"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." -Mahatma Gandhi

How often do I dismiss the wonderful things I have experienced, the beautiful people I've met or the wisdom I've gained? For the last several weeks I was far from mindful when I allowed myself to slip into a downward spiral of depression.

"Have good trust in yourself- not the one you think you should be, but the one that you are." 

-Taizan Maezumi Roshi

I've been paying a lot of attention to an intuitive calling which I feel was pointing me toward work in education. Sharing, offering instruction and coaching create tons of enjoyment in my life. There's never a feeling of superiority that arises; but rather, love is the driving force. I love you as I love myself. This stems from how I feel about the lack of self in opposition to the other. You ARE me, and I am you.

That said, recently I wasn't treating us too kindly. When I didn't get the teaching job I applied for with the local school district, I could feel the sadness take hold. I saw it coming from a mile away. I know this because I've seen it before. It's been a while, but I know where it can take me... and still I let it take over.

The couch was all too willing to hold me while self-pity washed over my mind like an over sized security blanket. Exercise was non-existent. Youtube videos, mindless programs on Netflix and many naps filled my days. Where had the real me gone? Or was this current state my true nature? Were all the joys I'd found in the prior months' experiences just some simple pieces of short-lived pleasure? Was I merely indulging in slices of the chocolate cake of life?

When I truly felt like I couldn't take it anymore- no thoughts of suicide or anything drastic- a friend urged me to look outside myself. She reminded me of my recent claims where I shared the joys of helping others. So why was I laying on the couch? Who was this helping?

"You are what you think about all day."  -Allen Ginsberg

So this past weekend I spent two nights sleeping in my car in the San Bernardino National Forest. It was a wonderful respite from the 100+ degrees I've been experiencing in the low desert of Southeastern California. The Yokoji Zen Mountain Center (zmc.org) has been requesting the assistance of volunteers from the Zen community. Their beautiful mountain side retreat and training center had been badly damaged by the mudslides which followed the Mountain Fire last month. I chose to drive up there with shovel in hand to help out. And that was the last moment I spent dwelling on poor little ol' me.

Saturday morning we shoveled for hours and removed several feet of stubborn mud from the entrance to the zendo. The photo above is of a car locked and abandoned at the base of the Zen Mountain Center. The owner was later located and he returned to remove some valuables. I could only wonder what the Car Fax Report would say about this vehicle if re-sale was ever attempted!

For the rest of the day we lifted, rolled and carried large rocks which were placed in strategic flood-blocking positions. Sandbags were filled by the dozen while we volunteers joked about things like county music lyrics to pass the time and distract us from mother nature's devastation. "But all my exes live in Texas," a few of us sang merrily with a silly southern draw, "and that's why I hang my hat in Tennessee." By day's end my back, wrists and hands were at their breaking points. I noticed briefly my depressing thoughts of self-pity and sadness were now mostly non-existent.

"Just don't do something, sit there!" -Unknown

I thoroughly enjoyed a much needed hour of Zazen practice with a large group on Sunday at Yokoji. And again this morning (Monday, 9/16) I sat (meditated) for a solid half hour. Lying down on the floor, I remained staring at the ceiling for another twenty minutes or so. I felt an awesome sense of serenity and calm abiding wash over my being. I'm pretty sure that meditation practice is not about finding some elusive state of eternal happiness. It is the ability which comes over time to see what is really happening in this moment AS IT IS. I pondered this and then I thought about what another friend said to me recently: "you are not the circumstances of life."

So how do I learn from all this? How can I avoid the panic and the fear in the future? I'm not sure of any cures, but I will remember the events of this past weekend. This was a time when I got out of self, left isolation for a moment or two and listened to the advice of loved ones.

Humbly yours,
Carl

"We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want." -Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 11)

More from The Tao:

"When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever."


I'm not sure of why I feel the need to post these writings today. Some days all the quotes in the world mean nothing to me, while other days every word flies off the printed page and hits me right where I need to be struck. The yin-and-yang of life is in full swing for me right now. I am so conflicted with feelings and facts. Today I am trying desperately to follow my intuition and stay in the flow. And yet that statement alone sounds clingy and may be a major trigger for some more self-induced suffering.

There is one major aspect of life I'm most grateful for: having choices. I shy away from words like decision. I prefer the word choice. When uttered aloud, you cannot keep from smiling when you position the mouth to express the word. Choice: this word can spring from my subconscious another word: rejoice. Follow this one further down the linguistic rabbit hole and you come to the word joy. 

“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.”  

-Thich Nhat Hanh

Yesterday a wonderful yoga class was where I found a place for my breathing to anchor itself. The instructor told us that the mind was not invited to play in this activity. He must have reminded us a hundred times to focus on the breath, to stop thinking, and to pay attention to the body. Yoga without awareness of breath is just stretching. Yoga is a Sanskrit word that is often translated as union. After I left yesterday's class my mind and body felt more united with the world around me. As new experiences present new difficulties I must remind myself that I have places to go during turbulent times. Yoga, meditation and some simple acts of stillness can serve as the shift my overactive mind so desperately needs to get out of suffering.


