away from Church of the Churchless headquarters here in south Salem.

Next, praise for Halloween itself, a nice mostly-pagan/secular holiday, albeit with some mildly Christian overtones, which are barely recognizable beneath all those sexy costumes.

It's interesting, but not all that surprising, that so many adults (and children also) choose to express their darker, sensuous, slutty, or sinister side on Halloween.

You don't see many Compassionate Buddhist Monk or Charitable Giving Tree costumes. When given an opportunity to let their inner whatever out, wild and crazy is more likely to make an appearance than tame and sensible.

My wife and I rarely dress up on Halloween. Mostly because we usually don't venture out on this day. With my two year old granddaughter living way down in southern California, and us not being party animals, there isn't much reason to costume up.

Yesterday, though, we decided to go to a Halloween dance at the RJ Dance Studio. Costumes, the notice said, were optional. My wife said, "let's do it." She likes to shop, so it was a pleasant and rather easy task for her to put together a cool blue outfit.

The feather boa was a nice touch, something Laurel had hanging around the house for an occasion like this.

After parking downtown we had to walk a few blocks to the dance studio. As we passed a hipster hangout, I couldn't help thinking that a lot of young people wouldn't look upon Laurel's get-up as a costume at all, but as normal attire.

Ditto for my considerably less creative outfit. I started with a black mullet wig that I got at WalMart for $8. Sadly, it isn't much in evidence in this photo.

I then accessorized with the very t-shirt that I'd been wearing normally all day, my dearly beloved Harley-Davidson "there are no rules" shirt. I capped it off with a Sportsman's Outfitter hunting cap and some blue shades to match Laurel.

Pondering what I'd say if someone asked me what I was, "Mill City meth lab operator" came to mind. (Mill City is a small nearby  town; Oregon meth labs have been relocating to rural areas, but in fairness to my state's reputation, we've pioneered in reducing the available supply of meth ingredients.)

It was fun to become someone else for an evening. A guy I know quite well came to the dance and didn't recognize me. Just as with Laurel's costume, of course, mine looked a lot like how many people dress all the time.

Laurel and I danced better than usual. We felt more relaxed, having cast off our usual dressing conventions in the whatever Halloween spirit. 

For two hours blue hair and mullet hair danced away, until our 60-something legs and feet got tired. We got some good tips from a more accomplished dancer on timing, rhythm, and moving to the music.

Someone left a comment on this blog today that talked about the joy of letting go in the presence in a guru. I responded that there are many ways of letting go of our usual overly self-conscious selves, dancing certainly being among them.

Putting on a Halloween costume also. Which is an outward act that reflects an inward transformation always available to us: choosing to be someone different from who we've always been.

Halloween is a reminder that we can be whoever we want, religious dogma and convention be damned. If we can do this one day of the year, why not every day? 

That's the positive side of this holiday. On the negative side, seeing all the witches around recently made me recall an email I got a while back from Alex, a Unitarian in Hong Kong.

He told me about children being murdered in Nigeria because they'd been branded as witches and blamed for various catastrophes.

Who is mostly responsible? Christian pastors, not surprisingly. Another example of how horribly fundamentalists can behave in the name of their imaginary God.

Shocked at my past beliefs, should I disown me?

I picked up the book. Thumbed through the pages and located the right chapter. Scanned a few paragraphs. Then found the lines I was looking for:

Mysticism has little quarrel with the theory of evolution -- as long as it is recognized that life evolves not randomly, but under the guidance of an intelligence which is far beyond our ability to fathom. All that is evident are the results of a divine will reflected most imperfectly in the fossil record and the current diversity of species.

Oh no!, I thought. The author is an intelligent design advocate. He believes in bullshit!

I threw the book down on my office floor in disgust.

I'd been looking for a quote to use in a blog post about evolution. But I wasn't about to use anything written by a guy who obviously didn't understand the difference between real science and mystical mumbo jumbo. 

Here's the funny thing: I was that guy. I was disgusted at myself. The book whose content I disagreed with was "Life is Fair" (now back in print over at the Science of the Soul Research Centre).

Now, I still believe in much, if not most, of what I wrote in Life is Fair. After all, life is. Fair.

But as I blogged about a few years ago, for different reasons that I argued in that book. That's how I see things presently, at least. Back in the late 90's I thought differently. In the future, who knows?

The only thing I can be certain about is that from this moment until the day I die, I'm not going to be absolutely certain about anything. Probably, I should add, to be consistent.

So after a few days of pondering my emotional reaction to re-reading what I wrote a dozen or so years ago, I've concluded that I was too hard on myself.

Yes, I was disturbed that my beliefs back then fell into a "religiously mentally ill" diagnosis. And when I read how the Brian of that time looked upon evolution, it bothered me that I was less scientific than I'd remembered myself being.

But here's the thing: I changed. And I'm still changing. As are we all. Thankfully.

Because change only stops when we're dead. Until then, living leads us in largely unpredictable ways. Our relationships with other people change; our bodies change; our lifestyles change; our physical activities change; our personalities change; our philosophical and religious beliefs change.

Which is unavoidable. And largely to the good, even though many of life's changes are objectionable to us.

Here in the United States, as likely is true elsewhere in the world, people like to play a "gotcha" game. Politicians and other public officials come in for special gotcha treatment. 

Opponents will drag up a quote from a speech someone made a decade ago, showing how that person believed in such-and-such back then and now holds a different view.

Gotcha!

Oh, really? Is there something wrong with a person changing his or her mind, arriving at a different conclusion, evolving into a more nuanced conception of reality?

No, there isn't. That's what I believe.

But still, if I really believed this, I wouldn't have had the throw-the-book-on-the-floor reaction that occurred when I was presented with evidence of how my notions about evolution have changed.

Which seems to point to some sort of lingering attraction toward a self that is more constant than I really am. Cognitive dissonance probably is at play here -- me wanting to resolve the conflicts between what I believe now and what I believed then by forgetting how different "now" and "then" were.

At any rate, this experience has reminded me not to judge other people's seemingly deluded beliefs overly harshly. One of my favorite blog post titles is "I've become the person I warned myself about."

Or reversing the arrow of time, "I used to be the person I now warn myself about."

I've got no clue who I really am, assuming there is an "I" at all. But the fact that I can be aware of how much I've changed shows that some aspect of me stands apart from being and becoming.

What we believe -- religiously or otherwise --  is important. However, re-reading "Life is Fair" reminded me that who I was deeper down, beneath my beliefs, when I wrote the book is pretty much the same person I am now.

If that's the case, doesn't it follow that we're all much more similar than alike? That what separates us all too often is our focus on beliefs. Political, religious, philosophical, moral, and so on.

We forget how easy it is to trade one belief system for another. How interchangeable ideas can be, while the person doing the mental changing is someone quite different from his or her thoughts.

Happiness is five years of churchless blogging

This being my birthday, I figured it was a great time to fire up my Burgman scooter, head to my favorite Salem coffee house, and write a blog post -- stimulated by 20 ounces of the Beanery house blend.

Next month is this blog's five year anniversary. One of the presents I opened this morning -- in addition to a bunch of books I gave to myself -- was a wall hanging that Laurel, my wife, thought was fitting for me.

Happiness: When one's spiritual needs are met by an untroubled inner life. Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others.

Well, my blogging definitely makes me happy. I know it's beneficial to myself, and have a lot of reasons to believe that this is true for others as well. To be exact, 607,001.

That's how many page views this Church of the Churchless blog has gotten since November 2004. Currently the blog is averaging about 550 page views a day.

Of course, some of those visits lasted just long enough for someone to go "Ugh! Blasphemy!" and head elsewhere into cyberspace. But the 12,858 comments show that quite a few people stay around long enough to leave their feedback.

Which makes me feel good. I recall (more or less accurately) a C.S. Lewis quotation: "We read to know that we are not alone."

For sure.

Religious believers have churches, temples, mosques, and such where they can congregate with like-minded individuals. Churchless folks usually don't. So I wanted this blog to be a place where spiritually independent people could come in contact with like-minded minds.

Thank you for making this possible. Writing and reading is a two-way street. Or more accurately, a circular boulevard.

Meaning, when I throw some thoughts out via a blog post, almost always my thinking is changed in some fashion by those who read what I've written and share their own ideas. And so it goes...around and around and around, sharing how we see things leading to fresh ways of seeing.

It's difficult to encapsulate how I feel that I've changed churchlessly over the past five years. I'll spend the last of my 20 ounces of coffee giving this a try.

More relaxed. Less worries about doing the right thing. I've become much less obsessed about following rigid ethical or moral rules, such as not drinking any alcohol. Now I follow what could be called a "middle way," if I was a Buddhist (which I'm not).

For example, I've found that a glass of red wine doesn't send me to hell. Just into a bit of relaxation and improved health.

It's also nice to not feel so special. I used to look upon my belief system as head and shoulders above all those ridiculous other faiths that didn't know The Truth. Now, I consider that nobody knows the ultimate secrets of the cosmos, so we're all in the same boat of not-knowing.

That's a humbler place to be.

So after trying hard for thirty-some years to lose (or lessen) my ego through meditation and devotional practices, it's interesting that by becoming faithless, I feel a lot fewer egotistical sensations of "I'm right and you're wrong!" welling up in me.

Lastly, the universe is an amazing place.

It's marvelous that we're here, conscious human beings, able to look out upon it -- and also capable of gazing inwardly at our minds that try to make sense of it all.

Almost certainly we won't ever be certain of what it all means, including what It is. All we can do is live our lives as authentically and zestily as possible, drinking in each and every experience with gusto.

Just as I'm doing with my last gulps of coffee. Time for a sunny caffeinated scooter ride home.

There are no rules (including this one)

Hopefully my Suzuki Burgman 650 scooter won't burst into flames from the blasphemy of riding it while wearing a Harley-Davidson t-shirt.

But I liked the message of the most philosophical piece of wearing apparel I came across in the Indianapolis International Airport shopping area yesterday, and had to buy it.

I love my Japanese scooter. Wouldn't trade it for a Harley.

However, the Harley-Davidson philosophy of life -- encapsulated on the t-shirt -- fits with my churchless leanings.

Here's the answer someone new to Harley motorcycles got when he asked on a forum what being a member of the Florida Crew meant. It's a great response, with an earthy lack of spelling exactitude.

It means you are loyal (whatever that means), honest (as can be), trustworthy (most of the time). You like to ride (dont make rules or follow rules that someone else makes). Ya have to be at least slightly off in the head. A little perverted ( or Celebate). Church goer (if your into that). Hang out at strip clubs (if your into that). Support Republicans or Democrats ( or whickans if you want, nobody really gives a crap). You can be a flasher (male or female, we encourage this either way, especially after a few beers when the riding is done). You must have a good personality (or multiple personalities, SP Redman). You must be a hillbilly from Central Florida where the highest hill is the town dump (or a city boy from the Hills of N.C.). You have to ride a Harley (or ride a Yellow Ski Doo with 3 wheels, a 650 dirt bike, a mini crotch rocket, or a superduper turbo charged gas guzzling Road King). You have to be Black ( White, Red, Yellow, Brown, or whatever, nobody gives a crap). You have to have a lot of money ( or be a poor dude right off the boat riding a rat bike with duct tape holding it together). Ya gotta be an animal lover (or an animal eater). Ya have to have a slightly graying pony tail ( or be bald as a cue ball hehe). Ya gotta live in Fla ( or we will make you an honorary memeber once we ride with ya)

That said, it really means

NO RULES JUST RIDE

Pretty good advice, whether you're riding on two wheels down a road or on two legs down the course of life. 

Like the guy says, if you're into church-going, great. If you're not, also great.

Problem is, "no rules" doesn't appeal to most true believers. They generally consider that there's one right way to live one's life, and this happens to be the moral/ethical code of conduct enjoined by their religion.

Now, there are no rules points back at itself. Meaning, there are no rules. Unless you want to follow a rule. Feel free. There's no rule that says "never follow a rule."

We all do this: follow rules. Life would be unlivable without them.

How could I turn on my TV if I didn't press the right button on the remote control? The important thing is to remember that rules are made to be broken when they need to be.

Just because a holy book or holy person says, "do such and such," doesn't mean you should follow that advice. This also holds for a holy GPS device, such as my dearly beloved Garmin Nuvi.

I took it to Indiana, the site of my wife's family reunion last weekend. Figured it would come in handy for finding our way around as we navigated unfamiliar roads in our rental car.

Leaving the airport late at night in a thunderstorm, though, I acceded to Laurel's belief that since all we really needed to do was get on I-70 W, the simple instructions we got from the National car rental lady would be sufficient.

Wrong.

I blamed Laurel for not pointing me to the correct lane that led to the I-70 W on ramp. (I could have blamed myself also for not paying closer attention to some signs, but that wouldn't have been as satisfying.)

While driving several miles in the wrong direction, looking for a suitable off-ramp to get us headed back the right way, my irritation led me to say, "If I'd been using the GPS device like I wanted to, this wouldn't have happened."

I made a mental note to self: use the Nuvi when you want to be sure you'll make the right turns in an unfamiliar place.

After all, like any GPS navigation device the Nuvi is almost god-like.

It possesses quasi-omniscience, somehow cramming in street level data for the entire United States in its small handheld case. It possesses quasi-omnipresence, since no matter where I am, it knows my location. And to true believers in technology like me, it possesses quasi-omnipotence, given that when I'm clueless about how to get somewhere, my blessed Nuvi will show me the way.

Well, almost always.

Heading back to the Indianapolis airport Sunday afternoon from a rural area about 60 miles away, I made a show to Laurel of getting the Nuvi out, putting it on my lap, and pressing "Go" after the device had found the airport in its database.

At first, it worked great.

I knew how to get back to I-70 since we'd already been that way once. But it was helpful to have the Great God Nuvi tell me when we were less than ten miles from the airport, since I could fill up the rental car knowing that the gauge would still register "full" when I returned it to National.

All was going fine. Back on I-70 E after stopping at a gas station I glanced down at all-knowing Nuvi and saw the airport was still 4.5 miles away.

Which, however, didn't mesh with the "Indianapolis International Airport next exit" sign that I'd just passed. My mind raced.

One of Laurel's relatives had told us that we were fortunate the airport was now easier to get to when approaching from the west. But I'd updated the Nuvi with the 2008 road database. Shouldn't that show any new streets leading to the airport? 

While pondering all this, I zipped past the exit. "You just went by the airport," Laurel said, stating the obvious in an irritatingly truthful manner.

"Nuvi shows it's four miles away," I replied, defensively. "OK, but the big signs over the freeway clearly said Indianapolis International Airport." I bowed to reality, reluctantly.

So three days earlier I figured that I'd missed going the right way leaving the airport because I wasn't using a GPS device. Now, I'd just missed going the right way returning to the airport because I was using a GPS device.

There are no rules. Common sense, though, is usually a darn good rule. 

When it comes to religious rules. Or, driving rules. When it's obvious what the right way is, go there, even if some supposedly higher power tells you to do something different.

Recollecting my state of mind as I looked at a freeway sign that said "Indianapolis International Airport next exit" after having just glanced at a GPS device that had an alternative view of reality, it's amazing that I was uncertain about which to believe.

The evidence of my own eyes. Or what a piece of machinery was telling me.

And yet...this is common. People often rely on something that contradicts their direct experience when deciding where to head in life. They may feel that it is fine to have sex outside of marriage, eat a hamburger, or have an abortion.

But if a religious authority says that's a no-no, this mechanical outside perspective, which gives the same advice no matter the individual circumstance, is considered to be more valid than what the person knows to be true for himself or herself.

Rules. You've got to know when to follow them, and when to ignore them.

After driving four miles in the wrong direction, and then four miles back to the airport, the rental car's gas gauge had a decided non-full look to it. National apparently let me get away with this.

However, I figured that a refueling charge was a reasonable price to pay for learning a life lesson: challenge authority (looks like I need another new t-shirt).

Follow your passion wherever it leads

Wow -- that's probably the most New Age'y blog post title I've ever inflicted upon cyberspace. But it fits with what I feel right now.

Which can be expressed in some other cliches that have run through my mind the past few days, when I've been pondering whether to consummate my passion for a Suzuki Burgman 650 Exec maxi-scooter that almost came to fruition last fall.

Live for the moment
Do it now before you're too old and can't do it
What's important is the traveling, not the destination
Having fun along the way is the way
Risk adds zest to life -- don't fear it

Having ordered a Burgman today, after canceling my order seven months ago, I want to get as much philosophical mileage as possible out of this semi-spendy purchase (big scooters are a lot less expensive than a car, and a lot more expensive than a bicycle).

I'm not interesting in preaching about the joy of motorcycling/ scootering. Some people are drawn to this activity; others aren't. Each to his own passion.

But we all have something that turns us on. And that thing is a link to the feeling of Oh, yeah!!! that washes over us when the turn on button has been pushed.

Follow that feeling. It's easy to deny it by speaking words inside our head like...

I shouldn't
I can't
I'm being unreasonable
So impractical
That isn't like me
What will ___ think?

It isn't wrong to think those thoughts. They need to be honored along with the feeling of passion. However, each of us knows the difference between being real and being fake with ourselves.

There are parallels between my churchlessness and my soon-to-be scooterness.

In each case, I knew where my Oh, yeah!!! sensation was pointing. But I used passion-squelching words such as the examples above to put a damper on the fire I could feel burning inside me.

Mystically, I'd read Zen, Eckhart, Chuang Tzu, or Plotinus and feel a non-dogmatic tingle run up my philosophical spine. For quite a while I tried to meld my passion for these mystic teachings with remaining a member of a religious organization with rather discordant beliefs.

Eventually the tension between being real to myself on the inside, and not reflecting that reality fully on the outside, became too great. I readily admit that I don't know the truth about the cosmos. But I do know what truly turns me on.

Philosophically. And motoring'ly.

I realized that when I thought about getting on two motorized wheels again (I had a small Honda trail bike in high school and college, and a mid-sized Yamaha motorcycle about fifteen years ago) I'd feel a sensation of Oh, yeah, that's me!

Not that I'm a motorcycle or scooter. But that I'm the sort of person who enjoys riding one, who likes taking risks in the pursuit of fun, who has a bit of Brando in me.

This isn't you. I'm me. You're you. I'm just saying that each of us, you, me, everybody, knows where our passions lie.

Maybe they're precisely reflected in what we're doing, thinking, and feeling now. Most likely, they aren't. Because for good reasons, and also for not-so-good reasons, we often trade passion for something else.

In the religious arena, hopefully our passionate being-real Oh, yeah's coincide with how we're expressing our beliefs in our life. If that isn't happening, a being-fake checkup is in order.

This afternoon, after handing over my VISA card to Cycle Country for a deposit on the Burgman, I spent an enjoyable twenty minutes or so talking with a knowledgeable sales guy about motorcycle jackets.

He showed me the ins and outs (shells, liners, rainproofing) of several TourMaster styles. In the process we chatted about the rewards and risks of two-wheeled riding, he naturally being much more knowledgeable than me.

I walked away with a warm sense of congruity -- that the inner motorcycling/ scootering me had taken a big step (with that deposit) toward getting in sync with the outer how-I-get-around me.

My churchless journey has been much the same. Getting real with myself. Eliminating fakiness when I find it. And most importantly:

Following passion.

Does consciousness age?

Got philosophical on my other blog, pondering the feeling of agelessness within that seems so different from the evident aging of my sixty year old body without.

Get rid of the guilt, religious or otherwise

I usually don't see myself as a guilt-ridden person. However, yesterday I learned that old Catholic habits hang around in difficult-to-discern guises.

I've got a natural food store checkout clerk to thank for this valuable churchless insight.

This was my first visit carrying a Whole Foods reusable bag. My wife and I had picked several up during a trip to Portland earlier in the day (Salem doesn't have a Whole Foods Market -- or a Trader Joes, despite our fervent visualizations).

When I plunked my purchases down on the conveyor belt and started to unfold the Whole Foods bag, I found myself wanting to perform a verbal penance to atone for what felt like a LifeSource Natural Foods heresy.

"I feel sort of funny using this bag in your store, since it comes from a competitor," I told the woman behind the counter. "When we were at a Whole Foods in Portland today, I just noticed that the bag stood up better than the ones I'd been using."

She stopped ringing up my items. Looked at me. Said, "Were you Catholic?"

At first I ignored the question. I wanted to elaborate on my choice of reusable grocery bags. Then it dawned on me that the clerk had zeroed in on an interesting issue.

"Well, yes. For a while. A few years when I was a kid. I wasn't confirmed, though. Was baptized and went through first communion, but dropped out after that."

This led into a mini-discussion about guilt.

