30 second meditations...

 These tiny tune videos are created to allow time for people to reflect each Sunday morning on what they have heard. 

I think I would prefer to say, “Clear your mind. Come into now fully.  Allow yourself to just be without thinking. Just breathe.”

I think I would prefer to say, “Take a deep breath.  Let it out slowly as you let go of all judgment against life, others, and yourself.  Come into this moment and feel the joy of being begin to well up in you as you let go of all attachments. Peace comes when we accept life as it is in this moment.” 

More fun with music

 Here are a few more short reflection songs for meditation which I create for our little online church in SoCal.  

Composing and creating

This is a short tune I had fun playing with the other day.  I call it Grief Falls Like Rain.  Based on a tune I heard in a Chinese or Korean mini-series, it might seem like an oxymoron to talk about having fun while composing songs about grief or laments.  But there is a creative joy that wells up, even when the subject matter seems so serious or somber.  I wrote a couple of tiny tunes that deal with this subject of grief and sorrow. However, for me, there is a freedom in accepting that this is what the song is about, as I accept my own mortality.  This world of physical, temporary forms is losing its grip on me.  I feel my own form beginning to slip away, and I am at peace with that.  Having said that, I do not know when I will lay down “this mortal shell” as my dad called it, but I am at complete peace in accepting that this temporary form, my physical body, was never meant to last forever.  The deeper part of me, or the spirit part of me which is connected to greater whole, to God, to the universe, gladly embraces the spiritual dimension.  

As I get older, I find that letting go of who I thought I was, or who I thought I should be, or what I thought I should have accomplished by now, becomes less and less important.  There is a sweetness in letting go of attachments to everything in this world.  Those attachments to material things are easiest to let go of.  Things, stuff, material possessions have a way of owning us, rather than the other way around.  “My car”, “my body”, “my money”.... I've never had a problem of letting go of material things.  Even now, letting go of relationships is easier for me... “my family”, “my friends”...I should say, letting go of my attempts to control or own or find my identity in those relationships is fading.   Even letting go of what I believe...or what I think defines me... “my religion”, “my thoughts”, “my ideas”, those intangible attachments which I often confuse as somehow defining me are sometimes the hardest to let go.    But there is freedom in letting go, of no longer trying to define myself by those externals.    

"Misery comes when we fret and worry and obsess about what we are not or what we don’t have.  But gratitude really does allow me to see the beauty around me now and the enoughness of this moment." 

I think, if I am honest, letting go of my dreams of how I thought my life could have turned out are the most illusory, and by far, the most deceptive.  After all, none of us have any guarantees of a long, fulfilled future life.  The future is an illusion.  The only moment that actually exists is right now, continuously unfolding,  as Tolle points out over and over.  But these attachments to unfulfilled dreams of romance or a home or a successful career or whatever it might be for each of us....those are harder to let go of, until I come back to the present moment.  

A new friend recently asked me, "Why aren't you married?"  Well, that's a loaded question in itself, fraught with all of its built-in expectations that I cannot live a fulfilled life without another person to validate my existence.  But putting that aside, because she was only asking out of curiosity and because she loves me, I tried to find an honest answer.  I mean, life isn't that simple, is it? I can't just decide to get married by myself!  There needs to be another willing party.  LOL!   I was engaged once.   Once upon a time, when I was young and foolish I thought I was in love.  I can see now that what I called love was infatuation and truly selfish in nature.  We were both selfish.  That is not love.  I could lament that I am not in a relationship now, but what is the point of lamenting what does not exist?  My life is as it is.  I would not change any of my choices.  Because no matter where I have landed, I have always found incredible, lovely, kind, shining people.  I have friends all over the world, from France, Belgium, Italy, India, Oregon, Oklahoma, Texas, and here in California.  So, instead of lamenting something that is not, I rejoice in what I do have:  FABULOUS friends!  

I could lament that I do not own a home or even furniture anymore...but those are just things.  I’m comfortable giving away everything I have.  In fact, I'm on a mission to get rid of every nonessential item in my current possession.  I could lament that I don’t have a bigger income or a thriving career.  I remind myself that "more" is not always more, but can be a trap.  And the trap of wanting more than what I have leads to discontentment or what Tolle calls “mostly useless thinking” (see Eckhart Tolle), based in either regretting the past or regretting a future that will never be.  

