The Presence

What is “Presence”?

What does it mean to be “present”, to live in the “now”?

How do you define it?

How do you attain it?

I love to travel.

I think traveling is one of the mind-expanding experiences a human been can have.

And I’m not talking about the cultural aspect and entertainment but the spiritual enrichment traveling provides.

Every time I am in a foreign country I experience a state of “Presence” a state of enhanced awareness underlined by a genuine feeling of curiosity, freedom, and exploration I used to have as a child.

It is very hard to describe but if you have traveled you probably know that excitement, that state of mind I’m talking about.  That “Presence” in the moment, in the NOW.

Of course, once returned home the feeling is gone and I return to the mental-spiritual state of “Ordinary”.

 I always thought that was a normal thing and I always attributed the magical experience to the geographical location. You feel extraordinary in an exotic place and ordinary in an ordinary place. Right?

But here is the catch. I live in Hollywood and every time I pass by the Hollywood Boulevard I can see hundreds of tourists in the exact same excited state while the only thing I feel is the dread of the traffic congestion the tourists create.

So, the excitement is not created by the place as I thought. The excitement is a state of mind, the place is just coincidental to the experience.

Last weekend I made a day trip to Julian, a little quaint town south of LA.

The old buildings, the blooming spring flowers, the weekend visitors with smiling places, all that experience and feeling of being on a vacation came back to me.

Once again, I switched from the “Ordinary” state of mind to the “Presence” state of mind just by being away from what I considered “ordinary”.

But what is “ordinary”? How do you define it? 

After all is Hollywood an ordinary place or an extraordinary place?

The other day I had to take my car to the dealer for some factory recall repairs.

I had to drive about an hour to the city of Duarte, which I knew about but never been there.

BTW you can live all your life in LA and never see all the streets and locations.

So why I was waiting for my car to be fixed I started walking around, found a Deny’s had some breakfast then went to Starbucks for some coffee and WIFI.

All this time I’ve been in Duarte I was in my “Ordinary” state of mind until that moment in the Starbucks when I snapped out of it and entered the “Presence”.

I looked around and everything was suddenly different. The flowers, the trees the people sitting outside at the tables under the green canvas umbrellas, the morning sun sparkling a little brighter, the blue skies, the white clouds. Everything was vibrant, beautiful, new and exciting. I was “Present” living fully in the moment.

And it was at that moment I understood what the “Presence” was and what the “Ordinary” was and how the whole state of mind works.

It is all in our brains.

The “Ordinary” is created in our mind by our Ego through the process of thought.

We build an imaginary reality in our heads, a story to put it simpler, that becomes the background of our life.

In this story, we have a different reality better than what “reality” is.

Our jobs, relationships, even ourselves are viewed through this fantasy filter.

We live in our heads, not in reality, therefore reality seems foreign boring, uninteresting, unappealing “ORDINARY”

Everything around us is “Ordinary” when we are living in the Ego build “reality”

It is really easy to see it once you become aware of it, but otherwise impossible to see because it is the normal state of our mind from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed.

We spend our lives “thinking” we spend our lives inside our head inside our Ego reality.

The moment you stop living inside your head. The moment you turn your attention, focus, presence from the inside to the outside things change, your experience change, you become “Present”.

It is the state of mind of children which still find reality exciting. It is the state of mind of tourist which for a moment are back like children with a genuine curiosity and senses wide open to the external experience to the surrounding reality. The Ego and its mental construct are simply not there anymore.

I spent the next hour experimenting switching from one state of mind to another.

It was very interesting because switching back to the Ego mind became more and more difficult.

You realize that the Ego reality is a make-believe, it is stupid childish and embarrassing.

Think about if the people around you could hear your thought. How would you feel?

Embarrassed, right?

 Sao this is what I recommend you do: Take a little vacation this weekend (I know I will) and go to a place you would consider out of ordinary. Observe the change in your state of mind and then try to switch back and fore. I think that will give you a new inside in the process of living in the moment and an understanding of “Presence”. 

The Trap of Positivity

You wouldn't think a daily diet of cake and candy is good for your body.
Then why would you think that feeding your mind all the time with feel-good positivity is good for your mind?

Positive affirmations and visualizations just like the sugary foods are high in mental calories and it will give you bursts of spiritual energy but just like the sugary foods have very poor nutritional value and after the rush, it will live you depleted and needing even more of the same to keep you going.