The clerk said that she had a guilt-filled background herself and was trying to break free of it. She told me that I was only the second customer she'd ever encountered who had felt the need to comment on why another store's bag was being used to carry out her store's purchases.

I left grateful that the woman had chosen, with her openness, to make what would have otherwise been an uneventful shopping trip into a learning experience.

She was right.

I do feel guilty about some things that should be absolutely, deliciously, passionately guilt-free. And it could well be that my youthful dive into the weird world of Catholicism, no matter how brief, imprinted me in unconscious ways.

For example, a first confession is a pretty impressive deal when you're eight or nine years old. The big church, the polished wood of the confession box, the hidden black-robed priest behind the screen, the questions that emanate from an unseen interrogator.

"Do you have any sins to confess?"
"No, not really" (I was so young, I didn't know how to sin)
"What about church? Have you been going to mass?"
"Not very often. Well, almost never.""
"All right. Say three Our Fathers and five Hail Mary's. And go to mass more often."

Didn't seem like a big deal at the time. I wonder, though, whether the notion of a Big Man Up There who judges our actions took more of a hold in my tender growing psyche than I've been aware of.

Driving home from the natural food store, I pondered the pros and cons of guilt. If I've hurt someone unnecessarily, seemingly it's good to feel bad about it. That way I'll be less likely to make the same mistake in the future, since feeling bad isn't pleasant.

But how often does this happen, compared to all the other pseudo-justifications for guilt?

A few hours previous I'd gone to a class where a few guys had practiced the more "martial" (and macho) side of Tai Chi, melding some of our previous hard-style training with this softer art.

We'd picked up bokkens, wooden training swords (remember them in "The Last Samurai"?). My classmate, Jeremy, and I hadn't played around with them for quite a while. Warren, our instructor, led us through some semi-forgotten exercises.

Whack!

After a quick spinning move it was audibly crystal clear that Jeremy -- a large strong guy -- had disabled his opponent. Or would have, if a person had been on the receiving end of the bokken's strike rather than a wooden piece of furniture in a corner.

I looked at Jeremy, wondering what he would do. I'm inclined to apologize in such circumstances.  Might have said to the dojo owner, "Man, I'm sorry. Hope I didn't break anything." 

Jeremy looked at his sword. Went over to the magazine rack, which looked to be undamaged. Inspected his bokken for nicks. "Look," he said, "I hit it with the right edge."

No guilt. No reason for it. Something had happened. No harm, no foul. No apology needed.

Yet for some reason I'd taken a single freaking Whole Foods bag into another natural food store and felt the need to acknowledge my sin. What gives?

Well, guilt. Which leads me to some conclusions.

Perfection isn't possible. Most of us are more willing to forgive the failings of other people than our own. This isn't humility; it is egotistical. And often it springs from a religious source. God is perfect; so should we be.

It's the "should" that causes so many guilt trips. Commandments, rules, moral standards -- they push people toward a never-ending pursuit of perfection. Catholic guilt isn't limited to a particular denomination, but pervades every form of religiosity, Western or Eastern.

Fuck it! is a fine philosophy. In a coffee house conversation, a friend reminded me recently of a pithy guide to guilt-free living: Fuck it. Most of what we agonize over does indeed deserve to be dumped in a psychological garbage can, wrapped in those two words.

You just said the wrong thing? Fuck it. Made a horrendous professional or personal decision? Fuck it. Become aware that you haven't made much progress toward maturity or wisdom after so many years on this planet? Fuck it.

Do it or don't do it; no other choices. Much guilt springs from a have it both ways attitude. We decide to do something, then feel bad about doing it. Well, like the saying goes, either shit or get off the pot. If I pay 99 cents for a Whole Foods bag, I should use it. Otherwise, why buy it?

And if I'm going to use it, then that's it. No in-between'ies allowed. There's a cardinal rule in ballroom dancing: the man leads decisively. Better to make a wrong step than no step at all. In dancing, like life, lack of action leads nowhere. Lead or follow; take charge or surrender.

Just do something! Then, something else (which might be the opposite of what you did before).

Guilt sucks up a lot of energy. Maybe there should have been an add-on "therapy" charge on my LifeSource receipt. I felt subtly different when I woke up this morning. Not hugely, but noticeably. Recognizing my guilt proneness more clearly seemed to have plugged up some sort of energy drain.

I got out of bed with a bit more spring in my step. I wasn't looking ahead as much, like I usually do, wondering if I'd be able to check off the "to-do's" in my mind that generally illusorily attempt to organize my day even before a first cup of coffee. Today, whatever happened seemed like it'd be fine.

Even if that meant finishing a blog post at 10:30 in the evening, generally way past my blogging bedtime. It's all good, to use an over-used cliche.

And when there's no guilt diluting the good...even better. Maybe you think this post is too long, that I blabbed on too much. Well...

Fuck it.

Thanks for making the past year happy

Church of the Churchless visitors, in 2008 you made me happy. Well, let's make that happier.

I would have had an enjoyable year without you guys and gals, but being in touch with you through your comments and emails added a lot to my life.

My wife and I belong to a "Salon" discussion group here in Salem. Monthly a bunch of us get together in one of our homes and spend three hours or so conversing about all kinds of stuff.

Politics. Current events. Books. What's going on in peoples' lives. And much more.

At the last meeting, a couple of days ago, we were sharing about our personal best's and worst's of 2008. As a best example I talked about a comment I'd just received on my "Death and the primal fear of non-existence" post.

I know this is almost 3 years after the original post and I have never been to this website, but today I typed in "fear of non-existence" into google and I got here. And your description of what you feel drove me crazy because for more than TEN years now, I have been feeling the EXACT thing you have described and I've searched online before but never found a description of the "feeling" that compares in any way to mine. So, even though I have never posted a comment in response to anything online ever, I really felt compelled to do this because I could not believe the description. I have just read it to my husband over the phone and he knows that I have described "it" in nearly the same exact words, but probably less articulate on my part. When I do "feel it" I spin into a panic I suppose that I can't control and I consider it also the worst feeling, but at the same time I feel like I see something that no one else does.... and now I know that someone else might. I could go on more about this, but I won't here.

When I read that, I felt great. Which may sound sort of strange, given the subject matter.

I wasn't happy that the woman is so panicky about death.

However, I really liked that the two of us were able to find each other in cyberspace (through the Great God Google) and share some thoughts that very rarely come up in polite conversation.

I mean, if you walk up to someone at a party, drink in hand, and say, "The notion of dying and not existing forever scares me shitless. What about you?" -- that pretty much guarantees a startled look and a hasty rush to the snack table from the other person.

But we can do that here. And talk about all sorts of other weird, wonderful, and wacky subjects.

I left my own comment for the afraid of death woman.

Karla, I feel good that you've resonated with the description of what I felt. It doesn't change death, or our reaction to it, but it's good to know we're not alone.

I believe it was C.S. Lewis who said, "We read to know we are not alone." So true. Books. Blogs. Whatever.

Reading about other people's experiences shows us that while we're all different, in another sense we're all one.

And maybe this is the key to opening the door that leads to not fearing death so much: oneness. Sounds like a New Age platitude, but it just might be the reality of our universe.

I wish I understood what I said in those last two paragraphs. I do in a sense, because I wrote the words.

Yet underneath (or beyond) those words -- all words, really, not just some words -- is an enigma. Mystery. Ineffability. Suchness, as Buddhists put it.

Whatever that is, and I've got no clue, it's what I feel binds us together. Whether we agree or disagree, love or hate, fight or embrace.

We're all in this together. Life. Existence. Reality. This.

Some people don't need to ponder the nature of "this." They simply live it.

Well, I'm a ponderer. And I'm thankful to everyone who has read my ponders and shared their own on this blog in 2008.

With a few exceptions, I've never met you. However, sometimes I feel like I know blog visitors better than acquaintances I've related to for decades.

That makes me happy.

Clearing out some churchless scraps

I feel grateful (not to God, but to the vagaries of weather) that our power is still on, given what's been happening today in other parts of south Salem.

We've been on the edge of a rain/freezing rain divide, created by the clash of cold air flowing down the Columbia Gorge and warmer air coming in from the Pacific.

Nasty stuff, freezing rain. I'll take snow over it anytime.

At any rate, being pretty much housebound I've had more time to stare at the non-Feng Shui piles of paper on my desk, which includes some scribbled ideas for Church of the Churchless posts.

Might as well do some winter cleaning.

The scribblings are worth a couple of paragraphs each, but given my inclinations toward verbosity I might revisit one or more of these themes on another day.

Encounter while getting the newspaper. Usually there's nobody around when I walk up our driveway to get the newspapers.

But one morning a guy I didn't recognize was walking past on our rural road just as I reached to grab the Salem Statesman Journal and Portland Oregonian.

"There's nothing new in there," he yelled at me. I felt like defending my newspapers. "Hey, there's some kind of new news every day," I told him.

"You want news? We're all going to die," he said, walking away. Great response, I thought. Maybe we have an unrecognized Zen master in the neighborhood.

Getting real at the end of an evening. I'm not a hugely social person. I can handle small talk for a while, but eventually it bores me. That's why I enjoy those rather rare moments when people tell it like it is, rather than how it isn't.

I've found that these usually occur near the end of a get-together, after a lot of chit-chatting. We've gotten through the usual acceptable conversational topics: politics, weather, children, health problems, vacations, and such.

Then somebody clears their throat and says, "I've been wanting to get this off my chest, but didn't feel comfortable bringing it up before."

Ooh! Now I'm interested. So is everybody else. The room is silent. All eyes and ears turn to the throat-clearer.

Who proceeds to say something that is so real, so human, so honest, so revealing, it makes what was talked about before seem utterly unimportant. I'm so thankful to that person for getting real.

And wonder why I, and others, can't do the same all of the time. Not just face to face. In cyberspace also, like on this blog. What keeps on the masks that we all wear?

What would happen if we took them off? What if we decided to say what is really in our hearts and minds without worrying about how we look to others?

I'm not sure if this would be a good thing. But it sure would be interesting.

Concentration versus letting go. I used to think that meditation, and spiritual practice in general, was largely about focusing one's attention -- concentrating on doing this or that, not being distracted by superfluities.

Now I'm much more into relaxation, letting go of rigid concepts, dogmas, expectations, commandments, rules, theologies. 

Focused concentration can be useful when there is an object to focus on. If a screw and nut are rusted together, a problem I faced yesterday, you need to zero in on the recalcitrant pieces of metal and try to get them moved apart.

However, when the intention is directed toward ultimacies, the Big Picture, Consciousness, Oneness, the Meaning of It All, objectification defeats its purpose.

If my aim is to sidle close to an ultimate truth that is way bigger (not spatially, but truthily) than I am, focusing my attention narrowly isn't going to encompass what I'm out to grasp.

Especially if that "what" isn't a thing, but is the root of me (consciousness) or the cosmos (existence, being). Relaxing as much as possible into ultimate reality then seems to be the way to go.

Or the non-way to not-go.

Writing is intuitive, not intellectual. I get irritated when people say to me, "Brian, you think too much." For one thing, you think too much is a thought. So why don't they lessen their own quantity of thinking by not expressing that thought?

More importantly, though, this advice seems to be based on an assumption that speaking or writing is an intellectual activity at odds with intuition -- which most people consider to be how spirituality or mysticism is expressed or grasped.

Lao Tzu did indeed supposedly say, "He who speaks does not know; he who knows does not speak." I wish he hadn't, because this part of the Tao Te Ching gets wrongly interpreted.

When I talk, I'm expressing a knowing that sprang full blown into my psyche in a flash. Boom!

Everything I want to say pops up in an intuitive instant. It then takes a while to unwind or explain that inner knowing in a fashion comprehensible to others.

Same with writing. I remember going home for Christmas my sophomore year in college, faced with having to write a massive term paper that I'd put off all semester.

It was a contrasting of Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" and Zen Buddhism. I set up a card table in my mother's living room. I got out my trusty typewriter.

As soon as I sat down in a chair to get to work the term paper was written. I knew it. I could see everything I was going to write. Not in detail, but in a clear outline. And so far I hadn't yet put down a word on paper.

It was a wonderful feeling. Which is repeated in a less dramatic manner with every sentence I've written before or since. When I start to type the words proceeding a period, they're already written.

See, I just did it again. Like, I bet, almost everyone does who writes or says anything. We communicate after bursts of intuitive insight. This is a soulful process, not an intellectual exercise.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's fine. Maybe you haven't paid much attention to how your mind works.

I just wanted to point out that people who can clearly communicate their intuitions aren't more intellectual than people who can't.

They're simply better able to use speech and writing to share what's inside of themselves, while others find it difficult to transplant hidden seeds of intuition into an observable thought-field.

If you can't find the party, try another place

I want to suck as much meaning as possible out of yesterday’s marvelous election results.

So I’ll keep the party going (sorry, Republicans) with a story about how I couldn’t find the party.

Which bears quite a bit of resemblance to how I wasn’t able to locate the spiritual extravaganza that supposedly was rocking on a level of higher consciousness, according to the meditation system that I followed for many years.

In both cases, it eventually became obvious that I wasn’t in the right place. But the interesting thing is how non-obvious obviousness can be, if you’ve got your mind made up in a certain direction.

As noted on my other blog, my wife and I planned to go to a Democratic election night party after our Tango class.

I’d read an email invitation from the Marion County Dems. So had my wife.

We both recalled that the party was at a ballroom in the Reed Opera House, a three story brick building in downtown Salem.

We confidently pulled up outside, surprised and pleased that with a large party happening upstairs, there were so many parking spaces available. (First lesson: pay attention to the unexpected, since it may have a message for you.)

All we needed to do was reach the top floor. I pushed the “up” button on an elevator. The door opened. Laurel and I stepped inside.

I hit “3.” Nothing happened. The elevator didn’t move. We looked at each other, wondering if we were stuck. (Sort of reminds me of my meditation.)

I lowered my expectations and pressed “2.” That got us to the second floor, where we searched for stairs that would take us higher. No luck. One stairwell was locked with a gate. The other had a door, but no knob, and wouldn’t open.

We were determined to get to the third floor, where we were confident a jubilant election night party awaited us. Retracing our steps back to ground level, we even believed that we could hear the crowd in the ballroom cheering.

(In retrospect, I now realize that we were standing by a wall that separated us from a bar next door, which must have been filled with progressives -- or people who’d been drinking enough to cheer for anything.)

So there we are, wandering up and down the bottom floors of a building where we had a lot of faith -- for no good reason, but that’s how faith works, irrationally -- that we were so close to a wonderful experience.

Given how long we’d waited to celebrate a Democrat winning the presidency again, the party we were looking for was the political equivalent of heaven for us.

We damn well weren’t going to give up on this dream easily. Eventually, though, reality began to break through. It dawned on us that not only was there no way to the third floor, we might not have remembered where the party was.

Back to the car. Off to another location, a few blocks away. The Grand Theatre building, which also has a ballroom on the third floor.

Unlocked doors. Music and cheering definitely coming from above. We walked in just in time to see Obama’s acceptance speech projected on a large screen. Deeply moving. It was great to share the moment with like-minded people.

Here’s the lesson I learned from the evening, which naturally wasn’t the first time life had taught me this: when you’re really, really sure you’re right, but there’s no solid evidence of it, stop and ask yourself, “Why am I so sure about my belief?”

Laurel and I kept on looking for a party in the wrong place for a lot longer than a reasonable person would have.

The reason: each of us had faith that we knew where to go, and since we agreed that it was the place we were at, our erroneous beliefs supported each other -- even when we began to have some doubts.

“Are you sure the invitation said Reed Opera House?”

“Yeah, I am. I read the email just this afternoon.”
“OK. That’s what I remember also. Let’s keep looking for an unlocked door.”

If we’d been on a religious quest, our commitment to what we thought was true would have earned us high faith marks.

We didn’t let minor details like no evidence of an election night party, which would have attracted hundreds of noisy, enthusiastic progressives, stand in the way of our repeatedly trying to get past locked doors that led to the third floor.

For quite a while we banished any thought of “I could be wrong” from our minds. We were reluctant to stop searching and ask a simple question: What makes us think we’re right?

We believed we were right! A firm belief repels skeptical questioning.

In the end, we ended up at the party we’d been looking for. It just turned out to be in a different location from where we first confidently thought it was.

If we hadn’t changed our minds, acknowledging the crystal clear evidence of No Party Here, we’d still be wandering floors that led nowhere.

Moral: if following your religion or philosophy hasn’t gotten you to the place you want to be, change direction. The party could be next door, and you shouldn’t miss it.

Small things can be the biggest

For me, one of the hallmarks of churchlessness is being content with the smaller side of life. Maybe this partly comes from aging, but not all of it.

Yes, I recall my 50th birthday, when a friend told me: “Now you won’t worry so much about accomplishing all that you set out to do.” What was unstated I took to be, “because you’ve passed your prime and don’t have much time left.”

Well, if that was true at 50, it’s even more so at 60.

Yet I don’t think age alone explains the increased pleasure I get from everyday life now -- as contrasted with my previous drive to know and do great things.

I used to want to write books that delved into the Big Questions of Life. Now I’m content to put up a daily blog post, frequently about a mundane subject.

I used to imagine that my meditation would lead me to a grasp of ultimate reality. Now I’m pleased if I can stay awake and semi-poised within my consciousness.

I used to feel that I was destined to significantly change the world. Now I get a lot of satisfaction from making a much tinier slice of reality a little bit better.

It’s been a dry fall so far here in Oregon. Rain is coming tomorrow. The forecast is that it’ll stay for a while. That’s been an incentive to get some good weather chores done. Like staining/sealing the railings and trim on a replacement deck.

I’m good at this.

Staining takes more care and concentration than painting. With the semi-transparent stain I’m using, mistakes aren’t easily rectified. A dried drip or brush mark is going to be with us for a long time.

I tried listening to the radio while I worked, but found this interfered with the simplicity of brush, brush, brush. I was endlessly fascinated by the unfinished wood changing color as I applied the cedar-toned stain.

At times I felt that if the next moment brought my last breath, I’d die content.

I’m doing something real ... making a difference. Look at that board now! Beautiful, how the darker knot holes contrast with the rest of the grain.

Much of my life has been marked by grandiosity. This period coincides, pretty much, with my churched phase. I’m not saying there’s a cause and effect connection between the two -- religiosity and grandiosity -- but there does seem to be a relationship.

Enlightenment. Salvation. Knowing God. Perfect love. Selfless service. These are big notions. Accomplish any of them, and you’ve done a heck of a lot.

I don’t seriously aspire to those sorts of lofty goals anymore. It’s hard to explain why. Probably there’s no need to figure out why I don’t have such a strong need to figure out the cosmos.

Yet...it’s fun to try.

I used to feel that there was (1) really real reality, and (2) where I am now. Blurring (or eliminating) the difference seems to be as good an explanation as any for my current appreciation of the ordinary.

Along with the above-mentioned recognition that -- while I’d dearly love it to be otherwise -- what I do or don’t do doesn’t mean squat to the universe.

I’m an infinitesimal cog in an infinitely large cosmic wheel. Staining deck railings has just about as much effect on a 100 billion galaxy universe as anything else, no matter how seemingly momentous, I might accomplish.

With that realization... the pressure is off. And William Blake is on.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand.
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

What else is there to say?

Once again, Edward nailed it (or rather, me) right on the head in a cogent comment. Regarding my previous musing, he said:

Brian, reading this post I got the feeling that you won't have to write much longer, you are almost done...

I like those words, almost done.

Conjures up an image of being slowly cooked, like a roast pig turning on a spit. I've been feeling a non-Biblical apple in my mouth make me grin more. Doesn't seem like the churchless heat has been turned up all that high, but clearly it's been causing some changes.

Anyway, you're right, Edward.

There's times when I wonder what else I have to say. Maybe it's the upcoming election, because I was drawn to start this Church of the Churchless blog after Bush won in November 2004.

Now, almost four years later, a lot has changed in this country. And, in me.

I haven't figured out what either a lot amounts to. It's enough to know that seismic shifts have occurred, and I hope they're movements in a good direction.

As if I, or anyone, could know what's good or bad. Or what sort of moral compass points toward them. I used to think that I had some understanding about this stuff.

Now, as I wrote before, the whole idea of a misguided universe – or me – that needs a direction finder is losing meaning. That sense of loss doesn't seem quite the same as when I worked in the health policy/planning arena, but maybe it is.

For many years I dedicated myself to trying to fix what's wrong with health care. I cared a lot. Then, I didn't, almost instantly. One day I realized, "This doesn't matter to me anymore." I went off in a different direction, writing some books about the Meaning of It All.