Mark Twain once said:

"My life has been filled with terrible misfortunes... most of which never happened. Life does not consist mainly, or even largely of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head."

Forever appreciative that FEELINGS ARE NOT FACTS,
Carl

"Seek patience and passion in equal amounts. Patience alone will not build the temple. Passion alone will destroy its walls." -Maya Angelou

While listening to a podcast on patience this morning, I found the following to be very interesting (from Zencast, August 12, 2012 speaker: Andrea Fella):

"There is an aspect of patience that is related to a tolerance of difficulty: patience under insult, sometimes it's said. So this kind of patience can have an active quality to it. Martin Luther King spoke so beautifully of this kind of patience and how it relates to love. Here is an excerpt from his famous 1963 speech about the philosophy of love:"

"There's another thing about this philosophy that says you can stand before an unjust system and resist it with all your might, and yet maintain an attitude of active goodwill toward the perpetrators of that unjust system. The ethic of love can stand at the center of the non-violent movement.

Theologians would say that this is the love of God operating in the human heart. When one rises to love on this level, he loves every man. He rises to the point of loving the person who does the evil deed while hating the deed that that person does. I believe this is the kind of love that can carry us through this period of transition.

So in many instances we have been able to stand before the most violent opponents and say in substance: we will meet your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and as difficult as that is, we shall still love you. 

But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. And one day we will win freedom. And we will not only win freedom for ourselves, but we will appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory."

Living freely... and patiently,
Carl

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young." -Henry Ford

During recent months of self discovery, I've found that working with others opens vast gateways into my own awareness. The other day I was practicing with a close friend. We simply guided each other in a body awareness meditation. With our eyes closed, we focused our awareness on the simple task of sensing the existence of the right hand. Feeling the hand (without moving or using it), and connecting to it with a deeper realization, one can actually breathe into the tips of the fingers. Through this simple act of becoming aware of a body part, we are able to make solid contact with our true nature. Our experiencing, or the awareness of all experiences, is who we really are.

The more I learn from others the richer my life becomes. Each day I wake with vigor for a fresh start to the new day. I look forward to every opportunity to meet someone new, experience something unknown or question the status quo. Living by the mantra, "I know nothing; and therefore, anything is possible," I mindfully keep my life in constant flow. There are NO bad days.

"When we have arrived at the question, the answer is already near." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Currently I'm struggling with re-learning algebra. I don't use it regularly, so like the foreign language classes of high school, algebra has long been forgotten. But I must display a solid understanding of math, reading comprehension and creative writing in order to obtain a California substitute teaching credential.

"Learning teaches you how to learn." -Jerry Brown

I believe real learning only occurs when both the teacher and the student are taught. We all have within us the inherent ability to be our own therapists. In Buddhism, we dedicate the positive energy from the teachings of the Buddha to attain enlightenment as quickly as possible for the benefit of all sentient beings. And what is enlightenment? Simply put, the goal is to return to our true nature, recognizing our noble birthright of freedom in any given moment. We practice to develop a mind which functions using all the positive qualities and is free from all negative states.

Aside from the time spent on my studies, lately I've been very fortunate to share the practice of mindfulness meditation with a close friend living in another country. I am so excited with the progress she has made. When we first met up via Skype, she shared her feelings of being scared and anxious on a daily basis. She holds a position of authority in the field of education, yet she was constantly concerned about the reactions and mind-made stories she perceived others to think about her. As a result she used a lot energy trying to cope with the emotions generated from these thoughts.

Following our initial "sitting" of merely a few short moments of deep breathing, she wept tears of joy and immediately re-connected with a her true essence. I was amazed and overcome with happiness in her quick progress. In the months since, she has touched some very deep places in her meditation practice. While working together, she has expanded my concept of mindfulness of the body. As someone who felt as if he lived merely above the neck, I now regurlarly enjoy sensing the connection between my thinker and my body. For this and countless other reasons, I am truly blessed to have her in my life today.

"Coming together is a beginning;

keeping together is progress;

working together is success."

-Henry Ford

In eternal togetherness,
Carl

“Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.” -Karl Wallenda

What are you waiting for Carl? It’s not going to get any easier; it’s not going to become any less frightful. Until you step onto the path that you feel drawn to, you will not find the courage and any other ingredient that your circumstances are requiring from you. So when you’re done with waiting, I will meet you on your tightrope of life, I’ll be waiting for you as long as you will be. It cannot happen without you Carl. 

 - The UNIVERSE -

This may be a strange way to start the blog (and this may sound even stranger), but each morning I receive an email message like this from the universe. Of course you can substitute the word universe with god, source, mother nature, etc. Some days the messages are less fitting than others. But more often than not, something in the electronically generated passage goes deep within me.