When I wake in the night and feel overwhelmed as physical pain stabs at my left breast, I pause between spasms of pain, and I feel the joy of accepting what is, of feeling the beauty of this broken body, and gratitude for now begins to comfort me.  Misery comes when we fret and worry and obsess about what we are not or what we don’t have.  Misery focuses on lack and Neverland, that obscure world of the “nevers” of the future.... “I’ll never have ________....I'll never be _________."   But gratitude really does allow me to see the beauty around me now and the enoughness of this moment. 

Isn’t it miraculous that I have lived and had enough to eat or had a roof over my head my whole life?   Isn’t it miraculous that as this physical body begins to shut down, and we are spinning in space at nearly 1,000 mph on this wonder planet filled with life, that I get to let go of attachments to this world?  Isn’t it amazing that we can experience joy and peace and love at the deepest levels of who we are?  Those qualities of joy, peace and love are not dependent upon circumstances to line up the way I think or demand they should.   No, the real peace and joy of being transcend circumstances.  So whether my body is breaking down or in health, I can have peace.  Whether I am rich or poor, I can find joy in every circumstance.  Whether I am accepted or cherished by my family or not, I can know a deeper love for them which transcends all the judgments and which covers all sins with forgiveness.  

More thoughts on Revelation and wilderness

 Thoughts as I walk in the wilderness and listen to Russell Brand’s Revelation:

What I can learn from 12 step groups:

• Ritual helps us “give up our addictions” more easily.  Well. Maybe not “more easily” but at least, perhaps less fractiously.  
• Tokens are handed out for milestone moments... 40 days without drugs... maybe 40 days without food for me (with medical supervision, of course).

“We are the unfolding path that we walk upon.  Unless we can walk with grace,  we are already fallen.” Russell Brand, Revelation. 

Other quotes I’m embracing this week:

“The more grateful I am, the more beauty I see.”- Mary Davis

“Earth's crammed with heaven, 

And every common bush afire with God, 

But only he who sees takes off his shoes;

The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Wow!  The more I examine this tiny verse, the more impactful and insightful, even incarnational, it becomes to me.  While I always understood the first part as a recognition of the sacred all around us, even in us, I only ever understood the second part about others as dismissive of those who don’t perceive the sacred.  Maybe I’m imbuing too much of my own limited perspective on this, but this is a profound insight into the ego-mind or the carnal mind, the unconscious mind-driven self.  Those who do not perceive the sacred all around them and in them do only what is natural to the mind divorced from the sacred.  They commodify or use the mundane for self-gratification, thus making it profane.  As we already know, the sacred and the mundane are one and the same.  It is a matter of perception, or in the latter case of the blackberry pickers, it is a misperception, an inability to recognize the sacred in everything.  This blindness to the sacred all around is the great disconnect we talk of sustainability circles.  It is our disconnection from the sacred that leads us to plunder and pillage the earth for our own selfish gain, to oppress and objectify “others” and thus, to commit acts of violence.  This is not a judgment on blackberry pickers, either.  There is nothing wrong with satisfying your natural cravings for food, right?  Browning’s longer form of this verse from Aurora Leigh points to this dichotomy in the human world of both sacred and profane all around us.

In Native American tribes like the Inuit and Aleuts or the Amazonian tribes like the Achuar, this common, global problem of greed, corrupt systems,  pollution and social disparities is perceived as only an external sign of a spiritual problem or a disconnection with spirit.  This is why Jesus said that if you fix a man’s eyes, the whole man would see clearly.  “But when your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!”( NLB)

Purple-hued mountains and bushes.  Clouds of lavender and deep purple flowers.  The luscious scent of Lilac and buttercups wafting from the pale blue and purple butterfly bushes in the wilderness.  Everything  was alive.  The birds sang and chirped and cawed.  The ants seemed to frolic as they hurried about their business.  The bees seemed to hum with aliveness.  Pinks, reds, magentas, purples, lavenders, white blossoms, brilliant yellows, neon oranges, spring greens, bluish sage... every color seemed more vibrant than ever before.  

Even lizards- black, brown, gray, or one iridescent aqua and turquoise blue- seemed to dance and leap.  A falcon allowed me to approach it.  I heard a bird in the preserve calling.  It reminded me of the sweet call of the red-winged black bird back home every spring.  

Tiny little green finches gather up the dandelion seeds.  My mother was right.  Why keep a lawn without dandelions?  What will the beautiful, little finches eat when they migrate through this land if everyone poisons the dandelions? I saw a dead hummingbird, its iridescent green feathers dulling.  I wondered had it died of natural causes? Had the fierce winds yesterday knocked it down and killed it?  I stopped for a moment to thank the bird for its beauty and its life.  I wondered if it had a grieving partner somewhere?  I thanked the tiny bird for its participation in this physical form, for its contribution to the dance of life.  