Meaning still matters to me. However, life is seeming considerably simpler these days, so I may be getting to a point where there isn't a whole lot to say about the big questions of life.

With health care, the overwhelming complexity of problems (cost, end of life decisions, new technologies, payment systems, to name a few) helped lead me to feeling what's the point?

With spirituality and metaphysics, the astounding simplicity of a cosmos that is just what it is (lacking the human concepts of sin, fallen nature, need for salvation, enlightenment, and such) could lead me to feeling the point is…no point.

I'm not there yet. Not quite.

But I'm enjoying looking through the window of pointlessness and wondering what it would be like to play outside.

Craziness can be a dose of sanity

The older I get, the more appealing a little craziness appears to me. I'm not talking about whacked out psychosis, but something milder – in the immoral, illogical, illicit, or ill-understandable sphere of strangeness.

Stuff that soothes a person's far out! soul, while making others question why he or she is marching out of the beat of the ordinary.

I'm not religious. However, there are aspects of religiosity that fill the crazy bill. Of course, theologically every religion is certifiably nuts. Intellectual or conceptual craziness isn't a positive sort of far out-ness.

On the other hand, when I watch TV and see church-goers dancing in the aisles, waving their hands in the air, praising Jesus with huge smiles on their faces – now that is weird enough to make me say "right on."

In general, though, religions discourage eccentric individualism. That's strange, given that the major figures of every religion, plus revered mystics of many varieties, thought and acted in decidedly unconventional ways.

Once spirituality becomes institutionalized, believers are expected to toe the dogmatic line and express their exuberance for life within well-defined bounds. You can do this, but not that. Intuitive feelings of right and wrong are repressed in favor of what a holy book or ecclesiastical hierarchy demands.

Sad. We lose a lot when we give up our personal passions.

I admire people who go their own way, regardless of how others view them. Eric, a childhood friend who was older than me, had a marvelous collection of surplus British Army and Navy uniforms (World War II vintage). He'd be seen riding his bike down the street, wearing a plumed "Bengal Lancer" helmet, whipping his rear fender with a riding crop.

At an early age he taught me the value of eccentricity. Which is a loaded word, because what's strange to other people is absolutely normal to the supposed "eccentric."

The way I see it, something in us longs to be way out there. There's also a part of us that likes to curl up with safe and sane conformity. Honoring both sides of ourselves, allowing each to come out and play naturally, seems to be key to living life happily and fully.

Summer is motorcycle/scooter time here in Oregon. I had a motorcycle for a while about a dozen years ago. Now I'm lusting after a maxi-scooter, being much more of a Suzuki Burgman than a Harley Davidson guy.

I ponder the pros and cons of getting around on two highly motorized wheels. When I had my motorcycle, just about everybody had a story about someone getting killed or maimed on one (many tales, though, were along the lines of "this dude I know drank a couple of six packs, then got on his bike and was going 110 mph when he hit a parked car…" – much more an indictment of stupidity than motorcycles).

Sure, motorcycles and scooters are dangerous. Yet it's even riskier to go through life without living it the way you want to. Trusting that after death you'll have another chance at happiness is how religions play the game, but it's a bet with a high probability of going bust.

Older people often turn exceedingly cautious, adoring routine. But since they have fewer years left to live, they should be the ones out there on the edge, since there's less to lose if they fall off.

There's all kinds of ways to embrace your inner crazy. Jumping on a high-powered scooter might turn out to be one way I do it. However, everybody has their own I've always wanted to…. that's never been gotten around to.

When? That's the question.

When are we going to answer the call of our own self? When will we choose to ride the desire-horse that has been chomping on its bit, ready to gallop? When is our inner sense of what's right for us going to overwhelm the "No, don't!" coming from the world outside?

When?

[Update: for a good example on the Oregon coast of what I'm talking about, check out my HinesSight post about Aunt Mary's -- a unique purveyor of vegan food and porn.]

Benefits of blogging and bitching

Yesterday I got an email from a Church of the Churchless visitor who offered me some advice:

It seems to me like you spend more time writing on this blogging thing than is healthy for anybody to do….We all get disillusioned with something, but we can move on or we can waste our time bitching about our disillusionment in cyberspace all day.

Well, I beg to differ. I'm not in cyberspace all day.

Though when our well pump stopped working this afternoon, and I had to find a way to get it fixed at the start of the Memorial Day weekend, I sure wanted to escape into a more pleasant realm of reality.

Which for me, is writing – the essence of my blogging. It's therapeutic for me to sit down for an hour or two every day, write about whatever strikes my fancy, then publish it on one of my two blogs.

Science agrees that it's good for me. And other people too, naturally.

Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits.

Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not.

I suspect that my correspondent felt better after writing me to say that I shouldn't spend so much time writing. He needed to bitch about how I bitch about my experiences with Radha Soami Satsang Beas, though in his message he also said:

A lot of the things you say about the path are valid, and many are similar to the reasons why I didn't follow in my parents spiritual footsteps.

If you want to read about someone really into sharing the details of their inner self online, check out Emily Gould's tale of blogging semi-addiction in the New York Times magazine.

Of course, some people have always been more naturally inclined toward oversharing than others. Technology just enables us to overshare on a different scale. Long before I had a blog, I found ways to broadcast my thoughts — to gossip about myself, tell my own secrets, tell myself and others the ongoing story of my life.

I was sort of similar. In my pre-teen years I founded a neighborhood "newspaper" via my mother's typewriter and carbon paper. It lasted a couple of single page issues, surely disappointing my handful of subscribers.

Like Emily, I've always had an urge to write down thoughts and, however I could, get them into other people's brains. Like she said, with the Internet it's just a lot easier now to do the mind-melding.

So I don't agree that sharing ideas already in my head deserves to be called "bitching." In my admittedly self-absorbed world view, it's "openness."

My notion of bitching is irritation feeding upon itself, the act of complaining serving as fertilizer that grows a larger crop of bitchum.

By contrast, almost always I feel calmer and more content after I write a blog post. Getting out what's inside lowers the level of my psyche's Lake Irritation (though I realize that often it raises other people's).

Here's another thing: today I mailed off the questionnaire Consumer Reports sends me every year. I dutifully reported on our experience with cars, restaurant chains, cameras, lawn mowers, and various home appliances.

I love Consumer Reports. I always have ten year's worth of issues stacked in a cabinet. Whenever we're considering buying something, I check to see what Consumer Reports says.

I also Google potential choices. I like to learn how other people feel about this or that. Likewise, Amazon reader reviews frequently sway my decision about whether to buy a book.

Why, if all this is so helpful, is it wrong for people to similarly share their experiences with buying into a religion, philosophy, meditation practice, or spiritual path? Sure, there's less objectivity here compared to, say, the performance of a vacuum cleaner.

But there's still a lot to like about someone sharing as honestly as possible how they feel about a "product" that supposedly brings one closer to God or Self.

Results may vary. Sure, that has to be remembered. Nonetheless, I'm interested in knowing what the results were. And in sharing my own, bitchily or otherwise.

Life is a mystery. Afterlife, ditto.

I like how Zen talks about the need for a "great ball of doubt." It seems like I should have enjoyed a satori by now, my doubt is so balled up.

Some days more than others. This was a good doubting day.

I just had an interview with my Zen master, who, conveniently, is myself (makes it easy to get appointments). He reviewed the enigmatic koans that life presented me on this Sunday, along with my responses.

I think he was pleased. But I can't say for sure. That doubt thing, you know.

Sundays usually follow a fairly predictable routine for me – breakfast at home, coffee at Starbucks with friends, exercising at athletic club, napping and chores. Today was way different.

Which got me to thinking: if it's so tough to figure out what's going to happen moment to moment here in this material world, how the heck can anyone believe they've got the afterlife figured out?

When I walked into Starbucks and didn't see anyone familiar there, "Mother's Day" popped into my mind. My mother being dead and gone who knows where, I'd forgotten that spending the day with Mom is what this May 11 means for a lot of people.

Including, apparently, my usual coffee klatch group.

Well, no problem. Starbucks still was pleased to sell a skinny venti vanilla latte to me, along with a New York Times. A third of my way into the latte an older woman walks over to my chair. Sort of eccentric looking. With purple fingernails.

One bit of small talk from her: "Nice shirt." "Thank you." Then: "Do you have a phone?" "Yes." "Can I borrow it for a local call?" "Sure."

Never happened to me in Starbucks before. But then, lots of things happen that never have happened to me before. Well, everything, in fact. Same for everybody. We just get lulled into the illusory quasi-predictability of life.

The woman went back to her table. She fiddled with my phone for quite a while. At one point she asked, "Do you have a watch?" "Yes." "What time is it?" "12:15"

I never heard her actually talk to anybody. I pictured her putting my phone into her purse and walking off with it. I wondered how I'd get it back. The way it happened was, she walked over and handed it to me. So predictable, it surprised me.

Turned out I needed the phone again, a few minutes later. A barista steps out from behind the counter and yells, "Anyone named 'Brian' here?" "Yes."

She walked over. "Your wife just called. Some sort of water emergency. She wants you to phone home."

Laurel and I never turn on our cell phones except when we need to make a call. So she found me via Starbucks. Another first.

After talking with Laurel I knew that the day was going to be even less predictable than I'd already found it to be. Gigantic bursts of air, and not much water, was coming out of our pipes.

Living in the country, with a well connected to a complex mass of water treatment equipment – softener, iron filter, ph adjuster, ozonator – we're used to dealing with water problems. This one, though, was beyond Laurel's ability to handle herself.

The man of the house was needed. I fired up the Prius and headed home.

Where I spent the next four hours dealing with mystery after mystery, aided in my quest by a couple of phone consultations with the guys who installed our water treatment system.

My usual fix for air in the pipes (disconnect ozonator solenoid; dislodge debris with paper clip) didn't work. More drastic measures had to be taken, stretching my minimalist plumbing skills.

Another trip into town to the hardware store to buy an O-ring became obviously necessary when water sprayed into my face after turning the system on, expecting that I'd solved the problem, only to find that the original problem had morphing into a fresh form.

Throughout, I was surprised at how serene I remained.

My churchless soul didn't see this, as it once would have, as: karma to be gone through, an opportunity to practice detachment from worldly concerns, or a test of my ability to perform selfless husbandly service.

It just was life. Stuff happens. Unpredictable stuff. Stuff with no meaning other than the need to deal with it.

A few weeks ago the Religion columnist in our local newspaper, Hank Arends, quoted Salem's Unitarian Universalist minister, Rev. Rick Davis. Davis likes to break out of conversational ruts. Recently, when he checked into the church office by phone he'd ask the office administrator, "What is the meaning of life?"

She ducked the question for several days, then answered: "To reflect the Divine Light into Earth's dark places." Here's what Davis said in the newsletter.

This answer provides a good 'purpose' for life but dodges the question about the 'meaning' of life. Seems to me that question is an imposition of a human concept upon a universe that doesn't operate according to our limited frameworks of understanding.

That's for sure.

We strive to find meaning in events because their unpredictability threatens our humancentric position at the center of existence. There's got to be some purpose, some master plan, some reason behind a malfunctioning water treatment system that consumes my entire afternoon, right?

No. Life can just be what it is. Arends continued:

By getting so involved in studying for the meaning of life, one could consume years of time and thereby miss life itself. Davis pointed to those who questioned Buddha with abstract metaphysical questions.

In response, Buddha said in essence: "Knock it off. You can endlessly speculate about such matters but that will not add to the quality of your present condition. Be aware. Pay attention. Wake up."

That's all we can do, really. Moment to moment, life is a mystery. The afterlife, infinitely more so, since we don't have any history, any regularities, any experience to base a prediction on.

Driving home after picking up the O-ring I tuned to the Oregon State baseball game with UCLA. OSU won the national championship the past two years, but the team has been slumping recently.

They were behind 7-4 in the top of the eighth. Bummer. Oregon State needed a win to take the weekend series and bolster their chances for post-season play. I figured I'd open up the paper tomorrow and read about another disappointing loss.

I turned on the radio on my third trip into town today, finally getting to get to my Sunday athletic club workout after mastering the mystery of the ozonator problem. First words I heard were…

"One of the greatest baseball games I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot. Unbelievable – a grand slam home run in the bottom of the eighth with one out. Then a double play in the ninth to seal the win."

Life. Who can figure it? When religious true believers say they can, don't believe them.

Unless they can reliably predict the outcomes of baseball games with one out in the eighth. And whether, when I'm sitting in Starbucks peacefully drinking a latte, I'll soon find myself playing with plumbing.

Big waves, small waves: no difference?

It's easy not to think too much on Maui. But my blogging addiction presses me toward a Church of the Churchless posting.

Where is my inspiration? In today, in the waves.

They were good sized today in Napili Bay, praise the wave gods. Whenever we come to Maui I religiously bring my boogie board on the airplane. Then I devotedly cart it down to the beach, every time we go, no matter how calm the ocean is.

You never know. You really don't. I've been fooled before. Nice waves can spring out of nowhere. Like satori.

This morning I was reading more of "Consciousness is All." An excerpt hit close to home. Our temporary home.

Imagine a drive-in movie theatre with a picture showing on its large white screen.

In the movie picture, a woman and man are standing on a tropical beach, gazing out over the ocean. There's a beautiful sunset and a boat is sailing by in the distance. As a large orange sun appears to drop below the horizon, the woman and man are talking about what a wonderful day they've had, expressing their emotions of happiness.

Now, Peter Dziuban's point is that all this wonderfulness is just images on a screen. The images aren't real. Only the screen is – the screen of consciousness.

For this example, all that is important is the screen, wholly apart from any picture projected, any movie projector, theatre, observers, or anything else.

Hmmmm. I like Consciousness is All as a philosophy. Oneness is so deliciously simple. Wouldn't it be wonderful if everything was the same thing, and nothing was different? Or…would it?

I can't deny my present reality, where some things sure seem to be a heck of a lot better than other things – regardless of whether they're ultimately real or not.

Since we got here my boogie board has been sitting on the sand. This morning the ocean changed. High pressure moved from the south to the north of the islands, doing something or other to the prevailing winds.

Whatever it was, the result was boogie boardable waves. Not great, but good.

And I felt so much better. More alive, because I love catching a wave and feeling the rush of being carried along by a force much more powerful than myself, yet under my control (sort of) if I can flow with it.

Big waves, small waves. A considerable difference, to me. Yet many mystic types would say, "All is one. Physical and mental sensations are passing phenomena, not part of unchangeable unity."

OK. I still prefer big waves to small waves (my wife feels exactly opposite, being a snorkeling fanatic, so we pray to different wave gods).

The Zen folks deal with this stuff somewhat similarly, or so my shallow understanding of Zen tells me. One school puts a big emphasis on keeping the mirror of the mind clear of dust. Another school says, what mirror, what dust?

There are two primary schools of Zen Buddhism. The Gradual School of Enlightenment is firmly rooted in the scripture of Indian Buddhism and the inheritor of that school of meditation. A verse from this tradition:

"This body is the Bodhi-tree
The soul is like a bright mirror.
Keep it clean at all times,
And let no dust gather upon it."

The School of Sudden Enlightenment created an entirely new phenomenon as expressed in an answering verse:

"The Bodhi is not a tree
The bright mirror is nowhere shining
As there is nothing,
Just where can the dust settle?"

and absorbed the Taoist approach to life. "The world is always held without effort. The moment there is effort, the world is beyond holding."

I guess I'm more of a Taoist than a mirror cleanser, or a movie screen devotee. I like reflections. I like images. Particularly when they're of stuff that I enjoy, such as large waves coming into Napili Bay.

Religions generally preach the merits of an other-worldly attitude. But all I know is this world, right here, right now. To deny my experiencing of it, my love of it, my enjoyment of it – senseless.

That said, I also can see how nice it would be if everything that I experienced was, well, nice. Because I didn't take it seriously and could enjoy it while it lasted – which, given the nature of the world, won't be for long.

Hawaiians are big on "hang loose." A good philosophy of life. There's got to be a way of melding an attraction for the screen, and enjoyment of what appears on it. Some movies are better than others, for sure.

But in the end there's "The End." Waves come, waves go. The ocean remains, though. I just want my boogie board to be out in big waves tomorrow.

Short cut to losing the ego

Been meditating for lots of years? Made pilgrimages to India? Devoted yourself to serving a church or other faith? And you still have a big ego?

Don't worry. I've discovered another path to egolessness. No Zen master required. All you need is an inexpensive Flip Video and a free You Tube account.

Then make some videos of yourself doing something that you think you can do, upload them, and experience the marvelous humility of seeing yourself from the outside rather than the inside.

That's what I did yesterday on my other blog, with "Me doing Tai Chi." I mention this post here for a couple of reasons.

One, the more people who watch me doing the forms (decidedly imperfectly), the greater will be the karmic impetus toward ego dissolution. At least, that's how I figure it. And I'm so smart, I'm hardly ever wrong.

Oops. There I go again. Bad ego!

Which brings me to Two: It's only by presenting our self that we really see our self. Now, before the advaitists and nondualists jump on that comment, I'm talking about the external side of us, not the subjective side.

Meaning, the side that other people see and relate to. That includes the religious, spiritual, and philosophical beliefs that we hold and communicate through words, actions, emotions, and other means.

Just as it includes less lofty things, like Tai Chi forms that I practice.

Until yesterday I'd never watched myself playing any forms ("play" is Tai Chi parlance for "perform"). I'd seen myself in the mirrors that line a wall of the room where I take classes. But a passing reflection isn't a good substitute for what a video camera captures.

It was a surprise to see how I looked through a Flip Video recording. I was pleased with some things I saw; not so pleased with others. Regardless, I learned a lot.

I learned that how I feel doing Tai Chi from the inside is different from how I look outside. I learned that I need to better meld the inside and the outside, because I don't always make my body move as how my mind believes it is moving.

That's one of the benefits of communicating religious, spiritual, and philosophical beliefs – or the lack thereof. Our words, and the reactions of other people, serve as an observable manifestation of what otherwise is kept inside.

Often I hear believers say, on this blog or elsewhere, that sharing their personal experience runs the risk of enlarging their ego. In my opinion, the risk lies in the other direction.

When we see ourselves from the outside, as others do, that's a healthy (and usually humbling) complement to the often inaccurate vision we hold of ourselves.

Feedback is good. Criticism is good. It can't be offered unless there's something to comment on.

I’m an ignorant fool (happily)

For most of my life I'd get pissed off if someone told me, You're an ignorant fool! But now I've begun to say that to myself. And it makes me feel good.

Today the words came to me before I began my habitual morning meditation.

I'd drunk my strong cup of coffee. I'd read from my eclectic mix of books, a bit of science, a bit of philosophy. I'd settled onto my cushion, preparing to open myself to insights into the Meaning of It All.

And the voice that speaks inside my head blurted out, You're an ignorant fool!

My reaction? "Yes, yes, yes. Say it like it is. I couldn't agree more. Talk truth to me."

I felt a delicious sense of weightlessness, of the pressure of being right lifting from my psyche.

I like to be correct. I like to win arguments. I like to sound like I know what I'm talking about. But when it comes to the big questions of life, I'm clueless.

I don't know whether God exists. I don't know if there's life after death. I don't know what's right or wrong. I don't know where the universe came from. I don't know if life has a meaning other than what we ascribe to it.

For the rest of my meditation time I sat immersed in a welcoming embrace of ignorant foolness. I didn't have any other revelations.

Can't say that I had any, really. Because understanding that I'm ignorant about the questions religion claims to have answers to is so blatantly obvious, it shouldn't count as a "revelation."

Yet maybe it does, since I often ignore the obvious. Such as the fact that I'm an ignorant fool. I get reminders, but they don't stick with me as much as they should.

For many years I've engaged in Sunday morning coffee house conversations about subjects both sacred and profane (the latter being a lot more interesting). Not infrequently debates would get hot and heated.

We'd be arguing this way and that, pretending that we knew what we were talking about. I remember times when a friend, who would go nameless if I didn't call him Steve, was asked what he thought about the contentious subject.

"I don't know," he'd say. "I've got no idea."

That was the most honest thing any of us had heard all morning. It'd bring the conversation to a momentary stop as everyone pondered this unusual take on whatever the hell it was we were dissecting and analyzing with such enthusiasm.

Then we'd ignore Steve and get back to it. Not-knowing often is the truest thing that can't be said, but it puts brakes on the illusory confidence that fuels passionate coffee house conversations. Or religious organizations.

On the positive side, the Fool occupies a high place in certain circles. Such as Tarot cards, where the Fool is the first major arcana card.