This is why I gave up reading the news, memorizing sports statistics and engaging in gossip. If we have such limited amounts of room in the brain, I now choose to fill the storage locker of my mind with lessons for growth. I still get frustrated when friends and family reply with the "I'm soooo busy" excuse (and I'm guilty too, just more aware of it today). Yet we can find ample amounts of time in the same 24 hour day to view greedy corporate advertisements disguising themselves as entertainment.

I should be staying busy studying for a test to help me begin a new career. But I couldn't look away from a documentary I caught on Netflix last night:

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Starsuckers/70126825?trkid=8133737

I don't know if the link will get you there without a subscription, so here's the IMDB and Wikipedia pages:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1510934/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starsuckers

"To be creative, just show up at the canvas, the paper. Pick up the paintbrush, the pencil. Begin."

-Annie Zalezsak 

And I can recall with great clarity the words of Steve Chandler in his book "100 Ways to Motivate Yourself." He simply stated, "the starting IS the doing."

So I begin. Finally stepping off the practice platform of negotiation, I'm embarking feet first in a career teaching young people. In a few weeks time I will take the CBEST. This is a state government mandated test to measure my abilities in math, reading and writing. I will be interviewed by the local school district administration, and later the school  board will decide if I may be entrusted in the precious handling of our greatest assets. 

I tend to avoid using the term children because labels only further separate me from them. Although I may be larger in size and have lived on this planet longer, I am in no way superior to the young. In these mindful efforts I will begin to make a difference: one student at a time If I must.

One of the shocking items I discovered while watching the aforementioned documentary "Starsuckers" involved the amount of time students use daily on electronic media. It was observed that kids spend three times the amount of hours engaging in electronic devices (mostly for the purposes of entertainment) than in total time spent at school! 

How often have we complained in an inquiring fashion, "what's wrong with kids today?" But I ask you to peel the onion back a little further than that. Who is it that sells, manufacturers and advertises these devices? Who makes the pornographically violent movies? And the drug companies administering mind altering substances to increase attention- who runs those?

Adults are responsible for all these. And it's a sad commentary on society today, but nonetheless appropriate: we do in fact eat our young. Greed for money, fame and power drives our insatiable appetite to devour the energy of the youth and fatten our grown up wallets.

So instead, I ask you, "what's wrong with adults these days?"

Put down the remote control, e-tablet and earbuds and sit quietly with me while we ignore what corporations tell us is important.

I'll be waiting for you on my meditation cushion. 

We can begin together,

Carl

"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world." -Hans Margolius

So what is meditation anyway?

And why should we "practice?"

Answers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ybfztsEO-7I

Jack Kornfield, The Practice of Meditation (excerpt) - Thinking Allowed with Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove by ThinkingAllowedTV

NOTE: This is an excerpt from a 30-minute DVD. http://www.thinkingallowed.com/2jkornfield.html Through quieting the mind we become aware of our unconscious tensions and the act of awareness itself serves to heal those tensions. Buddhist teacher of Vipassana (mindfulness) meditation, clinical psychologist and author of Living Masters of Buddhism and A Clear Forest Pool, Jack Kornfield, Ph.D., seeks out the factors common to all varieties of meditation.

"A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving." -Lao Tzu

If I've ever labeled myself a spiritual seeker, then what is that is being sought? And how will I know when I've found it? Perhaps the journey is more significant than the destination. I've pursued the meaning of nirvana and was delighted to find it was a present-moment based concept. The last year or so has been filled with travel. And all the while I haven't owned a personal vehicle since October of 2011.

In the few short years since my last "real job," I've discovered the freeing philosophy of the Buddha, participated in Bhakti Yoga (including Kirtan chants) and attended a multitude of popular western denominational church services. If there is one common appreciation I've gained from the different spiritual venues, it has been that of fellowship. As my mother explained when I would whine about not wanting to attend Sunday services at the local UCC (United Church of Christ):

Me: but can't I just pray at home, isn't God listening to me here?
Mom: of course you can, but imagine when you pray that you are one candle shining your light to God.
Me: OK...
Mom: well, when we attend services and worship with others, it's like all the candles coming together shining a larger, more powerful light to God
Me: hmmmm....

Today I can appreciate her words more thoroughly through firsthand experience. It's just like the concept of interdependence. Surely we are stronger together than we could ever be by ourselves.

So where will this soul-searching lead? If I have no expectations, might I also live my life without disappointments? Non-duality is new concept for me, so I won't try and elaborate on it now. If most answers lie within (matters of truth regarding our soul/spirit/source), then is ultimate freedom already inside my very being?

“If you find me not within, you will never find me...... For I have been with you from the beginning.”  -Rumi

Stay free,
Carl