I remembered the sweet, gentle mourning dove yesterday.  As I approached along the sidewalk, I saw it lying perfectly still in the middle of the sidewalk.  I drew closer.  It did not move.  I drew closer still, not wanting to frighten it, but wondering if it had been injured? Then, it flew away! And there on the sidewalk where it had lain was a tiny, damp feathered baby dove.  The winds had blown it from the nest and the mother was sitting on her baby, warming it, cuddling it, protecting it beneath her outspread wings. 

I thought of all the lovely redbud trees and the rocks, many pebbles which seem to find their way into the tread of my shoes... I thought about what it means to ‘be Zen’.  Zen is to be alive to this moment, to all of life as it is, to be like a tree.  Trees do not toil and strain.  They do not complain or make up useless stories about either how great they are or how despicable or how victimized they are.  They simply are.  

Does that mean that trees do not have hardships?  Of course not.  Just look at the tree in my yard, its bark wounded and scarred from the childish trauma inflicted by my young nephew.  Those wounds now allow the infestation of bacteria and insects.  Or look at the twisted, bent-over trunks along my usual path up to the mountains behind my home. The Santa Ana winds are a destructive force to be reckoned with.  Many trees are uprooted each year or branches broken.  To be Zen is to be at peace with what is, to be present now, doing whatever you do now because this is just what you do.  To be Zen is to be one with all of life. To be fully present.  This is the sacred dance, the awareness of the underlying life in all, the connection of community, the perception of beauty, of joy, of is-ness.  

Russell Brand’s Revelation :

Russell Brand's Revelation on Audible.com

It's April 1, 2021. A new day.  Today is Maundy Thursday in the liturgical calendar, the night in the church in which we remember the Last Supper, before the Christ was executed by people caught up in their ego-selves.

Listening to Russell Brand's Revelation: Connecting with the Sacred Everyday Life on Audible makes me want to laugh and cry and applaud his honesty about this addictive part of our lives. He is brilliant yet down to earth, logical but spiritual, profound yet simple, human but definitely looking for the divine...

Like his own chapter 3 on the sacred and mundane, Russell Brand personifies both. And he points out that we all are both sacred and mundane. We are both ordinary and extraordinary. His line of reasoning is spot on! When he talks in chapter 2 about our human systems of oppression and ego-centric selves, there is still hope! It is not depressing, but enlightening! There is a sense of joy, even as he deliberates his own bouts with hypocrisy. His openness about his own struggles with ego self, materialism, addiction, and awakening are refreshing! I sense a wave of new freedom! And as always, even with all of his intensity, there is humor. It's just breathtaking.

I'm going to listen to chapter 2 for the third time as I walk.  Something in what he said made me think of Jesus' 40 day fast.  It's still Lent for a few more days... maybe I will be able to let go of my own addictions this time and find out how and why Jesus fasted. I mean, I know it was about "dying to the false or ego self", but how do I let go of my own forms, while accepting them at the same time? Maybe my own hold on things and food and this sense of self will finally be broken. Maybe I can find true freedom from addiction. I don't want to just substitute one addiction for another: fasting for overeating, or addiction to exercise instead of overeating, or falling back into the addiction of judgment or even adopting a new addictive ideology, which feels really good and makes me feel "right and righteous". I want to truly lay all those down and find "God"... not my ideas of god or spirit, but find true spirituality, a wholistic, integrative way of seeing the universe and celebrating it and participating with it.

After Brand confesses his own participation through action and inaction in a global system which perpetrates crimes against the sacredness of the universe, he states, "The reason I want to talk to you about God, about revelation is because I believe we need a new way to conceptualize divinity and sacredness to survive. And if we don't, there is no point in surviving."

In chapter 2, Brand quotes the Kali Yuga. It sounds apocalyptic like the book of Revelation in the Bible.... yet, Brand points out that all these "disasters" are less like Nostradamic prophecy and more of a "prognosis based on deep knowledge of the principles that underwrite reality beyond perception"!!! Yes, thank you! This is logic. This is NOT fear based eschatology or end of the world hype, which feeds on the energy of more fear.... it's addictive! Fear feeds on fear. Fear turns to anger and hatred and violence.