"He represents new beginnings as he starts his heroic quest for self knowledge. In his naive innocence, the FOOL is very creative for he does not yet know rules or limitations. He is the court jester, village idiot, clown, time traveler, speaker of truth, and prodigal son. Mythologist Joseph Campbell interpreted the FOOL as the hero with 1,000 faces. His number is 0, the empty vessel waiting to be filled. He is ruled by the planet Uranus, the planet of revolution and liberation."

OK. I know zilch about Tarot. But I'm up with fools, being one.

For those wanting to dive more into foolishness, John R. Boettiger's blog has a nice post: "The Holy Fool."

The holy fool, or the fool as wise soul, is a figure in many wisdom traditions, including notably those of the Sufis of Islam, Zen Buddhism, Christianity and the inheritors of the Hasidic movement of Judaism, as well as folklore that is not specifically religious, like some of the tales collected by the brothers Grimm.

… there is another sense of the holy fool, less a matter of conscious and intentional disguise, more a matter of guilelessness, transparency, embrace of wonder and mystery.

"The path of soul, writes Thomas Moore, "is also the path of the fool, the one without pretense of self-knowledge or individuation or certainly perfection. If on this path we have achieved anything, it is the absolute unknowing Cusanus and other mystics write about, or it is the 'negative capability' of John Keats--'being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.'" (Care of the Soul, p. 261-262)

Talking about One is fun, but decidedly Two

It's a good day when I combine a tall nonfat vanilla latte with some stimulating philosophical conversation. This afternoon I enjoyed both in the company of Patricia Herron, a religious studies professor.

We get together periodically at the south Salem Beanery to solve the mysteries of the universe. Never quite get there, no matter how large the latte, but the journey is the thing.

Today we started out musing about nonduality and duality. It's fun to talk about the One, my favorite non-religious euphemism for "God."

But as countless mystics and philosophers have pointed out, as soon as you say anything about One, you've got Two. Ditto with a thought, emotion, intuition, or anything else about One.

So, basically, you've contradicted yourself right off the bat. Guess that's why Buddha did his holding-up-the-flower thing, though that's dualistic also.

Heck, everything is. Because as soon as there's a thing, there's at minimum two: the thing and someone aware of it.

Which led our musing down the trail of consciousness.

I said that when you try to get closer and closer to One, throwing out as many Twosies as possible – perceptions, thoughts, emotions, sensations, imaginations – reducing the contents of consciousness to bare bones, you're irreducibly left with…

Consciousness. Awareness. Knowing.

Because if consciousness was absent also, there'd be no awareness of One. There would just be One. And it's difficult to argue that One can be aware of itself, since then it'd be Two. Itself and its awareness of itself.

So knowing One, being aware of One, requires a consciousness that's separate from One.

I realize that all this sounds sort of abstract and intellectual (maybe a lot more than "sort of"). However, what we talked about is at the core of a whole lot of spiritual-religious-mystical seeking. And people go off in different directions depending on how they make sense of the One vs. Two business.

Countless times I've heard devout devotees say, "God is everything." Or, "The guru is everything; I am nothing."

I'd think, "Well, if you're nothing, how could you just tell me what you did?" More: do you really want to be nothing? Or is this just a way of speaking, and you really haven't considered the implications of what you're saying?

If God or the guru is everything, and you're nothing, there's just One. And you're on the outside of unity, looking in. How much sense does this make, though?

On the outside of unity? Where's that? How do you separate yourself from One, if it is truly One?

Beats me. And Patricia too. I've heard so much talk about the drop merging into the Ocean, the ray merging into the Sun, the soul merging into God.

But all that talk comes from people who obviously haven't done what they say is possible: merging completely with ultimate reality, a.k.a. "God."

Their talk is conceptual, theoretical, hypothetical. It isn't something they've experienced , because they're clearly still here in the world, as two'ish as you and I are.

The One isn't going to let you enter and leave again. All that coming and going would create dualities. So, yes, it's fun to speak about the One. However, that's just idle talk unless you can walk a One-way walk.

After which, there'd be no more talking. Or, walking.

Help expand recognition of my divinity

Thanks to my friend Randy, who emailed me these images today, for a while I felt really good. Finally! I was beginning to get a well-deserved recognition of my holiness – as befits someone, namely Me, who has preached so many sermons here at the Church of the Churchless.

Unfortunately, I let reality enter into my fantasy. Not a good idea, if you're entertaining delusions of spiritual grandeur (one of my favorite activities).

I made the mistake of Googling "church of briantology card." And damn it!, up popped a result that led me to a blogger who just had to write about his birthday, and how he got a great card that says on the front "The Church of Briantology," blah, blah, blah.

Well, that explains why the guy on the card doesn't look at all like me. Where's the beard? Where's the distinguished, graying, intelligent, charismatic, literary, sublime expression? Where's the posture of profound humility mixed with undeniable worshipability?

So it looks like I need to toot my own horn, since so far I don't even have a greeting card purely in my honor. It's time for some Church of the Churchless devotee to perform an act of service that, frankly, some visitor to this blog should have thought of on his or her own a long ago.

But it looks like the divine plan is for me to proclaim the obvious from my blogosphere mountaintop: There should be a "Brian Hines" Wikipedia entry.

I would have already written it myself, being eminently qualified to discuss my marvelous accomplishments and qualities, but Wikipedia has a hangup about autobiographical articles.

They are often biased, usually positively. People will write overly positively about themselves, and often present opinions as facts. Wikipedia aims to avoid presenting opinions as facts.

Hey, me too. If someone wants to draft a Wikipedia article about me, I'll be happy to review it and make sure that any unsupported opinions in it are converted to facts.

For example, if the draft said "Some feel that Hines has an inflated opinion of his philosophical and spiritual knowledge," I'd correct the sentence to read "Hines' writings are recognized as exceptional examples of modern scientific spirituality."

One point in my Wikipedia favor, among many, is that lots of information about me and my life is available online. Some of it even hasn't been written by me. Wikipedia says:

One thing which you can do to assist other Wikipedia editors is, if you already maintain a personal website, please ensure that any information that you want in your Wikipedia article is already on your own website. As long as it's not involving grandiose claims like, "I was the first to create this widget," or "My book was the biggest seller that year," a personal website can be used as a reference for general biographical information.

I've scanned the notability criteria (though not too closely, because I've already decided that I'm notable and don't need any inconvenient facts messing up that conclusion). Name recognition is important, and Google testifies to my preeminence among the world's Brian Hines'.

Which reminds me: Eric, another friend, recently passed on a link to The Church of Google. I already spend a lot of time worshipping there, so I'm glad to learn that one of my favorite divinities (other than Me) has been proven to be God, as I've always suspected.

Would-be "Brian Hines" article writers should feel free to email me to discuss how we can best collaborate on relieving the distress of a well-deserving man who is suffering from Wikipedia deprivation.

Fawning sycophants will receive priority attention. But since admirers in this category seem to number in the zeros, I'll consider anyone moderately capable in the English language to be well qualified (openness to editing suggestions is a must).

Thanks for the chlorine gas, Mom (cough, cough)

There I am, eleven or twelve years old, some age thereabouts, hunched over a test tube on my back porch, carefully following the instructions in my science kit that said, "Conduct this experiment in a well-ventilated area."

Good advice. Because this, thankfully, was before the days when anal-retentive product safety types could stand between a boy and his homemade chlorine gas.

As instructed, I put the chemicals into a test tube. I added water. I put my nose close to the test tube and waved my hand over the end of it to waft some of the gas into my nostrils.

Then I hacked and coughed for at least five minutes. It was a moment of science that is still clear in my mind at the age of 58.

Thank you, Mom.

A woman who'd divorced a jerk, my father, who never paid a dime of child support payments, she didn't have much money back then. Yet she paid for monthly Things of Science kits, if I remember the name correctly, that her son enjoyed immensely.

I got to thinking about this inner child stuff in the course of wondering why I react so strongly when someone trashes science, whether they be a commenter on this blog like William or the inaptly named Discovery Institute, a primary purveyor of creationist intelligent design B.S.

Must be that I got imprinted onto science at an early enough age so now I see it threatened and rush to protect it, like one of those orphaned baby monkeys that learned to look upon a rag doll as if it was its mother. Try to take it away and the monkey would scream like crazy.

I'm not quite that attached to science. But I spent many happy boy-hours at a card table inside my bedroom closet, where a chair and me could just barely fit with the sliding door closed.

I set up my chemistry set and other science experiments on the table, a bare light bulb hanging from an extension cord serving for illumination. That was me as a youth, a kid, an immature pre-teen.

And now? Every morning I make a strong cup of coffee in our kitchen. I then take it in hand and walk to an unused tiled shower in another part of the house. There I open up the sliding door and step over an extension cord that snakes from the shower to a bathroom electrical outlet.

I sit down on cushions rather than a chair. Plus, instead of just a light I've also got an electric clock and space heater. So, yes, I've changed, grown up, matured. Sort of.

My meditation area, my laboratory, usually still has a strong scientific presence, books that tell me what's happening with modern cosmology, evolutionary theory, quantum physics. They're pleased to share shower space with more explicitly spiritual literature, Taoist, Buddhist, whatever-ist.

That whiff of chlorine gas, it was real. When I read about chlorine attacks in Iraq, I had a much better understanding of what the victims experienced because of my back porch experiment more than forty-five years ago.

Such is the power and glory of science. It puts us in touch with reality. Not religious dogma, superstition, imaginings, conjectures, theology.

My mother didn't force me to endure any more Catholicism after I resisted nuns cramming my cranium with whatever the hell I needed to know to be confirmed. (Included something about venial and mortal sins, I do remember that.)

Her "religion," which has become mine, was learning. Learning how the world works. Learning how the mind works. Learning how the world and mind work together to produce such things as fingers typing on a laptop, communicating signals sent from a blogger's brain onto the World Wide Web where others can read words written in Oregon from any place on Earth.

With my allowance and chore money I was able to buy a Hallicrafter's short wave radio back in those good old vacuum tube days. I learned how long of an antenna was needed to pick up what I wanted to hear. It got strung out of my bedroom window, along the roof, and thence across our back yard, precariously supported by some lumber scraps.

I could sit at my desk and listen directly to what most adults had to glean from newspapers and magazines. I heard Radio Free Europe preaching to those commies in Russia. I heard Castro's propaganda emanating from Cuba.

Glorious. A gift of science. The ability to tune into distant places, unfamiliar and foreign, while sitting at my roll-top desk in Three Rivers, California.

And now? I close my science or spirituality book. I put on my noise deadening ear protectors and light obstructing eye shades. I take a last sip of coffee. I settle myself into my meditation cushions as comfortably as I can.

Then I listen. Trying to tune in to whatever is being broadcast on whatever frequency my consciousness can pick up. Still up to the same boyish tricks. I'm older, but I'd never say I'm wiser.

What I am is still a lover of science. Sitting in my own little laboratory. Doing some experiments. Wanting to learn a bit more about how the world and me work.

Some days, it's like sniffing chlorine gas. Not pleasant at all. Other days, it's like hearing an unexpected voice from halfway around the world, telling me something I've never heard before.

So if you read this blog and catch me blasting someone for being anti-science, hopefully now you'll understand better why this fifty-eight year old, going on eleven, feels the way he does.

To me, science isn't different from life. At least, life as it should be lived. Especially when we're trying to figure something out. Like, the meaning of life. Or why we want to figure out the meaning of life.

I'll end with a quote from Natalie Angier's "The Canon." What it points to is: we're all scientists.

You don't need to work at a laboratory bench to follow a scientific game plan. People behave scientifically all the time, although they may not realize it.

If someone is trying to fix a DVD player, they do experiments, they do controls," said Paul Sternberg, a developmental biologist at Caltech. "Step one is observation: What does the picture look like? What are the possible things that could be wrong here? Is it really the player, or could it be the television set? You come up with a hypothesis, then you start testing it. You borrow your neighbor's DVD player, you hook it up, you see your TV set is fine. So you check your DVD's input, output, a couple of wires. You may be able to track down the problem without really understanding how a DVD player works.

"Or maybe you're trying to troubleshoot your pet," Sternberg said. "Why does the fish look funny? Why is my dog upset? I'll feed the hamster less or I'll feed it more, or maybe it doesn't like the noise, so I'll move it away from the stereo system. Should I take Job A or Job B? Well, let's see how long the drive would be from the office to my daughter's school during rush hour; that could be the killer factor in making a decision.

These are all examples of forming hypotheses, doing experiments, coming up with controls. Some people learn these things at an early age. I had to get a Ph.D. to figure them out."

Balanced between belief and doubt

I enjoyed my 45 minute or so BlogTalkRadio conversation with medium Marcel Cairo yesterday. We were supposed to talk about Science, Spirituality, and Spinoza, which we sort of did.

The archived AfterLifeFM show is here. To hear me in my (somewhat muffled) glory, scroll down and click on one of the symbols to the right of "Dismantling Dogma." The arrow thingie fires up Windows Media Player.

Alternatively, I'll share my memory of some conversational highlights.

This is the third time Marcel and I have talked over the Internet. We've got a thing going. As a medium, Marcel obviously believes in the afterlife. Me, I'd like it a lot if I will live on after my physical death. Who wouldn't, so long as it isn't in a hellish state?

But I don't know if I will. So I float in the unknowing zone between belief and doubt, wanting to be open to the possibility of existence beyond the physical, yet having no proof that this is a reality rather than wishful thinking. To me, this is the most honest and practical way of living my life:

Accepting that until I know something, I don't know it.

So I told Marcel that every morning I spend some time meditating. My habitual pitch to the "universe" (my way of referring to the totality of what's real) goes something like this.

Hi, it's me, Brian. If there's anyone or anything hearing me, other than myself, I'd be pleased to get to know you. I have no idea who or what you may be. Jesus, Buddha-nature, Allah, Jehovah, angel, extra-terrestrial intelligence, God, Zeus, guru…I'm clueless. And ready to be surprised. Like Jodie Foster said as she was waiting to be transported somewhere, anywhere, by a mysterious force in Contact, "It's a go!"

I don't know which direction to go myself. Yesterday I said that the best I could do is surmise that ultimate reality is much more likely to be found within rather than without. Spinoza makes scientific sense when he says that there is only One Thing happening in the cosmos.

He called it God, or Nature, or Being. Three words for the same thing that can't be encapsulated by words. It's everywhere and everything. We're all a part of it. Or perhaps more accurately, we are it. Thus to look for this truth outside ourselves is to miss where it could be found.

I mentioned that it's strange (or maybe not so strange) that if there's a reality beyond the physical, it's so damn difficult to discern. You'd think that the foundation of the cosmos would be just a touch more evident. However, scientists can't put their finger on a Theory of Everything either, despite a tremendous amount of trying.

This leads me to the conclusion that a soft touch is better than a crude reaching out. My meditation now is essentially an effort to stay on a pivot point that allows me to turn in any direction. Belief. Disbelief. Faith. Doubt. Higher. Lower. East. West. Death. Life.

Last night Laurel and I had our second Night Club Two-Step class. Like Tango, the man is supposed to be the leader 100% of the time. At one point Lora, our instructor, went over to the sound system and brandished a remote control.

"See this, guys?" she said. "This is yours in dance. You get to decide the moves. Use it!" That's a challenge. An equal challenge, for the women, is to not anticipate what the lead is going to be.

Laurel and I would get into practicing a series of moves, a pattern. After a while I could feel her edging ahead of me, taking a step before I'd led it because she thought she knew what I was going to do.

Bad girl! Laurel was admonished for this when Lora took on the man's role while demonstrating a move with my wife. Lora stopped Laurel in her tracks and said, "What are you doing? I didn't lead that step."

Applying this lesson to dancing with the entire universe rather than an individual person, Spinoza taught that everything that happens is necessary. It's determined. There's nothing outside of Nature, or God, that could exercise an influence on the universe.

Thus you could say (and Spinoza does) that God/Nature always does the leading, and we the following. Einstein agreed, holding that free will is an illusion. He echoed Spinoza's view that we are aware of what we desire to do, but unaware of the causes that lead us to have that desire.

So it makes sense to strive to be a good follower, sensitively attuned to the forces acting upon us both from within and without (understanding that if the universe is indeed a unity, actually there's no without).

We become lighter on our feet, trusting that we're in the arms of a partner – God/Nature/Being, to use Spinoza's terms – that will lead us truly. Our faith is that we'll be led to do, think, feel, and perceive the right thing, even though it isn't possible for us to know ahead of time what that will be.

Such is the balance that a dancer who's a good follower has.

She returns to her center after a move is led, not anticipating what will happen next, ready for anything, sensitive to the lead that may be felt either subtly or overtly.

She floats in an zone between faith and doubt – confident that she will be led appropriately, but not knowing where or how.

Know the strength of man,
But keep a woman's care!
Be the stream of the universe!
Being the stream of the universe,
Ever true and unswerving,
Become as a little child once more.

…Know honor,
Yet keep humility.
Be the valley of the universe!
Being the valley of the universe,
Ever true and resourceful,
Return to the state of the uncarved block.

--Tao Te Ching, chapter 28

(Here's another version of those verses, with some nice commentary.)

Me talk Spinoza on BlogTalkRadio today

Who knew there was such a thing as BlogTalkRadio? Not me, until medium Marcel Cairo invited me to be on his AfterLifeFM show today, 4 PM Pacific, 7 PM Eastern, some other time in between the coasts.

Tune in. Or better yet, call in. You listen via the Internet by pressing the "Click here" thingie when the time comes. You can call in via any sort of phone: 646-478-5711.

Our subject is Dismantling Dogma: Science, Spirituality, and Spinoza. I'm no expert on Spinoza, but I've filled up a large-post it note with pithy reminders of his philosophy, which should be good enough for a BlogTalkRadio show. (I'm guessing, and hoping, that no Spinoza experts will be listening).

Marcel bills his show as featuring "smart talk from both sides of the grave." Hopefully my side of the conversation will be from the alive side. If not, this should be a really interesting afternoon for me.

Finding our energetic groove

The past few days haven't been real cheerful for me, save-the-world (or 137 acres, at least) wise. My wife and I have been leading a fight against a proposed subdivision on groundwater limited farmland adjacent to our neighborhood.

Wednesday we got screwed by a purely political decision by our county Board of Commissioners. They ignored an independent hydrogeologic assessment and their own Planning Commission. That night I had trouble getting to sleep, as travesty of justice visions kept running through my brain.

Thursday I got to vent to a television news reporter. That made me feel a bit better, even though just a few seconds of my sage observations got on the air.

So what do you do when you're confused, discouraged, and out of sorts? I was bummed out by a material world disappointment. But I've had the same feelings when my spiritual aspirations were dashed by cold, hard, unfeeling reality.

For about a day and a half I struggled to regain some sort of balance. I alternated between Screw social activism because it all comes down to bullshit politics and Those ignoramus county commissioners have to be stopped before they kill (the environment) again.

It was interesting to observe how I reacted to my own thoughts and intentions. Whenever I envisioned continuing to fight the subdivision to the bitter end, no matter what it took, I'd feel a burst of positive energy. Giving up, or engaging in a half-hearted attempt to stop the development, left me listless.

There's a few things I like about "The Secret." Just a few. One is that your emotions are signposts pointing to the Way for you. When you're doing what you should, it feels good. Not necessarily pleasant (climbing a steep mountain, for example), but right.

Hard to put into words – "right" isn't quite right as a descriptor – but you know it when you feel it.

Which I did sometime Friday afternoon. I stopped conducting mental cost-benefit analyses, the odds of winning an appeal vs. how much we and our neighbors would have to raise to pay the attorney fees. I realized that what mattered to me wasn't what might happen in the end; it was what I felt driven to do now.

And that was to battle on. If the rolling hills I drive by every day eventually are covered by homes, it'll bother me a lot less if I feel like I left everything on the field rather than throwing in the towel (sports metaphors come easily after watching the College World Series a little while ago. Go Beavers!).

I'm reading a book about Spinoza, an appealingly heretical seventeenth-century philosopher. Here's what I came across this morning:

Happiness is freedom, says Spinoza. It follows when we act in accordance with our own deepest nature – when we "realize ourselves," as it were. Unfortunately, we humans rarely have the privilege of acting according to our deepest nature, for in our ignorance of ourselves and of the world we submit ourselves to the guidance of forces beyond our control.

…Most people most of the time, concludes Spinoza, are passive. But the point of life is to be active.

…The conatus is a drive or desire – in essence, the desire to persist in one's own being. Every person – and indeed every rock, tree, and thing in the world – has a conatus to act, live, preserve itself, and realize itself by pursuing its own interest (or "advantage").

"Pleasure" is the state that results from anything that contributes to the project of this conatus, that is, anything that increases a thing's power or level of "perfection": and "pain" is the state that results from anything that does the opposite, that diminishes the power of a thing.