People on a high diet of positivity have very low spiritual stamina. They get easily offended, scared and depressed when faced with tough situations or prolong negative environments.
A strong spiritual person is built on a strong spiritual foundation.
Your belief system is the core foundation of that spirituality.

What your mind needs is TRUTH which like broccoli and spinach is not very appetizing but 100% healthier.
When your belief system is based on undeniable truths you can withstand the most devastating situations without collapsing spiritually.
You may, in fact, come out of these situations even stronger than before with your belief system forged even more powerful by the battle.

Is then positivity bad for you and should you avoid it?
Of course not.
Positivity when properly used is very beneficiary to our spiritual being.
A session of positive affirmations at the start of your day will be like a cup of coffee in the morning just the right thing to get you started on the right foot.
Or a little pick me up in the afternoon when you feel a little down spiritually will also do you good.

The problem with positivity like with everything else in our lives, comes when we start abusing it and neglecting the fundamentals of our spiritual being.
Unicorns and rainbows hugs and kisses are nice but not very good at building a strong spiritual person.

The world we live in is still full of negativity and to survive and thrive in this world you have to be a fit spiritual warrior.
Your mental health, your spiritual stamina, and strength have to be a top priority in your life just like good nutrition and physical exercise for your body.

Buddha on Diet

Dieting: A system of starving yourself to death so you can live a little longer.
Jan Murray

A diet is when you watch what you eat and wish you could eat what you watch.
Hermione Gingold

A diet is the penalty we pay for exceeding the feed limit.

I have a great diet. You're allowed to eat anything you want, but you must eat it with naked fat people.

Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.
Garfield

I'm on a seafood diet. I see food and I eat it.

The cardiologist's diet: If it tastes good, spit it out.

I tried every diet in the book. I tried some that weren’t in the book. I tried eating the book. It tasted better than most of the diets.
Dolly Parton

Never eat more than you can lift.
Miss Piggy

A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand

If hunger is not the problem, then eating is not the solution.

I have gained and lost the same ten pounds so many times over and over again my cellulite must have déjà vu.
Jane Wagner

Inside every fat person, trying to get out, there is a beautiful thin one - or even two or three.

Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in
Kingsley Amis

I don't diet. I just don't eat as much as I'd like to.
Linda Evangelista

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four.
Unless there are three other people.
Orson Welles

There are no fat people, just people too short for their weight.

Praise is the best diet for us, after all
Sydney Smith

Probably nothing in the world arouses more false hopes than the first four hours of a diet.
Dan Bennett

An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.
Irv Kupcinet

The second day of a diet is always easier than the first. By the second day you're off it.
Jackie Gleason

I told my doctor I get very tired when I go on a diet, so he gave me pep pills.
Know what happened? I ate faster.
Joe E Lewis

Can you imagine a world without men? No crime and lots of happy fat women

I found there was only one way to look thin, hang out with fat people
Rodney Dangerfield

The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight because by then, your body and your fat are really good friends

It's strange but true. Fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing

I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating, and in 14 days I lost two weeks.
Joe E. Lewis

I've been on a constant diet for the last two decades. I've lost a total of 789 pounds. By all accounts, I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.
Erma Bombeck

No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat.
Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.
Covert Bailey

The accidental Buddha

If life in a communist country can be summarized as “living in a zoo cage” capitalist life would be then most appropriately described as “the wildlife”
And the wildlife has but a simple rule: You don’t hunt you don’t eat!

That means that if you are a newcomer to the capitalist jungle and you have no “pack” to protect you, no friends and no relatives to teach and support you, your only help is your welfare check. Until you learn how to hunt you have to live on the crumbs falling from the table of plenty.

Welcome to America!

I spent the first thirteen months of my free life on welfare.
One month, navigating the bureaucratic paperwork required for all political refugees coming into the country and just being blown away, dazed and confused about pretty much everything America was; Six months to learn the English language and six months in an ITT vocational school.

I remember running out of money at the end of one month. The hardest month ever.
All I had in the fridge was a couple of slices of bread, a quart of milk and three large potatoes, one for each day until the welfare check would come in.

I would have a piece of toast and a glass of milk in the morning then I would go to school. I would come home at five, bake a potato and eat it with a cube of butter.
I would do my homework and then just lay in bed in order to conserve my energy.
I have never had a harder time in my entire life before or after that.