I see my own family is practically paralyzed in fear and hatred and anger thanks to all the "End Time" preachers like Rev. David Wilkerson, Rev. John Hagee and Fox News' own cult leader, Tucker Carlson. While they lament the state of America (no sense of global, shared humanity or compassion here- there's no room for it with fear), they rush home nightly to feed their addiction to Tucker Carlson's End of the World diatribes and laments. This kind of prophecy does NOTHING to help humankind. It only leads to more fear, more distrust of "others", more "tyranny wrapped in an American flag" and thumping a Bible. I know this sounds really judgmental right now. But, I finally have compassion for those trapped in this ego-driven, fearful self. I was also caught up in that destructive way of perceiving the world for 50 years! I mean, what else can they do if they don't know that there is ANY other way to be in the world or to see the world? This type of insanity is the norm, as Eckhart Tolle very often points out. How can it be otherwise for them or for me or for any of us unless we take that immense leap into faith?

As Brand so simply puts it, this is a logical natural order and sequence or consequence of events. It is the natural, ordinary, even predictable outcome of human behavior! It's logical, not supernatural. Reflective of Jesus' own attitudes toward "sin" and "hell", seen as a natural consequence in this lifetime of our choices, rather than some future state of paradise for members-only or a future state of eternal damnation, this makes perfect sense. Yes, even the prediction that earthquakes and natural disasters will increase only makes sense when one recognizes the impermanence of this physical world or the basic laws of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy (or chaos and disorder) always increases with time! This isn't a dire prediction of doom and gloom for the future, but a "revelation" of the condition of the physical world.

For all my friends and family who love to quote the ominous, end of the world predictions attributed to Jesus at the end of the gospel of Matthew (chapter 25), we must realize that Matthew the tax collector, who lived by a sort of balance book accounting, rights and wrongs weighing each other out, missed Jesus' worldview completely! Matthew's retributive sense of justice is always scaled toward punishment, rather than seeing that God has always loved us and always will. He misses this beautiful connection with all things. Read Matthew's accounts of Jesus' parables and almost inevitably, there is a twist like a knife at the end of his version, one which almost always includes some judgment or meeting out of punishment. Unfortunately, like Matthew, we make empty, vain, self serving ideologies out of Jesus' death, but we forget his life and his powerful truths about the nature of reality.

Brand states, "In advocating for a return to the sacred, I'm not evangelizing for any one faith, far less any doctrine, simply that you elect to commune with the beautiful connection between all things over separation". Well said, Brand, well said!!

Brand goes on with his soul-searching questions, questions which I am asking myself:

"Who would we become if we could let go of self obsession? Who would we become if we stopped doing what we know to be wrong and start doing what we know to be right? "

This is Brand's invitation to "practice."

Can I use these questions to guide me during this 40 day fast? Can I embrace each moment as it comes? Can I be fully present now, to this moment, each moment? Can I let go of everything that holds me back from seeing this oneness with the universe, with God? Can I find meaningful connection to the oneness that is everywhere and in all? Can I see my family in this same way?  Even making this my goal misses the point. Why?  Because it is future-focused, rather than present moment being.

We want to transcend, not to escape this life of joy and suffering, but to be fully present to every moment as it is. I want to find that good news that Jesus talked about, that the kingdom of heaven is here, now, not some distant future paradise, but a transformative view of the world (and yes, myself as a part of that universe) now.

Solutions based on the very systems which oppress will not lead to transcendence. Ideology, even these very thoughts I write now, will not work if they come from the same useless worldview which dragged me to where I am today. Only from transcendence can we find transcendent ideas... this is grace upon grace!!  And grace does not come from us. It is from God, undeserved, unmerited... Oh, that really smacks against our meritocracy beliefs in America! Grace.

Perhaps I'll write more about this in the future as I begin to grasp it myself. Who knows?

But for now, how do we live this transformation? What to do? How do we find the sacred within us, or that connection between us, the abiding presence of God (Brand 2020)?

Brand's advice:

"Having spent the first part of my life augmenting the self through gratification, fame, and indulgence, unconsciously tainting even the most admirable of endeavors in activism-the ego's easy colonization of righteous action- I am exploring spiritual solutions."

Brand's stated purpose in writing Revelation, "I want to find a new way of talking about God that is useful and meaningful to a culture that is inadvertently becoming nihilistic, angry, and inert, to broaden the conversation..." Hear! Hear! The very word or idea of "God" has come to be so toxic, its connotations so fearful, so hateful, so oppressive or dreary for so many, that it has lost its power. Brand uses the word, "God", in a sense reclaiming it, but redefining it in a meaningful, purposeful, relevant way. He says, "God can mean many things; transcendence, imminence, purpose, love, union, harmony.  Above all, 'God' must mean that there is being beyond our comprehension..." So, for those who shy away from any conversation about "God", but sense deep inside the truth that all is one or even that something more exists in the world that you can't measure or prove, this audiobook is for you!