Well, I didn't need a philosopher to tell me this. It was nice to read an explanation of what I'd been going through the past few days, though. I could tell when I was in, or close to, my conatus' energetic groove. Also, when I was out of it.

Relating this to being churched or churchless, faithful or faithless, devoted or doubtful, something in each of us yells Oh, yeah, this is SO right! to ourselves when we're really grooving to the beat of our inner drummer.

Our dance might not be visible to other people (or, it might). But (shifting metaphors) we know when our conatus is firing on all twelve-cylinders and smoke is pouring from our racing slicks as we shoot down our Way fueled by high-octane confidence.

Confidence that we're doing what we should, even if we're the only ones on that road, because there's nothing else we can do. The engine's warmed up, the gas tank's full, the windshield is clean, and we've got some traveling to do.

Life is good, even when it isn't, so long as we keep moving. Staying still isn't an option unless we're dead. As I remember Davy Crockett saying in a Disney movie from my childhood, "Be sure you're right, then go ahead."

Spinoza would agree.

“Nobody is going to come.” So I killed him.

In my dream, I hasten to add. No need to call 911. All the killing last night took place in my own mind for reasons unknown, like so much else that transpires in my psyche.

Usually I'm not big on trying to interpret dreams. Mostly they seem to be my mind's attempt to connect fragments of the previous day's disconnected experiences.

Maybe this explains my dream. Maybe not. Regardless, the peak emotional moment is still vivid.

"Nobody is going to come!" After repeatedly calling out for help to people I could see around me, I finally realized that if the man who was trying to kill me was going to be stopped, I was going to have to do it.

With that realization, my panic abated. And my ferocity fired up.

My attacker had been relentless. He wasn't armed. I had a gun, but it wouldn't fire. The trigger mechanism was devilishly hard to pull. It kept freezing up just before a shot should have been fired.

Deeply frustrating. Revolver interruptus. The fight turned to close-in combat.

Which is when I was able to pound the guy into his death throes. Conveniently, a pile of stones was within reach. I was on top of him as we struggled on the ground. I picked up a good-sized rock.

And smashed it into his throat. Repeatedly. It felt great. Blood started spurting. I got covered in it.

After he was dead I walked past the people who had ignored me. Probably because they weren't even aware of me. They didn't seem to notice a blood-soaked man with a rock in his hand slowly strolling by, out of breath.

"Nobody is going to come." The feeling stuck with me into this morning's meditation. It didn't make me feel lonely. More like resigned to reality.

Nobody has come after close to forty years of daily meditation. Nobody other than me, and sometimes even he didn't show up. So what are the chances that an outside rescuer is going to appear before the end of my life? Pretty darn slim.

I've done a lot of dialing and talking on my spiritual telephone over the years. Hello. Hello. Is anybody there? Can you hear me? Love to chat if you have a minute. Or, eternity.

When you don't get a response, how long are you going to keep holding the receiver up to your ear? At what point does it make more sense to pick up a rock and smash that plastic "Hello Kitty" toy into smithereens?

Because the fucking thing isn't connected to an outside line! Nor, anything. Other than my own mouth and ear, so far as I can tell.

Todd was one of my best high school friends. We kept in touch for a while after college. He moved to Oregon at one point. Took a few classes at Oregon State. Lived in an old house outside of Corvallis.

I remember going to visit him. Todd told a story about how he'd been trying to fix the oil heater in his basement. A line broke. Oil started spurting out.

Todd said that he remembered what his father used to tell him. Todd's family had a ranch in Three Rivers, California, where we grew up. They also raised hay down in the San Joaquin valley. Lots of stuff goes wrong on ranches and farms.

"Look around," was the advice. "Don't panic. You'll find that you have what you need to deal with the situation within reach. Just look."

Todd did that. He saw a rag. He wrapped it around the leaking pipe. Cinched it tight. Got breathing room for a real repair.

I thought of that story when I woke up this morning. Those rocks were right there next to me. All I had to do was pick one up. And smash away. Problem solved. The man deserved to die. It wasn't hard to accomplish.

All I needed to do was get past the turning point: "Nobody is going to come."

Evidence of my steadily declining divinity

When we had to drag everything out of the crawl space above our garage, I found a 1970 photo that hadn't seen the light of day for quite a while.

I was struck by how I appeared so wise at 21, and, let's admit it, Christ like (leaving aside the minor detail that no one knows how Jesus looked).

Now, at 58, I don't know nothing about God and all that. I'm on a downward trajectory that has culminated in my Wu Project. But I'm confident there's further to fall.

This unposed photo was taken in my home town of Three Rivers, California. I'd returned there for a summer festival of something-or-other in an artistic neighbor's pasture. David Green, sculptor, artist, and spiritual seeker, snapped me in front of a tie-dyed banner that he'd made.

I'm holding some posters in the original. I cropped them out to place more focus on my serene yogic visage.

Back then I knew it all. Or at least a lot. That was before I became a spiritual doofus. I'd been studying hatha yoga and meditation pretty intensively for more than a year. I could chant mysterious mantras and stand on my head like you wouldn't believe.

I could give inspiring talks on Indian philosophy. I could say "Tat tvam asi" (That thou art) and actually believe that we all are God.

Now, I'm clueless. Yet this lack of clues about what It's All About doesn't dismay me. I've gotten comfortable with being spiritually lost.

Back in 1970 I thought I'd found That. Yet, looking back, what I'd found were ideas, concepts, imaginings, philosophies. I was good at talking the talk, but not walking the walk.

Not much may have changed in that regard. But at least now I'm more realistic about where I stand, even if I'm not moving in any discernible direction.

And heck, for all I know (which isn't much) where I am, and was, might be exactly where I'm meant to be. It just takes a lot of stepping to learn the value of staying still.

The metaphysics of a really shitty job

I spent six hours this weekend pulling disintegrated insulation out of the crawl space above our garage. There are difficult jobs. There are nasty jobs. And then there are really shitty jobs. Like what I just did.

Serendipity is perusing the comments on your blog and finding just what you need to give a boost of profundity to the post you were planning to write. Thank you, Edward, for the Richard Feynman quote:

"A poet once said "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass closely enough we see the entire universe."

Hopefully also if we look closely enough at a crawl space full of disintegrated insulation that needs to be disposed of. And at other sorts of jobs that lead the brain to scream, What the holy fuck am I doing here!?

That cry of despair was particularly strong yesterday, when I clambered up the drop-down folding stairs in our thirty-five year old garage to begin the Job from Hell.

Our detached garage/carport is getting an earthquake renovation. Supporting lumber needs to be “sistered” to the joists in the crawl space. The contractor told me, “The insulation has to come out. We’ll be back Monday.” “No problem,” I said, with what was, in retrospect, ridiculous overconfidence.

My first problem yesterday was simply seeing. A squirrel had electrocuted itself on top of our power pole. Nonetheless, I needed to get going on the insulation disposal job.

Rainsuit with tight cuffs. Fifty garbage bags. Dust mask. Rake for difficult to reach spots. Gloves. Flashlight. Battery powered lantern. “Glasses” with LED beams. I was ready to go.

But it didn’t take long for me to realize that I wasn’t ready for a stygian nightmare. Gloomy shadows. Stale air. Clouds of thirty-five year old dust, decomposed insulation, mouse poop, and god knows what else rising into the unventilated crawl space every time I touched the unholy mess that covered the spaces between the joists.

Dreams of Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome danced through my head.

I’d like to say “the worst part was…” But there were so many worst parts, it’s hard to choose.

Pulling on a piece of insulation and having it disintegrate into many fragments, each of which had to be picked up and stuffed into a garbage bag. Crawling my six foot, 185 pound body under the low sloping roof edge, perched on a piece of wood to avoid going through the sheetrock, reaching out half-blindly with the rake, only to find the insulation caught on one of the 2x4 crosspieces that for some inexplicable reason had been nailed between the joists every two feet (undoubtedly with the intention of driving me insane several decades later). Hitting my head on a rafter and/or roofing nail. Pushing around the large pieces of plywood that our crap had been stored on before we’d laboriously hauled it down the stairway to hell earlier in the week.

There was a moment on Saturday of near-panic. Scrunched under the lowest part of the roof, immersed in a dark dust cloud that wasn’t being totally filtered through my mask, already tired and frustrated with the shitty job less than 10% completed, I thought, “I can’t do this. I just can’t. It’s too awful.”

And yet… (Isn’t it wonderful how life always offers up an “and yet”?) I didn’t know how to find an illegal alien for hire on the weekend. The guys from Paragon Construction were expecting the insulation to be out by Monday. I was still capable of moving. I hate to ask for help when I don’t really need it just as much as I hate to ask for directions when I do.

So I tossed the few bags I’d filled down the folding stairs. Took a shower. Went to our tango class. Got lattes with my wife afterward. Went to Lowes. Bought a better N95 particulate mask. And longer gloves.

Went to sleep envisioning a new and improved plan of attack on that goddamn insulation (which, strangely, was installed in an unheated garage; again, surely as part of some cosmic plan to drive me insane thirty-five years after the construction was complete).

New day. New attitude. Laurel kept saying, “Why don’t we just call someone on Monday, have them do the work, and tell Paragon they’ll have to put off finishing the work?” Hah! No way.

In our tango class I’d just been told by the female instructor, “Guys, have more of an attitude! Take control. Lead! Make your partner do what you want her to.” I wasn’t about to let Laurel talk me out of climbing back up into the crawl space and bending that fucking insulation to my macho whim.

With a Taoist edge. Today I started off mellow. Gazing through my new eye protection (clear swim goggles), perched on my new insulation collection platform (decided to push around the plywood for a firmer base of attack), breathing better through a respirator with a valve, I sent out love to the insulation.

Gently, gently, ever so gently, I’d pick up a piece and put it in a garbage bag. Keeping down the dust. Breathing regularly. Taking my time. Slowly, grasshopper.

Worked for a while. I realized that this job, shitty though it was, could be managed. I had a choice: to make the best of it, or the worst of it. I had the choice. No one else. I was on my own in that crawlspace. No illegal alien was going to materialize miraculously to rescue me. Nor was my wife going to be of any help, allergy prone as she is.

It was me and the insulation. Well, since the insulation was unconscious, it really was just me up there. How the rest of the shitty job day went was going to be up to me.

I had my ups and downs. After a few hours, I hit the dark night of insulation removal. I still wasn’t halfway done. Getting into the low spots was ticking me off even more than before. I’d hit my head on the roof beams so many times, I stopped saying “Ouch!” There wasn’t anybody else around to hear me. I got tired of speaking the obvious to myself.

Then I hit the sweet spot: a mini (or micro) satori. I was in the zone. I stopped thinking, “This is shitty.” Or, “This is fine.” It was both. And neither. I was just doing what I had to do.

It didn’t matter that my legs hurt, I was thirsty, my water bottle had rolled under a piece of plywood that I didn’t feel like moving, there were still three rows of insulation-filled joists to deal with. As strange as it may sound, I was quasi-blissful.

I’d hit the bottom of a really shitty job. It didn’t feel so much like I’d bounced, but rather that the bottom wasn’t there anymore. Or the top—where I’d tried to stay during my brief Taoist “got to flow with it” phase. It was just what it was, as New Agey clichéd as that sounds.

By 3:30 pm I was done. Right at Super Bowl kickoff time. I had enough energy left to do my usual athletic club workout. Saw the end of the first half at the club. Have managed to not learn the score up until now. Time to fast forward through my DVR recording, focusing on the commercials (usually the best part of the game).

I promised the metaphysics of really shitty jobs in the title to this post. I’m not sure if I delivered. Which is, I hope, an indication that I have.

You can try to find meaning in a really shitty job. Or, a lack of meaning. Same applies to God, religion, salvation, the hereafter, and all that. But in the end, there’s just what is. Dust. Garbage bags. Decomposed insulation. And…an unwatched Super Bowl game.

That’s enough. More than enough.

Silent snow has a lot to say

This is a Church of the Churchless day when some Oregon snow is going to do most of the talking. I learned quite a bit from it on my walk this morning.

When you feel the spirit, jump up and dance with snowballs.

Bare bright branches are beautiful. No leaves necessary.

Even blah barren brush turns into wow! with a coating of white.

Put on the right coat and you'll say "It's not cold."

Dead trees are still alive. Oh, yes, very much so.

It’s possible to walk in your own footsteps (our dog can, at least, which is how she makes four paws look like two).

At the end, dive in. Unless you don't want to.

Suddenly--a flash of color.

On the edge…an interesting place to be

It’s true: bending low, bamboo doesn’t break.

Keep flowing. Always.
Around rocks. Wherever.

It’s nice to have a friend along when exploring shadowy woods. (But alone is fine too.)

Thank you, Church of the Churchless visitors

It’s sort of clichéd for a blogger to devote his last post of the year to thanking his readers. But who’s afraid of a big bad cliché? Not me. I’m doing it anyway.

Thank you.

TypePad, my blog host, tells me that on average a few hundred people enter the cyberspacey Church of the Churchless door every day. I’m grateful.

I talk to myself a lot of the time. That gets old. It’s nice to reach out and touch someone else, even if they’re repulsed by the gesture. Today I caught up on some unreplied emails and came across one from a woman who said:

I do read your blogs once in a while – initially I used to get angry, upset, baffled, and confused by reading them but now I enjoy them…

Apparently not because they’re any less of an irritant. She’s just come to accept that my skeptical/heretical attitude toward religion in general, and Radha Soami Satsang Beas in particular, is simply part of the burden that God’s truth-bearers have to put up with.

You know, the “Take up thy cross and follow me” sort of thing.

Well, I’m happy to hear from everyone who comments on my posts, emails me, or gives me an earful in person about something I’ve written. Really.

I’m the child of my mother, Carolyn Hines. She was a ferocious conversationalist, in the nicest sense. She loved nothing more than a spirited debate. My mother could be a hugely irritating know-it-all, yet she truly did know a lot.

She’d inspire others to bring forth what they knew, or thought they knew, because if you didn’t bring your best game when you debated her, you were going to get blown out of the give-and-take ballpark.

From my mother I got my intellectualism. From my grandmother, Eva H. Lewis, I was inspired to seek the truth that lies beyond thought. Mystery.

As I wrote about in “Tracking the trajectory of my Wu Project,” she affirmed a 13 year-old’s poem about the void of unknowing. And who knows? Echoing Robert Frost, being encouraged at just the right time to take the road less traveled by may have made all the difference for me.

Religion is a well-traveled road. So is science. Another way—I don’t have a good name for it—is what I’m drawn to. As are, it’s pretty evident, many if not most of you. That way is difficult to pin down because it defies description.

It’s the road that I’m sure exists, and will get me where I want to go to, but which is so damn difficult to find it often makes me want to scream. Or, blog about. Or, shed tears for, as I related in “An old koan rises from my past.”

“There will be light when there is no darkness and through darkness we cannot find the light.” Like I said, fuck! What kind of bullshit is this? Well, the kind my mind has been wallowing around in since that 13-year old stared at the California night sky and thought, “What’s in the darkness past the stars?”

I’ve never regretted setting out to answer that question. The search can be lonely, though. Necessarily, it’s taken me into myself, where so far I’ve encountered mostly me. Well, for all I know, entirely me.

Via this blog it’s nice to share what is sharable about the ramblings I take around my state of consciousness. I enjoy feeling a connection with fellow travelers. I’m not sure what direction we’re heading, individually or collectively.

I simply appreciate knowing that there are others on a roughly similar ride. Gracias for being willing to jump on board my train of thought now and then. And special thanks to those who take my musings in a different direction through your comments and emails.

Fresh vistas. New scenery. You guys are great travel companions. May we all get closer to our final destinations in 2007.

Happy New Year.

What makes for a nice day?

I ran into a platitude-buster at Salem’s LifeSource Natural Foods today. A new check-out girl started to ring up my items.

She said, “Are you having a nice day?” I was familiar with grocery store etiquette, so responded with my expected line. “Yes, I am. Hope you are too.” That’s where the scripted exchange of pleasantries usually ends.

But she surprised me. She stopped what she was doing, looked me in the eye, and asked, “What’s made it a nice day?”

Nice! Yet also mildly anxiety-producing. I needed to come up with an answer.

Pretty quick, since there were other people waiting behind me. I’d just proclaimed that I was having a nice day. Could I be convicted of check out line perjury if I stood there speechless until a VISA receipt was handed to me?

I thought back to my most recent nice moment.

“This morning my wife told me that I’d probably forgotten to get her a new Self Realization Fellowship appointment calendar for Christmas. Oops. She was right. But I walked in and got the last one that you had. What a relief!”

I continued on a bit, blathering about guardian angels who look over procrastinators. I must have felt the need to say something vaguely Christianish, given the time of year. But that was extra.

The real gift the girl gave me was making me answer to “What’s made it a nice day?”

For one thing, it was nice to have someone inject a dose of freshness into the usual “Are you having a nice day?” back and forth. At Fred Meyer, the traditional grocery store that I frequent, I’m often tempted to reply with a “Sure, aside from being diagnosed with a malignant brain cancer and having my dog die. How are you doing?”

But so far I haven’t gotten up the guts. The LifeSource girl had a much better approach to bringing some genuine (and non-ironic) human connection into the minute we spent together. And she got me to thinking what makes for a nice day.

Nice moments. A day, or a lifetime, is made up of moments. Those infinitesimally brief, yet also eternally long, instants of awareness.

Looking up and down the bookshelves at the store. Not seeing any calendars at all. Ah, they have some. Good. But now…where’s the SRF calendar? Two days before Christmas, they’re probably all gone. Geez, how could I forget? Wait. Isn’t that…yes, one left!

That moment of yes, it was nice. As was taking Serena to the dog park earlier and, after some interminable sniffing of grass and trees, seeing her finally join a compatible canine play group.

Both of those moments were undeniably real. Here and now. I can’t imagine telling the girl, “What was nice today was that I hoped for…” Or prayed for… Or believed in… Or had faith in…

Nice days aren’t in the future. Neither are they in some distant heaven. Nice days may include some hoping, praying, believing, and faithing, but what makes them nice isn’t the unseen, unknown, unintelligible whatever-it-is that these abstract activities are directed toward.

A hypothetical God or ultimate reality doesn’t make for a nice day. Real nice moments make for a nice day. There’s no need to bring God into them. The guardian angels I brought into my check-out line conversation were totally extraneous.

I didn’t sense them at all. Just the Self-Realization Calendar. And my mind’s so-nice yes!

Loud siren is a wake-up call

God, it’s said, works in mysterious ways. So I’m willing to believe that the siren on the side of our house that blared for ten minutes across our neighborhood yesterday evening was a divine message directed to me.

My wife, too. And all of us, really. The message is universal: Be aware. Look. See.

We were running late, per usual, for our weekly Tango class. There was going to be a guest instructor so I wanted us to be on time. I was ready a few minutes before Laurel, per usual.

“We should leave the dog in,” she said, hurrying to the door. “She had to go to the vet today and deserves some home-time.” I glanced at the dog lying on the living room carpet. Walked into the entryway. Armed our security system. Went out the front door. Locked it.

About seventy-five minutes into our two-hour class Laurel freezes. “The thought just came to me: did you press the ‘away’ button on the security system? We left the dog in, and she would have set off the motion detector.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I remember arming the system, but not whether I pressed that button.” The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t remember. When I phoned home for messages, the answer was evident.

A neighbor had called. Wanted to let us know that the alarm had gone off for ten minutes. He’d walked over and checked on things. Nothing looked amiss (not a surprise). The security company also had phoned. Wanted to let us know the sheriff’s office had been alerted to a possible burglary.

Laurel said we should go home right away. We did, missing the last part of the class. She was worried that our loud-noise phobic dog had been driven crazy by the siren going off.

“Maybe Serena tried to run through a glass door in order to get away from it,” Laurel fretted. Briefly I had the notion that our dog could have tried to chew her ears off, but the anatomical impossibility of this reassured me that we’d find Serena in one piece after we sped home.

Which was indeed what we found. After taking down a note from a sheriff’s deputy that was stuck on our front door, we encountered the family dog peacefully lying on the living room rug right where we’d left her. I phoned our neighbor and thanked him for coming over.

“I’m an idiot,” I told him. “Five seconds after I walked past our dog, lying on the floor in a room where we have a motion detector, I press the button that arms the detector.” “Hey, don’t be too hard on yourself,” he told me, “we all can be idiots.”

True. But I still want to look upon this embarrassing episode as a loud wake-up call. Too often I go through life half-aware. I do things semi-consciously. I’m partly here in the present moment, and partly there in an intended future that hasn’t happened yet.