Coming to America I have left behind everything I ever had: The loved ones, my family, my friends all my possessions, my language and culture, my country my memories.
Here I was a stranger in a strange country leaving on welfare, three potatoes away from starvation; but I will tell you something stranger even than that.

Those thirteen months of my life as hard as they were, they were the happiest days of my adult life.

I would wake up every morning with a smile on my face. And that piece of toast and that glass of milk would be the best breakfast I could ever want. I wouldn’t have changed it for caviar and foie-gras because you see those thirteen months I was living on dreams.

Those thirteen months were the months of infinite possibilities. Those thirteen months were the months of miracles and wonder.
I have never been so focused in my life. I have never had such a clear vision, such a purpose, and drive.

I was the complete master of my destiny and like a conductor conducting a symphony, every note was in perfect harmony every action and every thought was intertwining in a flawless melody.
I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. I was the fountain of my joy and happiness; I was the spring of infinite hope and inspiration; I was complete.

I was walking the streets of Hollywood an enlightened Buddha and I didn’t even know it.

Zen Tales: The Frog and the Scorpion

By the blue lagoon on the South of Hogtown, there lived a young frog name, Beth.

Beth was a teacher and she loved teaching and she loved kids more than anything else in the whole world and she hoped that one day she would get married and have a bunch of tadpoles of her own. The only problem was that of all the frogs she had kissed, none turned out to be the prince of her dreams. So she went back to her work and her quiet life until that fateful day when a young scorpion stopped by the lagoon for a drink of water.

He was a very handsome fellow, with his metal blue eyes and his square jaw and all those muscles bulging from every part of his body. But he had a very bad reputation. His venomous sting had left a score of dead and wounded hearts in the bayou and Beth knew all the horror stories. So the moment she saw him she leaped to the safety of her lily pad.

- Did I scare you? Asked the scorpion with a broad smile on his face.
- No, not at all. Said the little frog with bravado.
- Why should I be afraid of you?
- Well, - said the scorpion – I have done some terrible things in my life, and if you would look down on me, I would totally understand. But now my wild and crazy bachelor days are gone. I found my calling working with children.

That was true too. Beth had heard of his work with the boy scouts and it was quite impressive. So they start talking about kids and about life and things and what do you know? He turned out to be a very intelligent, erudite, charming young fellow, nothing like the jerk she had heard he was. So he came back day after day, never making a pass, never saying or doing anything wrong. Of course, Beth kept the distance and didn’t even dream of letting him on her pad.

Then the scorpion didn’t show up for several days.
Beth started worrying and started calling all her friends but nobody knew where he was. She almost lost all her hope when he showed up.

- Where have you been? I was so worried. She said
- I didn’t know you cared.
He said with that killer smile on his face.
- Besides I left you a note on your lily pad.

She looked at the lily pad and there it was. A note explaining his departure. How embarrassing – and she thought all those bad things about him.

- Anyway, - the scorpion said – I thought that we should celebrate, do something really special tonight. What do you say?
- Of course! Said the little frog hardly concealing her excitement.
- I always wanted to see the other shore of the lagoon. Since I can’t swim I thought you could carry me over there for a romantic dinner.

The little frog stepped back in horror.
- I know what you are thinking – Said the scorpion – but just think about it logically. If I sting you I would die by drowning.
That makes perfect sense. Thought the little frog and although her instincts told her no her mouth said:

- Ok! Hop on.
He jumped on her back and she took off as fast as she could.
It was a beautiful summer evening and in the fiery sunset, the lagoon looked magical.

Beth slowed down. She could feel his body pressed against her and that electricity flowing melting them into one blissful union.
And then when all her doubts were gone and she was feeling confident and secure. Wham! He stung her. The poison rushing to her heart, she muttered her last words.

- How could you do this to me? How could you do this to us? We both are going to pay for this dearly. I thought you loved me. I thought you changed…
- Sorry, babe! – he said – I am a scorpion, I can’t change.
That is my nature.

Redemption

"The doctrine of Redemption is the fundamental mystery of our holy religions, and whoso believeth in it shall not perish, but have everlasting life in which to try to understand it.”

In my search for God and spirituality, I stopped and chose Zen Buddhism for several reasons, one very important one being the fact that Zen Buddhism emphasizes the act of human enlightenment. The practice of Zen is not a passive one of ritual observance and brown nosing to the all mighty.
The practice of Zen aims at changing the individual and his life.