Yesterday my fingers were arming the security system while my mind was thinking about whether we’d be late for the Tango class. End result: we weren’t late, but we missed 45 minutes of the class because of my absent-mindedness.

Increasingly I’m coming to believe that spirituality, or whatever you want to call the “More” side of life, starts (and maybe ends) with being fully aware. Of what’s right in front of us. Not of a future heaven, paradise, satori, enlightenment, awakening, revelation, or second coming.

What’s here. Now. Only when we’re fully in touch with the apparent here and now, I suspect, will we be capable of perceiving whatever More may exist on a subtler sphere of reality.

Interestingly Wayne, the guest Tango instructor, focused on getting his eight beginning students to do just that. He had us practice some basic (yet challenging) leading and following drills. The man shifts the woman’s weight to one side or the other, then takes a step. And she follows.

After a while Wayne interrupted the drill. “Leaders, I can see that all of you are getting ahead of yourselves. While you’re taking a step you’re looking toward the next planned movements. One thing at a time. Lead. See what happens. How does she follow? Be aware. Of that single step.”

He demonstrated with the other instructor, Jodi. One step, fully led, fully followed. Pause. Done. Completed. Then…another step. Fully led, fully followed.

Nothing half-assed about it. Not partly here and now, partly there and then.

This morning I went for a walk with the dog. It’s a walk I’ve taken most days for many years. But not usually fully present. Today, I tried to be more aware.

Of…

A pool on non-yet-flowing Spring Creek

Leaves carpeting the trail

An old tree friend who I don’t look up often enough

A hanger-on

Ducks skimming Spring Lake, startled by a man and his dog

A stump that's grown a green head of moss

Morning tree lace

Green before the fall

Reuters’ tag line used to be “Know. Now.”

Excellent advice. I'm making a vow to follow it more assiduously.

Skepticism, cynicism, and science

On this blog I’m still flogging my “In Good Spirit” interview with mediums Marcel and Lenny. Hey, it’s been a long time since I was on a radio program. Okay, this was an Internet program, but that still counts.

My interview starts at about minute three of the archived file and stops at about minute eighteen. We covered quite a bit of ground in that quarter hour.

As I noted in the previous post, when I listened to the recording I was aghast at how often I interjected a “you know.” I was totally unaware at the time that I was doing this. When I mentioned this to Laurel, who heard the interview live on my laptop, she said “I didn’t notice that.”

Interesting. It makes me wonder how much else I, and everyone else, unduly takes for granted about how we see the world. If I’m unaware of some things that I’m saying, how do I know what else I’m blind to?

I also was struck by the fact that I proudly proclaimed myself an agnostic, explaining that this comes from a-gnosis, not knowing. Yet there I was unconsciously throwing in “you know’s” all over the place. Well, at least I wasn’t saying “I know.”

At one point Marcel said that he appreciated the way I expressed my metaphysical skepticism. Cynicism, on the other hand, turns him off. Me too. I explained that skeptics are open-minded. They don’t want truth to come to them secondhand, through a glass darkly.

Cynics are much more negative. I’m fine with a smiling Humbug! But a cynic would growl, Bah, humbug! Big difference.

I was sort of surprised to hear Marcel say that listeners to Achieve Radio (“the positive side of broadcasting”) don’t much like skeptics. I’ve always figured that New Age types are more open-minded than traditional religious believers.

And again, what is skepticism but dedicated open-mindedness? Not clutching onto any old purported truth that happens to meander by, but scanning the horizon in all directions for evidence of the Real Thing.

If you listen to the program, you’ll hear my paean to science and the new physics get interrupted. Probably a wise move by Marcel, since I’m sure he could tell that I was just getting warmed up on the whole quantum connection thing.

It really is amazing that previously paired photons, or other atomic particles, are able to instantly communicate between themselves across any distance, speed of light be damned. I started to point out that this “communication” doesn’t involve any exchange of information, so no faster than light signaling by humans is possible.

Still, whatever the universe is like, deep down, science recognizes that this mysterious foundation of the cosmos is far removed from our current understanding. The quest of physics for a Theory of Everything is stalled, notwithstanding the prodigious efforts of some of the earth’s greatest intellects.

For me, this is the source of a powerful sense of awe. I don’t need religious belief to make me fall on my knees before Whatever the Hell It Is that’s responsible for all this.

As I said on the show, simply contemplating that our universe of about 100 billion galaxies, each with an average of around 100 billion stars, somehow fit within the confines of an atom at the instant of the Big Bang, is mystery enough for me.

Who needs God? That’s just a conception. Evidence for the Big Bang is everywhere. (Countless particles left over from the primal microwave radiation are impacting each of us right now).

Along these lines, sort of, I came across this Thomas Jefferson quote in Richard Dawkin’s “The God Delusion” today.

The priests of the different religious sects…dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live.

Welcome, "In Good Spirit" listeners

I enjoyed my conversation with Marcel and Lenny on Achieve Radio's "In Good Spirit" tonight. Marcel mentioned the Church of the Churchless several times, so maybe some new blog readers have found their way here.

I wrote about my reading with Marcel, the medium, last month, so it's slipped off the listing of most recent posts. For those interested in how a skeptic viewed his first reading, click on "I visit a Hollywood medium, Marcel Cairo."

When (or if) Achieve Radio puts up an archive of tonight's show, I'll blog about it. For sure.

[Update: Marcel sent me a link to last night's program. It was a bit painful to listen to myself, though I seemed to make pretty good sense. Was surprised at how often I said "you know" though. Bad habit.]

Dancing free, not to a pattern

About 90 minutes into our Tango class last night the instructor asked us, “Are you ready to really challenge yourself, to drive yourself crazy?” There wasn’t much of a response from the dozen students. I meekly muttered, “Sure…I guess.”

Up to that point we’d mostly been working on an ocho cortado pattern. At first it drove Laurel and me crazy, so that explains why we weren’t thrilled to hear that we were about to be driven even crazier.

Six simple steps. But each has to be led and followed. Laurel and I struggled to get the pattern down. Then the rhythm. Carlos and Jodi, our highly competent teachers, gave us tips.

My main problem was not following Laurel after I led a movement. I had a preconceived notion of where she should go. When she didn’t end up where I expected her to be, I had trouble adapting. I’d gotten a geometric ocho cortado pattern in my head rather than the feel of the moves, which in Tango can move any which way so long as the man and woman stay connected.

So what was the next phase of our Tango development to be? Carlos told us: “You’ve been following the ocho cortado pattern. Now, break it. Be spontaneous. Do whatever you want. Experiment. Try different things.”

Interesting. It’s easier, much easier, to follow a dance blueprint than to create your own unique movement in time and space. Yet that’s where the evolution of learning Tango takes you. And is why Carlos likes to call Tango the “Ph.D. of social dance.”

A while back I wrote about getting a glimpse of Tango Zen. That’s still what I have, just a glimpse. But finding connections between the spontaneity of dance and the freedom of churchlessness continues to intrigue me.

There’s a natural rhythm to life and the cosmos, that, when you move freely with it, feels so right. The trick seems to be not trying to mimic someone else’s pattern.

That’s why religion binds. Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, Lao Tzu, Krishna, Moses, Kabir—they all danced to their own music. Similarly, we need to dance to ours.

Tango on, spontaneously and freely. Life is your lovely partner.

I'm on "In Good Spirit" tonight

Tonight two mediums gang up on little ol' skeptical me on Achieve Radio, an Internet broadcasting system. Hope I survive. One of them is Marcel Cairo, the Hollywood medium I had a session with and blogged about recently.

I enjoyed talking with Marcel, so I'm looking forward to doubling the medium pleasure this evening. Here's a blurb about the show.

Download marcel_lenny_in_good_spirit.htm

I'm pretty sure the interview will be archived online, for those who have the good sense to watch "Lost" at 9 pm (PST) rather than listen to live Internet radio.

I go to a Hollywood medium, Marcel Cairo

Yesterday I lost my medium virginity. During a visit to Hollywood to see my daughter Celeste and her husband Patrick, Marcel Cairo was kind enough to treat Celeste, Laurel, and me to a reading.

Marcel is an afterlife medium and spiritual therapist. (Check out Marcel’s website for more info). Last Tuesday I got an email from Marcel that said, in part:

I came across your site and really got a kick out of it. I like how you present thought provoking concepts with a sense of humor. I kind of take the same approach to my work. I am a medium, and have been for 23 years now, and humor is a key bridge that unites the here and the hereafter.

Anyway, on occasion I co-host a weekly radio show called Conversations from Beyond with fellow medium, Lenny Feldsott. The show is part Crossing Over w/ John Edward and part Car Talk from NPR and on occasion, a bit of Howard Stern “Lite”. It would be interesting to talk to you about your blog and your Church of the Churchless.

I replied with a “sure” (though now it looks like I’ll be on the “In Good Spirit” show on October 11). I told Marcel that coincidentally, if there is such a thing, my wife and I would be in his Hollywood neck of the woods in a few days.

I wasn’t (consciously) expecting anything to result from that comment, but Marcel responded that he’d try to fit us in for a free reading if we wanted and our schedule, and his, permitted. Which, it did.

So there we were at 10:30 on Sunday morning, lined up in skeptical order on Marcel’s couch. Celeste to the left of me, Laurel to the right.

Laurel has been to several mediums and psychics. She’s a believer. I’m open-minded, though I probably lean toward the skeptical side. Celeste, like Patrick, is about as here and now as they come. They believe in what they experience.

Me too. Marcel started out by asking me to summarize my Church of the Churchless philosophy in a couple of sentences. I think it took me a couple of paragraphs, and I was just warming up. He cut in and tried to summarize.

“So it’s a matter of seeing and believing, right?” “Yes,” I said. “I like to say that I’ll believe it when I see it, not that I’ll see it when I believe it.” From there we were off and medium’ing.

I won’t try to describe all that transpired in the two-plus hours we spent with Marcel. The bottom line is that I enjoyed our session. I found Marcel to be genuine, humorous, sensitive, and spontaneous. He made some observations that hit me hard, though I can’t say that they knocked me for a loop.

I mean, it seemed unlikely, though not impossible, that the information he was conveying came solely from his purely human brain.

I’d give examples, but the most intriguing messages conveyed through “spirit” (departed souls) were directed to Celeste and Laurel, and were quite personal.

Interestingly, Patrick got a lot of attention from spirit even though he was at home watching football and is even more of a spiritual skeptic than Celeste. Marcel shared some zingers about Patrick that were right on the money—specific enough that they seemed unlikely to be lucky guesses.

But again, not impossible. Given this semi-skeptical attitude of mine, I guess this is why spirit declined to pay me much of a visit. I probably ended up getting 10% of the departeds’ attention. They just didn’t have much to share with me.

Marcel did say that my mother pitied me. Which I can believe, I suppose. Marcel asked if my mother was a strong, independent woman, the feeling he was getting. I said, “Yes, indeed.”

Basically her message to me was that I should stick with the intuitive non-verbal connection I have with “God” when I go on my nature walks and put to rest my questioning intellectual side that is always saying, “But then again…” My mother, or whoever, made sense. Still, I’ll have to think about it.

One thing I need to ponder is that my mother was much more intellectual than I am. She also was much less attuned to nature than I am. So she must have been working on the Taoistic side of her soul during the twenty-one years since her death.

Somebody else—maybe it was Evie, my sister who died as an infant—told Marcel that I was a know-it-all. Well, I do know a lot. But I’ve never considered myself a know-it-all. Maybe that message was meant for someone else. Like my ex-wife.

I also was advised to duke it out with my dark side. Borrowing from the first Star Wars trilogy, Marcel passed on the word that I’m Luke Skywalker. Yet also Darth Vader. (Aren’t we all?) The two sides of me are supposed to take up psychological light sabers and finally determine who’s going to rule Brian’s Brain.

This wasn’t new news to me. I’ve been wrestling with the various sides of myself for as long as I can remember. (Again, haven’t we all?) However, I appreciated being reminded that it’s best if only one entity inhabits the cranium where the sense of Me resides.

But then again, when I shared the Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader insight with my Tai Chi instructor this afternoon he said, “There is dark and light, yin and yang, in everyone.” Yes, opposites make the world go round. That’s the nature of Tao.

I can’t speak for Celeste and Laurel. What I got out of the session were some fresh viewpoints on my psyche and approach to life. It doesn’t matter much to me where they came from: Marcel, the spirit world, or both.

I didn’t experience anything that made me a firm believer in life after death. But I’m probably a bit more open to the possibility now. Marcel said that I should repeat to myself, “I believe in the survival of consciousness.”

Well, I want to. The thing is, I’m still a “I’ll believe it when I see it” kind of person. Marcel advised that I open myself to signs of spirit, which might come from any direction.

That was good advice. Communicate away, spirit. I’m open 24/7. Once I see, I’ll believe. To me, the best form of spiritual belief is an empty receptivity to whatever reality may exist beyond what I know now--not blind faith in some dogma or theological assertion.

Lastly, we got to meet Marcel's charming wife and child after the session. Nina, his daughter, is a red-haired bundle of cute. In the course of searching for information about Marcel to share in this post, I ran across a Cairo family video on Google Video. Watch "The Art of Sharing." Nice music, nice family.

[Next day update: OK. I get the message.

When I read this post to my wife last night, she said, “You didn’t mention your father.” When I checked my email this morning, I read a message from Marcel that said about my father, “You failed to mention him at all in the story.” When I perused the comments to this post, I saw that Roger asked, “Did Marcel discuss anything about your Dad?”

So…Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father. To put it mildly, he was a Force to be reckoned with. He turned to the dark side until, at the end of his life, he saw the light. My own father never did, so far as I know.

Yesterday evening my psychotherapist wife observed to me, “From what I know about your father, he was like Darth Vader: powerful, domineering, highly intelligent. You may think that he wasn’t much of an influence on you because you only spent an hour with him in your entire life. But no matter how little or how much kids know about their dads, the influence is there because fathers are so important to us.”

Yes, Marcel mentioned him. I can’t remember all of the details. And I don’t feel like listening to the tape of the session right now. My father is my dark side, my Darth Vader. I tried to convince my wife that the reason I didn’t mention my father at first in this post is that everyone has a dark side, like Warren, my Tai Chi instructor, said. So why focus on my father when I’m speaking about that aspect of myself?

“Because he wasn’t like most fathers,” Laurel told me. “Your father was strongly dark. Not just a little. A lot.”

I know. As I said in my “One hour with my father” post, ever since I got to know what a jerk my father was, I’ve been wary of the paternal genetic heritage that’s lurking in every cell of my body. Identical twin studies seem to show that about 50% of personality has a genetic basis; he’s one-half of my genes; so I figure that a quarter of who I am, more or less, is Pure Jerk.

Which feels about right. I keep that side of myself fairly well hidden, but it’s there. Probably that’s why Marcel advised that the climactic battle between my Luke and my Darth has to take place. Or maybe it could be a reconciliation. Whatever. I’m not going to force the two of them together. We’ll just see what the Force has in store for us.

I get glimpses of what that energy is. I suspect that I’m not firing on all cylinders because I don’t trust letting myself go. I enjoy feeling the higher revs of my inner engine, but am afraid that if I unhook the horsepower limiter I’ll take a turn too fast and do a Thelma and Louise over the cliff.

And yet…in just about every Tango class I’m reminded that tentativeness is a kiss of death for the male lead. Last night my partner and I were having some problems with a clockwise basic turn. I tried to figure out what was going wrong, then got frustrated and said to myself, “Screw it. I’ll just do it.”

Which I then did. Just fine. In Tango the woman only knows what to follow when the lead is unambiguous. Passionate Darth Vader energy melded with pure Luke Skywalker intention.

Get them together and you’ve got something. Good.]

Plotinus and I make so much sense

Today I made a lot of sense to myself. Per usual. When I heard myself explaining how Neoplatonism relates to Christianity and why not-knowing is the highest form of religion I was totally convinced that I knew what I was talking about.

This afternoon it was nice to have two captive audiences: me, whom I can’t seem to ever get away from, and a man with whom I have a business relationship, who was trying to entice me to sign up for additional services.

We’d never met, as he’d taken over our account from another guy, so this was a get-to-know-you conversation. Naturally he had to ask what I did. “Basically retired now. I’ve been writing books and keeping up my blogs.”

He then made the mistake of asking what I wrote about. This ended up reducing his sales pitch time considerably. Tip: unless you’ve got time to spare, don’t ask a woman who has recently given birth if her child ever does anything cute, and don’t ask a writer what his books are about.

I rolled through “God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder” and “Life is Fair” quickly, but found myself getting more and more enthusiastic about Plotinus and “Return to the One.” Partly because I knew that as soon as I stopped talking, the effort to sell me stuff would start.

But mostly because I was just making so damn much sense, I couldn’t bear to stop listening to myself. You had to be there (as I was, fortunately). However, I’ll try to recreate some of my 5-10 minute synopsis of what Plotinus, Christianity, and the cosmos is all about.

Plotinus, it’s been said, is “Plato without the politics.” So you’re left with Greek spirituality, minus all that boring stuff about the perfect form of governance. It’s also said that if you add Jesus to Plotinus’ Neoplatonism, you’ve got Christianity.

St. Augustine was a big fan of Plato and Plotinus before he became a Christian. The Gospels are mostly stories and don’t say much about the nature of God, soul, creation, and such. So Augustine took Plotinus’ philosophy, grafted it onto Jesus’ teachings, and voila, a Christian theology.

People think that the Greeks were rationalists. But Plotinus was a mystic and had profound experiences of the divine. He realized that thinking can only take you so far. After that, you’re in the realm of Mystery. For him, that was the One. Christians say, “God.”

Makes sense to me. Here we are, sitting in your office, a teeny-tiny part of a 14 billion year old universe. So far as we know, this is the only life in our part of the galaxy. Isn’t that amazing, that we’re here at all? To me, that’s what a genuine sense of religion is all about: Wonder.

Plotinus taught that it isn’t possible to say anything about God, the One. How could you? Whatever we know is something other than the One, because it is knowable—separate, distinct, dual. God can’t be known. Only approached as Mystery.

If every religion would recognize this, wouldn’t the world be a better place? Christians think they know what God is like. So do Muslims and Jews. Even Buddhists, though they don’t speak about “God.”

I don’t know anything about God. Neither do you. Likely nobody does. If we all could sit down together and honestly say “I don’t know” as one, that’d be terrific. Plotinus reminds us that silence is the best way to worship God. Just being present with…whatever.

Sure seems like that should be One, not more than one. Physicists aren’t searching for theories of everything—just one theory. So God likely is One also. If there are two things, given how the world is so nicely interconnected they have to be united in some fashion. Whatever does the final uniting is God, the One.

Science knows a lot about the very small through quantum theory. Science knows a lot about the very large through relativity theory. But the two theories can’t be fit together so far. Superstrings, that’s a possibility. Vibrating energy. Is that God? Nobody knows.

It’s a mystery.

That seemed like a good place to stop talking. Especially since I was only getting a polite smile in response, not the standing philosophical ovation that my not-so-humble self felt that I deserved.

When some papers were pushed across the desk toward me, I got a glimmer why. I noticed a classy-looking silver ring, on which was emblazoned a cross. I’d suspected that I wasn’t talking with a Wiccan. Suspicion confirmed.

So I had to be content with making sense to myself. Didn’t make a convert to churchlessness today. That’s good, I guess.

If you become a believer in anything, even if that is nothing, isn’t that something? And isn’t belief the essence of religion?

Good questions. Looks like I’ve got to have another conversation with myself.

Nice to belong with those who don’t belong

I’ve gotten several email messages recently from people who said they appreciate what I’m doing here on the Church of the Churchless. Well, I appreciate the appreciation.

We churchless still feel a need to belong. But it’s a lot more difficult to share a sense of camaraderie with those who aren’t a part of organized spirituality because, obviously, we’re not organized. Nor do we want to be.

So I get a lot of satisfaction from cyberspace pats on the back. I also enjoy, in a different fashion, the occasional missives from true believers asking me to please, please, just shut up!

When I get a request like that I usually think, “if only I could.” For I aspire to being the Taoist sage who wanders silently along deserted mountain trails, his foolish grin saying all that needs to be said.

Not there yet, that’s for sure.

Back in my public speaking days (as contrasted with my current blog speaking days), I’d frequently give talks, a.k.a. satsangs, to fairly large gatherings of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) members, a.k.a. satsangis.

Then, as now, my message would stress the need to be scientific, skeptical, sincere, and un-sanctimonious. I’d stress that an ounce of direct spiritual experience is worth a pound of theoretical belief in some supposedly holy book or person.

And I’d do my best to laugh at our ridiculous pretensions to knowing anything about God and ultimate reality, starting with my own. (Standard line: “The easiest RSSB vow for me to keep is the one that prohibits revealing our inner mystical experiences.”)

Usually I’d get about halfway into my 45-minute talk and start noticing a lot of quizzical faces. Frowns too. Not surprising. I was skirting the edge of what many devotees considered heresy. To me it seemed like honesty.

I’d be mildly concerned about how I was coming across until I noticed some other faces with a different demeanor here and there in the audience. Foolish grins beaming at me. I’d foolishly grin right back. A connection!

After the talk sometimes a grin would walk its body up to me and say, “Thank you so much. I thought that I was the only satsangi who felt that way. Now I know I’m not alone.”

I’d reply, “No, there’s at least two of us. Of course, we both may be crazy and wrong. But it’s nice to meet you, fellow deluded heretic.”

As it is still nice.

Wings of love fly in two directions

This afternoon I rolled out of my nap bed, glanced at the pile of overly devotional books that I’ve culled from my bookcase, and decided to pick up the topmost title: “On Wings of Love,” by Madeleine.

It was published in 1972 by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) in South Africa. I’ve got the first (and likely only) edition, which constituted 1,000 numbered copies. Mine is #919. For that reason alone, this previously unread book is now a keeper.

For another reason also: Madeleine, whose last name isn’t revealed, is a poetess of blunt words and intense passion. A foreword by Janak Puri notes that this twenty-something (who now is, or would be, a late-50’s or early-60’s something) is a South African whose love poetry flows from a bottomless well of devotion to Charan Singh, her spiritual Master.

I was initiated by Charan Singh in 1971, so Madeleine and I are of the same RSSB generation. Most people would say that we are entirely different in other ways, however. Madeleine is a devotional “bhakti” through and through, while my spiritual bent is much more in the meditational “jnana” tradition.

Reading some of her poems, though, I’d have to differ with anyone who says that we are markedly different. Madeleine’s wings of love fly her in one direction, mine in another. Yet we both love the ultimate reality who has no name, but gets called many things, including “God.”

I know this for a fact, because while I only know Madeleine through her words, I know me from the inside. And I’ve felt her feelings about the guru Charan Singh, if not with the same intensity.

In January 1978 I flew out of the Punjab’s Amritsar airport, having spent two weeks in India at the headquarters of RSSB—a.k.a. “the Dera.” Before that I’d never seen Charan Singh in person. Looking out the plane’s window at the snow-covered Himalayas, I remember thinking, “Master, I don’t want to have any more thoughts of my own; they are all yours from now on.”

This passage is from the last of Madeleine’s poems:

Indeed, I wish my love were so true,
That if I had a thousand heads
I would cut them all off –
And then I might submit
Not one – but a thousand! – at your Feet!

So I believe that it’s false to make a hard and fast distinction between “bhaktis” and “jnanis.” Each variety of spiritual seeker aims at union with the ultimate, love. That longing gets expressed in different ways. Some people, like Madeleine, express themselves emotionally. Other people, like me, express themselves in a more detached manner.

But I can tell you that the un-feelable feeling or un-thinkable thought that underlies those varying sorts of expressions is the same. I know this because I’ve felt deep emotion for someone I considered at the time to be a God in human form, and I’ve thought deep ideas about formless mystery.

The root from which both states of mind sprout is the same. I’m sure of that. However, the wings of love do fly in different directions even though the goal—unity with the ultimate—is shared by bhaktis and jnanis.

Madeleine perceived God in a person, Charan Singh. She longed for the guru’s glance, his attention, his presence. I can’t do that any more. I long for what lies beyond what I know now, recognizing that for all I know, the “beyond” could be right here, right now.

Astrophysicist Arthur Eddington said about the cosmos, “Something unknown is doing we don’t know what.” And whatever it is, I love it. Or at least, I want to love it--to unite with it so fully that I am it.

That love necessarily takes a much different form from Madeleine’s, because you don’t write poems to the unknown, wait by your mailbox for a letter from the unknown, or fly off to India to sit at the feet of the unknown.

Alan Watts puts it nicely in his “The Wisdom of Insecurity.”

To “have” running water you must let go of it and let it run. The same is true of life and of God. The present phase of human thought and history is especially ripe for this “letting go.” Our minds have been prepared for it by this very collapse of the beliefs in which we have sought security.

From a point of view strictly, if strangely, in accord with certain religious traditions, this disappearance of the old rocks and absolutes is no calamity, but rather a blessing. It almost compels us to face reality with open minds, and you can only know God through an open mind just as you can only see the sky through a clear window. You will not see the sky if you have covered the glass with blue paint.

…To discover the ultimate Reality of life—the Absolute, the eternal, God—you must cease to try to grasp it in the forms of idols. These idols are not just crude images, such as the mental picture of God as an old gentleman on a golden throne. They are our beliefs, our cherished preconceptions of the truth, which block the unreserved opening of mind and heart to reality.

…what religion calls the vision of God is found in giving up any belief in the idea of God.

Fly away from belief on the wings of love. You just might find God in the empty sky of nothingness.

Soul is still lost, but I’ve found my keys

I can’t say that I’ve experienced Zen’s Great Doubt. Or the Dark Night of St. John of the Cross. But I do know what it’s like to lose my keys. I’m hoping that this was a message from God. Or at least the Key Fairy.

Last Thursday afternoon I started to rush out the door, semi-late as usual, to drive to my martial arts class. I reached into my hip bag for my keys and found…nothing. Now, this lack of finding pretty much describes my daily search for my soul in meditation.

But the difference is that earlier in the day I’d had my keys in hand, so I knew that I’d lost something. Never having found my soul, so far as I can tell, I’m not bothered when it doesn’t turn up.

I was seriously irked, though, when I dashed around the house, looking in the usual suspect places for my keys, and came up empty. I remembered that in the morning I’d carried them out to the carport, thinking that I needed to move the Prius in order to get the mower out of the garage.

However, Laurel had driven the car into town. So I recalled that I’d gone back into the house to hydrate before tackling some field mowing and had left the keys inside. No doubt about it. Absolutely. For sure.

Which made it all the more irksome to be running around the house in circles, aware that I was increasingly late for my class, certain that if I looked here or there just one more time the keys would magically appear, because I was certain that they were somewhere inside and I couldn’t believe—refused to believe—that I wouldn’t be able to find them.

Until the realization hit me that I could either have the keys lost and completely miss my class, or have the keys lost while I enjoyed the portion of the class that I could still attend if I left right now. So, I dug up spare house and car keys. And left immersed in a mystery.

Driving to Salem I was mildly pleased that I’d been able to accept my lost condition. Part of me had wanted to stay home and search for the damn keys until I found them, because having lost them when I was sure that they couldn’t be lost was driving me crazy.

However, a saner part of me was saying , “Chill out, brother. You can look for them later. Now they’re lost. Later they’ll probably be found. And even if they aren’t, is that the end of the world?”

It turned out that Warren and Dave, my martial arts classmates, hadn’t even started by the time I got there. I told them my lost keys story. Warren responded with a lost key tale of his own. His involved looking all over the neighborhood, and then finding them close to where he began his search.

That story seemed to have some spiritual significance. I hoped mine would too. And, indeed, I believe it does. For my intuition was correct when I told Warren and Dave, “I suspect that it’s going to turn out that Laurel is behind my lost keys.”

When in doubt, blame the wife. Seemed reasonable at the time.

And even more reasonable when I got home, walked into the living room, and saw a note on the rug. With my keys sitting next to it! “We need to exchange our keys,” Laurel had sweetly written.

“What the hell!” I not so sweetly screamed. “I spent fifteen minutes looking for my keys, and you had them! What's this about an exchange? I don't have yours!”

It turned out that I’d dropped my keys in the hallway, just as I had thought. Laurel had forgotten that she’d put her own keys in a gym bag. So when she looked in her purse and couldn’t find them, she glanced around, saw my keys, and figured that they were hers.

The lesson here—and this is where I find (or manufacture) some mystical meaning to all this—is that there was no way I was ever going to find my car keys the way I’d been going about it. I could have looked fruitlessly for hours, because my assumption that they must be where I had left them was wrong.

Likewise, people think that divinity can be found by following the instructions of a holy book or holy person. “Look here, do this, and bingo, you’ll find your soul.” Or God.

I doubt it. The most believable descriptions of enlightenment, satori, or God-realization—whatever you want to call it—are that it comes unexpectedly out of the blue, swoop! You can’t anticipate from which direction, or in what manner, because the Ultimate isn’t bound by directions. Or manners.

Anyway, I now have an increased confidence in the value of letting things stay lost when they can’t be found. Like keys. And souls. And God. Frantic searching doesn’t help if you’re looking in the wrong fashion.

It’s better to wait and trust that what has been lost will be found. The cosmos has a way of revealing itself. But on its own terms, not ours. I like to think that one day each of us will return to our spiritual home and say, just as I did, “Ah, finally. This is what I’ve been looking for.”

Who’s afraid of this big bad blog?

This Church of the Churchless weblog doesn’t strike me as scary. Not like a big bad wolf. Pretty much all I do is say it as I see it. My most frequent utterance is “I don’t know.” For variety I try to express this un-profundity in alternative ways, but they all end up pointing at my metaphysical cluelessness.

My musings wouldn’t be threatening if it weren’t for a secondary theme: “I don’t know, and there’s no proof that you do either.” It’s the sentiment after the comma that strikes at the heart of organized religious pretension.

I have to assume that this is what galls the ecclesiastical authorities who represent Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the mystico-spiritual organization that I’ve been associated with for over thirty years and which I have much fondness for.

So much fondness, that I regularly take some time and trouble to critique RSSB’s failures to live up to its claim that it preaches a “science of the soul.” If I didn’t care about the organization I’d give it as much attention as I do to goings on with the Southern Baptists.

Another reason RSSB pops up in my posts fairly frequently is that I still have some connections with this group. As I wrote about back in February, Matt (a New Zealand RSSB initiate) and I collaborated on publishing a German translation of my first book, “God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder.”

The translation was of a shorter and simpler version, but it contained almost all of the quotations from books written by RSSB gurus and disciples that were in the original version. When “God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder” was published in 1995, six thousand copies of my book were purchased by RSSB for resale through its own distribution channels.

What I tried to do was show that mysticism can be a spiritual science, just as physics is a material science. The book didn’t appeal to everyone in RSSB, for sure. But it struck a chord with those who looked upon meditation more as a method for knowing ultimate reality than as devotion to a personal god or guru.

I didn’t mention back in February why I got involved in publishing the German translation. Matt had contacted some RSSB powers-that-be and asked if his translation could be copied and made available to German speaking disciples. They said, “No.”

I couldn’t leave it at that. I felt bad that Matt had put so much work into his translation, only to have it rejected by the group that he had primarily performed this service for. So I emailed Matt and told him that one way or another, we’d get “Wenn Gott flüstert, donnert es in der Schöpfung” published.

And we did. I ended up publishing the book under my own imprint, Adrasteia Publishing. I paid for the book design and setup costs. It’s a print on demand title made available through Lightning Source and thence to online bookstores like Amazon-Germany.

I priced the book most reasonably. Likely I’ll never make back the money I put into publishing it. Not that I care. Like Matt, I considered this project to be a gift to German speaking readers. Our payback wouldn’t be in dollars (or euros). I feel like I’ve already been well-compensated.

After the book was published RSSB was contacted once more. Could the book be made available through their distribution channels? After all, six thousand copies of the English version were bought and resold at cost by RSSB. Why not do the same on a smaller scale for the German translation?

This time a reason for “No” was given. “It’s because of Brian Hines’ Church of the Churchless blog.”

How ridiculous.

There are good reasons for rejecting a non-fiction book. Untrue. Uninteresting. Uninspiring. Unintelligible. However, rejecting a book because the author has a weblog where he writes about what he wrote about in the book—that doesn’t make sense to me.

Admittedly, I write about other subjects too. Including the aforementioned criticisms of Radha Soami Satsang Beas. Yet I always think back to the words of Charan Singh, the guru who initiated me: “Our critics are our best friends.” In science that is true. In religion it isn’t.

So RSSB has helped make the point that I dwell on in some of my posts. When the focus is on the messenger rather than the message, you know you’re in the domain of religion rather than science. If a revered guru says something, by itself that doesn’t make it right. If a heretical disciple says something, by itself that doesn’t make it wrong.

I’m with the X-files: the truth is out there. There’s nothing to fear but our failure to find it. And maybe not even that.

Musings on the Metolius

It’s easy to get into an meditative mood while walking along the banks of the Metolius River. It becomes an instant river about a mile upstream of our central Oregon cabin, gushing out of springs that carry water from distant sources.

Since the upper reaches are mostly spring fed, the Metolius’ water level doesn’t change much throughout the year. Vegetation is able to grow on logs and rocks that, with the passage of time, become islands of life.

This evening, on my ritual dog walk, thunder clouds were starting to form. Per usual, Serena, the dog, and Brian, the human, didn’t encounter any other people. It was just us and nature.

Beautiful.

No matter what has been worrying me before I set out on a walk, the Metolius magically leads it to fade away. I suspect that the magic is always there. Inside me, inside all of us. Nature just opens the door to what we normally shut ourselves away from.

Peace. Acceptance. Contentment. A sense that whatever is happening with the world, or with us, it's all right. Things are flowing along as they should. The river of life knows what it is doing.

I used to say, “Ah, just like a Japanese Zen garden.” Then I realized how foolish I was. Zen gardens are like nature, not the other way around. Nature is the original, humankind the copier.

In our garden I’ve tried to position rocks so that they don’t look like I tried to position the rocks. It’s damn hard. The Metolius does it effortlessly.

A thought: Is this the way It really is? Perhaps the big It, that which we’re wondering “What is It all about?” truly is this simple, this no worries, mate. Religion urges us to solve the problem of human existence. Maybe there is no problem to solve.

Walking along the Metolius, it certainly seems so. Until the thunder starts.

More accurately, until Serena notices the thunder. I’d been hearing it for several minutes before she did. However, Serena had been on some super-intense chipmunk chases (she never catches them, and mostly never sees them; it’s the smells that entice her).

Dashing through the Ponderosas, fully immersed in the joy of the hunt, thunder wasn’t on her mind. Juicy chipmunks were. But then she stopped running and tuned in to the distant rumbling. Whereupon she started to go into her thunder-phobia.

Serena wasn’t in any danger. She thought she was, though. Suddenly she couldn’t enjoy what was giving her so much pleasure before. Her sole goal was to find a place to hide. Fortunately, I had a leash. She tried to dig herself a hidey hole under a fallen tree. I had to drag her out.

A thought: Is this the way I am too? Are most of my fears and anxieties as nonsensically founded as my dog’s aversion to loud noises? (Once a loud nearby thunder clap startled her; ever since then, Serena freaks out at gunshots, firecrackers, and, of course, thunder).

Religion offers us a place to hide. From fear of death, pain, suffering, misfortune, non-existence, meaninglessness, isolation—lots of things. But do we need to put our head in the sand (or under a tree stump)?

An alternative is to embrace the flow of life. No matter what it brings.

During a happier moment today, Serena demonstrated a jump-right-in attitude that makes a lot of sense. Especially on a hot day (the Metolius is 48 degrees—just right for her, hypothermia for me).

I get a glimpse of Tango Zen

Monday night at my Tango class the instructor taught us a pretty complicated move. Muy Tangoish, so it was cool. But difficult for our four-month-old Tango brains to grasp. My wife and I gave it a try, though.

From the man’s perspective: Step, step, trap her foot, turn her to left, stop her, cross step, side step, move her around with waist turn, trap her foot, step forward into centering position, step, step, step.

Well, it looks better on the dance floor than on a computer screen. However, at first I struggled to get the moves down. Then we started practicing.

And did OK. Heck, maybe better than OK. Within a few minutes Laurel and I were Tangoing along nicely. Until I started thinking, “Wow, we’re Tangoing along nicely.” That was the kiss of death for the new move.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Laurel complained. “You were doing fine before. Now you’re not.” “I know,” I said. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to make X, Y, and Z flow better.”

“Well, go back to how you started,” my non-shrinking-violet wife told me. Which I tried to do by just doing it, not by thinking about how to do it. Eventually I got back to where I had been. And then better than that, after we practiced the move for another half an hour with very little analyzing.

It was a revealing Tango Zen experience. I began by knowing that I didn’t know. Did fine. I progressed to knowing that I knew. Fell apart. I ended up not-knowing that I knew. Best of all.

In his book, Tango Zen, Chan Park talks about this sort of thing in refreshingly brief chapters.

Whatever feelings and thoughts arise while dancing Tango—just let them pass by with no attachment to anything. Zen teaches us to open our minds and see things as they are. Be ready to let feelings and thoughts come and go without engaging them. Resist the impulse of analyzing or judging them. However, don’t push away or avoid them either. Just listen to the music and dance.

…For Tango to be Tango, we need to make each and every movement with confidence. No hesitation. In Zen we strive to celebrate our own nature, our unique gifts and abilities. We are who we are and, likewise, we dance Tango the way we are. For self-confidence, we need to block our self-consciousness by stopping the self-critical monologue, e.g. the mental chatter while dancing Tango. Be easy on yourself, as you are the best you can be Here and Now!

It struck me that the attitude I had during my awkward period at the dance class was akin to feelings I had when I was overtly religious. At one time I thought that I knew a lot about the faith I was committed to, that of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). I knew what was right and what was wrong. I was constantly afraid that I’d make the wrong move.

Eat some meat, fish, or an egg by mistake. Imbibe some alcohol. Fail to meditate for the required period of time each day. Act against the wishes of the guru. I was stumbling all over myself trying to make precisely right moves on the spiritual path. I was self-consciously attempting to be humble and lose my ego.

Didn’t work. Couldn’t work. Would never work.

Here are some quotations from the Tango Zen book.

There is only the one Way—straight, open, and utterly empty of obstructions. –Yuan-Wu

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. –Zen Proverb

Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate. –Zhuagnzi

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things. –Dogen

Master technique and then forget about it and be natural. –Anna Pavlova

There is Buddha for those who don’t know what he is, really. There is no Buddha for those who know what he is, really. –Zen saying

I have no desire to prove anything by dancing. I have never used it as an outlet or a means of expressing myself. I just dance. I just put my feet in the air and move them around. –Fred Astaire

I’m alive. Wow!

I’ve been having a strange sensation recently: I’m alive. It’s accompanied by: One moment I won’t be. Amazing.

What’s even more amazing is how many days there have been out of the total I’ve lived (21,065) when I didn’t have this sensation. I took life for granted. I didn’t envision my own non-existence.

Maybe it’s taking getting older and passing the 21,000 day mark to begin to appreciate the marvel of being able to appreciate anything.

I’ll be walking the dog, or standing in Tai Chi class, or getting out of bed in the morning, and suddenly I’ll be struck with a realization—not a thought, not an emotion, but a knowing—that there will come a time when it will be the last time I’ll do that thing. Or anything.

Maybe this sensation is the most genuine understanding of the mysteries of life that I’ll ever have. If so, I’m appreciative. Not that I understand anything about those mysteries; but at least I feel a deep sense of awe about the fact that I am able to not understand.

I could have been nothing at all. I could never have existed. And one day I will be just that: nothing at all and non-existent. Bodily, at least. Yet for now, this moment, I am. I am alive, I am conscious, I exist.

Which is far out. So far out, I can’t even begin to comprehend the billions-year-long series of astonishments that combined to bring me to be alive at this place and this time.

The big bang fourteen billion years ago. The formation of stars and their destruction as supernovae to form the heavy elements of which I’m made. The coagulation of Sol-orbiting particles into this Earth. The sparking into existence of primitive life. The evolution of that spark into a rich conflagration of species that have flamed up and burned out over many hundreds of millions of years, with one continuing trail of life culminating in the entity that is me.

It’s just too freaking unlikely to be true. Yet, it is. Here I am. As you are. Isn’t that amazing?

I wish I could say that this insight has made me a better person, that I live life more deeply now, that I cherish every moment. It hasn’t, and I don’t. Still, I feel that even though I’m no closer to grokking the mystery of the cosmos, the darkness is more apparent to me.

Blind and stumbling around, I marvel at the pain of sharp corners and the relief of soothing softness. I can’t see what’s really there, but at least I know that I can’t see. Enlightenment would be nice. Absent that, I’m happy with endarkenment

Beats the absence of either. Envoidenment.

That could well be where I’m heading after death. Who knows? None of us do, until after we die. And then there might be no knowing of anything, including death.

So I’m left with a feeling that I might call gratitude if I knew that there was an entity I could be grateful to. “God” is just three letters for me. An abstract idea, not a clear and present reality.

It isn’t so much gratitude, thankfulness, or appreciation as a simple Wow! To feel my fingers typing these words on my new laptop, to see my wife chopping vegetables in the kitchen, to hear our dog settling into her post dinner curled-up lassitude with a canine burp—it’s amazing.

From the big bang to this in 13.7 billion years of never-ending wow’s, almost all of which occurred outside the ken of sentient beings. And now here I am, a sentient being, alive, conscious, participating in all this. For a while, until I die and participate in something else.

Wow!

A nasty truth, naked and rough

I want to share some thoughts from a woman who emailed me from Europe. Like me, she’s a Sant Mat initiate (satsangi) in the Radha Soami Satsang Beas line. Also like me, she’s gone through some intense soul-searching.

I’ve mildly edited her words for clarity, but left her English style intact. (Believe me, she writes infinitely better in my language than I can write in hers). Here’s her first message:

Hello, I just found your site and have lovely laugh when I was reading some of your stories. I am your spiritual sister, a so called satsangi. A year ago I would consider you as an idiot, but not now. I had a breaking point, a meeting with a nasty truth, naked and rough.

I hardly survived this losing of self hypnotic state. For a few months I have been confused, because I WAS an example of a perfect disciple, and then, everything was over. All my dreams of this parallel reality in which I believed so much.

But look!! I haven’t lost anything, except my dreams, and I got freedom. Freedom to choose how will I live.

I realised that if I meditate of any other reason then for myself, because I want it, it’s wrong. If I believe in something is because I want to believe. It doesn’t matter am I on the right side or the wrong one. It’s just me here, and no one else.

And this was a most unexpected and glorious experience in contrary of everything I had in mind about Sant Mat. I can say that Master gave me this, because he believed I can handle it. So in the background of all these doubts there is his Love. Its impossible to say what I want to say, but just to tell you, you are great!

Love from _______

I wrote back to her, saying:

“Thank you for sharing your experience. Very interesting. You did well, trying to explain what can't be explained. Still, I would love to hear more about your ‘nasty truth, naked and rough.’ Can you speak more about what this truth is? I think I understand, from what you said in your message, but would like to know more. Like you said, you are my spiritual sister. It seems that we have come to similar conclusions about this Path.”

Here’s her reply.

Brian, you are right. We came to similar conclusions, just we are dealing with them a little bit different. I surrendered to the fact I know nothing about it. I don’t blame anyone for this because going to the Sant Mat was my decision and I take responsibility for it.

And if I’m honest, Sant Mat helped me to survive in the very difficult phase of my life. Relationship I built with Baba Ji gave me strength and hope. I had a great experience of His love and Grace, so I think I became too dependent on Him. I don’t say this has an absolute value. It has value for me. It could be just mental trick to find a spiritual friend and surrender to Him. I don’t care. The importance is that it helped me.

So when the time was ready, I just realised that we know nothing about God, about Master, about Sach Khand. These are just empty words, which give to people some confidence and hope for the future. We repeat these words and think we KNOW! And the nasty truth is, we don’t! We just believe.

I was very shocked to know this and of course completely confused. I realised my own helplessness in this matter. No meditation will save me, not even my morality and my effort will save me. We are actually too weak and too ignorant to do anything. So I just gave up in the sense to achieve a goal.

Now I’m thinking that maybe there is no goal in the sense of separation from us, that WE are the goal, and this life is just a means to realise that. Now I meditate because it gives me peace of mind, because there, inside of me exists a lonely warm space where I can feel alone, but not lonely, in peace with myself and the world.

Does God exist? I don’t know. I don’t care. I have responsibility to myself. Master is only a guide, nothing more and nothing less. We still need to love ourselves. We still need to take the action.

In my new position I feel good, knowing that things are not in my hands. Just for the record, last November I stopped going to satsangs and stopped giving speeches. I was glad to receive your mail, so I hope it was not the last one.

Love from _______

Wise thoughts. We think we know. But we really just believe. It can feel nasty to realize this truth. Yet what a gift it is.

If you believe you’re at your destination, but you aren’t, you’re much worse off than if you understood where you actually stand on the spiritual path. A mirage can look an awful lot like a pool of water. Sand can’t quench thirst, though.

It’s better to keep walking across the desert than to mistakenly consider that an oasis is real.

Breaking free of family influences

Bear with me, Church of the Churchless visitors. This personal story concludes with a churchless moral.

Idly watching a high school teen flick on Comedy Central, “She’s All That,” while stairmastering this afternoon, I was taken aback when a character spoke some lines that could have been said by me at his age—with some slight modifications.

I heard Zack, a senior, tell Laney (in so many words): “My dad wants me to go to Dartmouth. He always has. It’s just been expected of me. He’s always saying, ‘Zack, you’ve got to make up your mind about college.’ But I know what he means. I’m supposed to choose Dartmouth.”

Me too. My father graduated from Dartmouth. He never was a part of my life, though, so that isn’t where the pressure came from. It was my grandfather who was dead set on me going to his alma mater, Dartmouth, and its associated Tuck Business School.

Grandpa Lewis was a New England businessman. He was a founder of the Lewis-Shepherd Company, which made electric lift trucks (a.k.a. “materials handling systems”). His eldest son, Jack, was his heir apparent. I was the oldest male in the next generation, my mother being Jack’s sister and Grandpa Lewis’ daughter.

So it was taken for granted that I’d eventually head up the family business. That was simply how things were supposed to be. Unquestioned. When I became a teenager, I remember that I started getting Dartmouth sweatshirts for Christmas from my grandfather. Every year. Whoopee. Just what I didn’t want.

When college began to loom closer, I learned more about Dartmouth. A men’s school. In New Hampshire. Ergo, no girls. And cold. Just what I didn’t want. I was a sunny California boy.

It wasn’t difficult for me to decide that there was no way I was going to Dartmouth. The idea of dedicating my life to selling electric lift trucks didn’t thrill me either. I wanted to major in journalism. I applied to U.S.C. and was accepted.

The tough part was telling my family what I wanted to do; my mother, uncle, grandfather—they all were zeroed in on me attending frigid girl-free Dartmouth. I can’t recall how I broke the news. I do remember that it wasn’t received well. A lot of Dartmouth momentum had built up over the years. My family had my future all planned out for me. Problem was, it wasn’t the future I was drawn toward.

Happily, my mother understood. Maybe she never was all that keen on me being the Lewis-Shepherd businessman of the next generation. She was an intellectual, a truth-seeker. I’m sure there is truth in electric lift trucks, but it wasn’t the sort that my philosophical mind was attracted to. My mother could relate to that.

I ended up going to San Jose State College, about as distant from Dartmouth (in many ways) as you could get. I was admitted to an experimental program called Tutorials in Letters and Sciences. Each semester of my freshman and sophomore years was spent in a single twelve unit “class,” plus three units of electives.

The class was all small group seminar discussion. No more than ten students and a professor. Lots of reading. Lots of writing. Lots of thinking. Lots of discussion. The idea was to take a single period of history, such as the early Greeks or the Renaissance, and simultaneously study the literature, art, science, politics, and whatnot of the time.

It was great. I loved it. Wasn’t Dartmouth. Was just what I needed.

And what I wouldn’t have experienced if I’d marched in step with family tradition. Which gets me, finally, to my churchless theme. My family wasn’t religious. Business was what they had faith in, understandably. It had provided a good life for my grandfather, uncle, and other family members. I was supposed to believe in business too.

I couldn’t. I wasn’t cut out to be a traditional businessman. That wasn’t my way, my calling, my karma, my destiny, whatever you want to call it. I feel fortunate that I wasn’t also pressured to follow a certain religion, as so many children are. Probably the pressure to believe in a certain fashion about God is more powerful than the pressure to believe in a certain fashion about how best to make money.

Make your own choices. Don’t blindly follow in your family’s footsteps. That’s my simple moral. There’s a complication, though.

It’s easy—almost inevitable, in fact—to become your own “ancestor” as you grow older. You’re seemingly emancipated from external family pressure, but now you’re generating your own traditions that you feel beholden to.

“I’ve always had these beliefs about God. I’ve always worshipped in this way. I need to honor my heritage.”

No, you don’t. You can change your mind. You can make an abrupt change of direction. You can head in any spiritual direction. You can start a new tradition at any moment.

My mother taught me that when she fully supported my non-Dartmouth college choice. Happy Mother’s Day, wherever or however you are. You’re still living in me and your other child, Carol Ann. We’re independent, just like you were. Your gift to us keeps on giving.

I meet a true guru

Today I met an honest-to-god guru. I trusted him immediately. He was warm, humble, forthright, genuine, and an evident master. I laid my problems before him. He listened patiently and then gave me some sage advice. I took it. And I’m considerably happier now.

My mountain bike is in much better shape after the ministrations of my guru. His name is Brad. He works at Eurosports in Sisters, Oregon. He taught me a lot this afternoon. I only wish that spiritual teachers were equally capable of resolving my questions and problems. But they’re not.

I could watch Brad affix an Armadillo tire to my rear rim so I’d (likely) never get a flat; I saw him adjust my front brake much more efficiently than I could; I heard him say, “your front tire pressure is 20 and it should be 40” after a quick press of his fingers (and a tire gauge proved him correct); I listened attentively when he said that the angle of my seat was scary and realized, after sitting on it following his adjustment, that my crotch indeed was more comfortable now (an important consideration for me, and all men).

In less than thirty minutes I got more proof of a bike shop guru’s competence than I’ve gotten during thirty years of my connection with a spiritual guru—which I’ve written about frequently in posts under the “Radha Soami Satsang Beas” category on this weblog.

Of course, it isn’t fair to compare the two gurus. Brad was dealing with a material entity, my mountain bike. Charan Singh, the spiritual guru who initiated me in 1971, supposedly has been dealing with an immaterial entity, my soul. I can tell how well Brad knows his stuff by how my bike handles. With my soul, it’s devilishly difficult to fathom what changes, if any, are taking place.

Which points to the problem of having blind faith in any sort of spiritual or religious “guru,” whether this be a human being, holy scripture, angelic entity, theological dogma, organized institution, or whatever. How do you know whether a guru is for real when the domain of his purported mastership isn’t on the physical plane?

If Brad had listened to my concerns about the condition of my bike and merely responded with, “Have faith that all will be well one day; just keep riding with a loose brake and puncture prone tire; if you ever can’t stop or get a flat, know that it is your destiny and be thankful for what the Bicycle God has given you,” I would have walked out of his store.

Yet this is basically the deal offered by virtually every Religion Shop on the planet: we don’t fix your screwed up soul now; you’ll have to wait until after you die to get the proof that our spiritual repair job worked. However, we’re pleased to accept your money, devotion, and obeisance now, thank you.

I realize that most people look to their religion for physical as well as spiritual benefits. Among other things, they enjoy the companionship of fellow believers and the opportunity to engage in charitable activities. But the thing is, if Brad had just made me feel welcome in his shop and pointed me toward the United Way jar on his counter, I wouldn’t have been satisfied.

I wanted my bike fixed! That’s what a bike shop is supposed to do. Likewise, I’m looking for spiritual fixes in a religion shop, not extraneous goodies that I can obtain equally well elsewhere. If it feels like my soul isn’t handling any better after many years of work on it, then I’m going to follow a different approach.

I’m not into endlessly deferred spiritual gratification. That’s the province of religion. My tilt is toward the mystical side of spirituality. That’s the home of people who want to soul-ride fast, loose, and free now, not after death.

Each of us has to decide on his or her own how well a spiritual repair job is going. It’s an intuitive judgment, not an objective determination. I could watch Brad spin my front wheel around until the rim was skimming past the brakes without obstruction. When it comes to my soul, I’ve got to trust my inner sense of what is properly balanced and what isn’t.

When I went into Eurosports today my main goal was to get a Armadillo tire put on. Then, when I was watching Brad install it on the rim, I thought about asking if he could adjust the front brake.

“I could understand if you don’t want to show me how to do it myself,” I told him semi-seriously. “If all your customers could do many of their own adjustments, you’d have considerably less business.” Brad replied, “I want people to know how to fix their own bicycles. Here, this is how you should adjust the brake.”

I watched. I learned. Next time there’s too much play in the brake handle, I should be able to, well, handle it myself. Brad is a good guru. He wants his “disciples” who enter the store to leave knowing what he knows. Or, at least as much as he can convey in the time he has available to chat with customers.

If your religion or spiritual path isn’t doing the same—trying to make you truly independent—it’s time to find a “guru” who doesn’t foster dependency. Ride free. Worship free.

I establish a new religion, Galobet. Believe!

A few days ago I had a revelation. Galobet spoke to me. That’s the true name of God. I’m sure of that, because the God who wants us to know him as Galobet told me. So my advice is: believe!

Unless you don’t want to. In that case, I’m not responsible for how Galobet responds. You’ve been warned.

Here’s the story of my revelation. It will undoubtedly be told throughout the ages. Or at least as long as my TypePad blog account is paid up. I begin with the first of a series of miraculous occurrences.

LifeSource Natural Foods had a type of coffee on sale that I hadn’t bought before, an organic Fair Trade french roast. Since I always buy whatever is cheapest, the beans came home with me. And got ground.

Then, made into a cup of coffee on the Most Holy Day, Monday, April 17, 2006--when Galobet was revealed to the world though me, Galobet’s unhumble servant. The miracle is that this particular french roast was damn strong. Even stronger than the strong coffee that I habitually brew every morning.

So after sipping my way through some pre-meditation reading, my consciousness was marvelously attuned to Galobet’s divine message. I was flying high on the swiftly beating wings of caffeine. This proximity to Galobet’s heavenly realm allowed me to hear his words (I’m not sure if Galobet is a “he,” but since I am, and I’m Galobet’s chosen messenger, I’m going with the masculine pronoun.)

“I am all of the gods so far known to humankind. And yet I am so much more, my beloved Brian. You are destined to reveal my nature to the world.”

Understand, Galobet hadn’t yet spoken his name to me. All I knew was that a godly entity was communicating with me. This being had the power to form thoughts in my mind, so akin to my own that there was scarcely a hairsbreadth of difference between them. Such is the glory of Galobet—Oneness.

I was impelled to grab pen and paper. I felt Galobet’s guidance flowing through the sacred medium of the super strong cup of french roast coffee that enabled me to discern the mysteries of the cosmos with marvelous clarity.

Everything was becoming crystal clear, in much the same way as I remember my college statistics textbook becoming so much more interesting after a Benzedrine or two. Except, this natural high came from organic Fair Trade beans. And Galobet was directing my thoughts. He wanted to be known. I was to be his messenger.

I started jotting down the names of God associated with the major religions. I threw in Neoplatonism, even though it isn’t really a religion, because it is a philosophy that forms the root of many faiths. Not that I need to explain myself. Galobet can do whatever he wants; I am simply a tool in his mighty hand.

God—Christianity
Allah—Islam
Lord—Judaism
Brahman—Hinduism
Tao—Taoism
One—Neoplatonism
Emptiness—Buddhism

There was something here. I knew it. But Galobet wanted me to struggle with his revelation a bit. I wrote down the first letter of each name of God. I rearranged them in various ways. At first I had “Jehovah” for Judaism, but suddenly “Lord” struck me as a better choice.

I went from JAGBEOT to JAGOBET to LAGOBET. And then came the divine inspiration:

GALOBET. Right away it just seemed so…right. I had revealed the name of God, the God who encompasses all other gods, the God who was using my caffeine-soaked brain as his revelatory blackboard.

Praise be Galobet’s name, I present here the sacred piece of paper on which his nature first was revealed. I am ashamed to admit that when I lovingly placed this holy text in my scanner, I thought, “If only I had known that I was to be Galobet’s earthly messenger, I wouldn’t have put a free notepad from a gun shop in my meditation area.”

But then I realized, “Brian, how little is your faith. Galobet makes no mistakes. His will is supreme. If anyone looks down upon this revelation merely because of the paper on which it was written, they should be sorry for their failing, not you.” Ah, how true. The message is more important than either the messenger or the messenger’s gun shop notepad.

This message is so deep and profound I have barely begun to scratch the surface of it in this post. I must be content with just a few preliminary observations. We see that the true holy name is divided into three areas: GAL, the Western names of God, Allah, and Lord; O, the bridging Neoplatonist name of One; and BET, the Eastern names of Brahman, Emptiness, and Tao.

I leave it to the Galobet theologians who surely will follow in my footsteps to consider the possible meanings of “GAL” and “BET.” On the face of it, Galobet is hinting at his feminine predilections and the likelihood that given a choice between the gods of West and East, the East has better odds of being true.

My readers, in this divine communication I have tested your capacity for absorbing miraculousness. But please, permit me to share one final example of Galobet’s revelatory wonders.

After learning the true name of God, I decided to consult Google to see if there had been any false prophets before me. I typed in “Galobet” and waited a few seconds. The results appeared.

Just 104 of them. Not many. And what was the #1 Galobet search result: this.

Praise Galobet! I asked a German speaking friend, Irmgard, to translate “Der herr mine Gott.” She wrote back to me:

Hi Brian, This looks like perhaps Pennsylvania Dutch, Mennonite or some other "pseudo" German. I'm sure this is what they are trying to say: Galobet (German Round of Praise) Galo -o-o-o-o-o-o-bet sigh Gelobt sei der Herr mein Gott Galo -o-o-o-o-o-o-bet sigh --Praise to the Lord, my God--- Der herr mine Gott. more literal translation: --Praised be the Lord, my God-- In very old German you will find the word for "praised" shown as gelobet, but any prayer books I have of even my great-grandmother is gelobt.

Is it possible not to believe, my friends?

Dance to your own music

I’m taking tango lessons. Hard to believe. But I’ve got proof. Check out my “We tango and also get tangled” post. A month has passed and we don’t get quite as tangled now. I’m enjoying tango much more than I thought I would.

It’s tempting to dive into an analysis of what I like about tango. However, the memory of some pithy advice I was given at the last class is still vivid: “Shut up and dance!”

That declarative statement was a gift, not an insult. Borrowing a favorite word from Steven Colbert, I enjoyed the marvelous truthiness of it. It came from the lips of an accomplished dancer who I hadn’t partnered with before.

For some reason I usually feel the need to make small talk when the instructor says “Women, rotate to the next partner” and I’m dancing with someone I haven’t met before. I asked this woman how long she’d been dancing. “A long time,” she said. I then said, “What do you like most about dancing?”

She looked at me like I was an idiot. Which, in the dancing world, I certainly am. I sensed that I’d made a dance faux pas. “I’ve never been asked that question,” she said. “I don’t know. I just love how dancing makes me feel. Free.”

I should have been aware enough to stop talking at that point. But no, I had to blab on about what I liked about dancing, based on my whole six-week experience. She listened politely for a while, then said: “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but shut up and dance.”

I did. Thankfully.

My dance partner wasn’t thinking “churchless” when she spoke those words, yet they jolted me back into the direct experience that exemplifies spirituality for me now. Heck, more than exemplifies—that’s all genuine spirituality is, direct experience. Everything else that’s added on, dogma, belief, faith, conceptions, interpretations, surmises, is an imitation, not the real thing.

Bill Long is a friend of mine. He’s also taking tango lessons. In some ways we’re a lot alike. Analytical. Wordy. Bill’s a law professor. Also, an author. Shakespeare aficionado. Biblical scholar. Prolific essayist.

Recently Bill wrote two essays about tango and life. I liked them a lot. They’re about dancing—the kind you do to outward music, and also the kind you do to inward music. I highly recommend them to Church of the Churchless visitors. You may not be much into the first kind of dancing but all of us move to inner rhythms.

The question is, what music are we dancing to? Our own, or someone else’s? When it comes to how we live our life, are we original composers or imitators?

These questions are particularly apropos in the area of spirituality. Traditional religions offer up ready-made answers to life’s biggest mysteries. God. Life after death. Creation of the universe. We can either choose to march to the beat of someone else’s spiritual drum or follow the unique rhythm that is heard by us alone.

Bill’s “Tango and Life” essay contains an fascinating story about an influential tango composer, Astor Piazolla. It’s about how four blunt words from a woman changed his life forever. Read it.

Then move on to “Tango and Life II.” Here Bill talks about three lessons about life that he’s learning on the dance floor. (1) The man leads, (2) Always stand chest to chest, and (3) You communicate without talking.

Leading and following is a subtle thing that I’m just beginning to understand. When Bill says, “The man leads,” there’s a lot more going on than simply pulling the woman around on the end of a dance-rope. It’s all about the interplay of yin and yang, cosmic forces reflected in tango steps.

The Tango Moments web site has a nice piece on The Gender Relationship in tango. It contains some wise advice for anyone seeking to integrate the yin and yang of themselves.