What about “people can’t change their nature” statement?

Nature is what we are born with. Like the color of our eyes, hair or skin. Things like personality, sexuality, talents, and abilities that are given to us by God – or genetic inheritance if you are inclined to believe so.

You can’t change your nature simply means that no matter how much plastic surgery Michael Jackson will undergo, he will never turn from a black man to a white woman.
It means that no matter how hard I want or try, I would never be a talented musician because I was born tone death.

I was not born an asshole.
I don’t know why but I have done hurtful things to other people, especially to the people that loved me.
I have betrayed their love and trust, I have cheated and lie to them. I have behaved like a jerk.

The practice of Zen has brought me face to face with that inner jerk. I had become aware of the evil and ignorance lurking in the recesses of my soul and I have decided to change.
Have I succeeded 100%? Not at all.
Have I changed my own nature? Not a bit.

I see myself as one of those recovering alcoholics, locked in a battle with their disease for the rest of their lives.
I am a recovering asshole and I will be all my life a recovering asshole.
Maybe I should start an asshole anonymous group. …That will be really interesting.

So I believe that one can change their behavior, one can be aware of their demons and try to keep them under control, but I believe one can’t change his nature.
Even this behavioral change is extremely hard and rare.

How many people in the US have bad eating habits? - More than 50%.
If only changing one's habits would be so easy, we would all be trim, fit, healthy and successful.

So for practical purposes and to keep you out of trouble and being taken advantage of, I would say that assuming that people wouldn’t change just because you love them is a fairly accurate statement and it will serve you well in the wrong run. What if they change? I would say then, a nice surprise is better than a nasty one.

What about Jesus and believing in Jesus as a path to redemption?
If I tell you – believe in me and you will attain enlightenment, what do you think am I asking you to believe?
That believing that I physically exist will make you enlightened.
Or: That by practicing my philosophy you will attain enlightenment.

When Jesus was addressing his disciples and asking them to believe, he was not asking them to believe in his existence.
He was right there in front of them. He was asking them to believe his teachings are the path to salvation.

There is no one that believes in Jesus more than Satan. After all, how could he not, when he got his ass kicked by the all mighty so many times. So is Satan going to heaven because he believes Jesus exists and he's the son of God?
Hell no. Satan doesn’t believe in love, peace and turning the other cheek.
In other words, Satan doesn’t believe in Jesus and neither 99% of the so-called Christians.

To believe in Jesus and to be a Christian means to feel, and think, to talk and act like Jesus.
Mother Theresa is a Christian, not the Pope. Gandhi was a Christian, not Pat Robertson.

The notion that just by saying “I believe Jesus is my savior’ will give you a free pass to heaven is absolutely ridiculous.
This evangelical propaganda that you can do whatever you want without any repercussions as long as you hail to their dogma, has taken America on the path of moral decay and bankruptcy.
The right-wing, fear mongering, war loving, hate spewing evangelism, sweeping America today, is taking us straight to hell.

I believe there is a judgment day coming for all of us and I believe there are no free passes.
More of, I believe God is not a Christian, Muslim, Jew or Buddhist and on that day of judgment, we all are going to have a huge surprise.

On the Human Nature

"Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false."
                                                                                 - Dalai Lama

"On the highway of life, the secret of smooth riding is to avoid the potholes."
                                                                                  -Anagami

A long time ago I had a friend that was really bad with money.
He couldn’t hold a job for more than six months, was always involved in some get rich overnight scam, never paid his bills in time and always got in trouble with the banks.

One month, as usual, he was late in paying his rent and was facing eviction.
He asked me to lend him 300 $dollars until next day and somehow I couldn’t say no.
Well, guess what? I never saw my money back.

My question was not why he didn’t pay back his debt – that was his nature.
He did the same thing with every person he came in contact with – but why all the people got suckered in to give him money? Why somebody like me who thinks of myself as a pretty rational man, did not see it coming?

At about the same time I started dating a very nice girl.
Her best friend had a very nasty gossiping habit and I was quite shocked when my girlfriend started telling her very intimate tidbits of our personal life. I told her:
- Don’t do that! She is a gossiper and she will take that information and spread it around.
- No, she wouldn’t do that. She is my best friend. She replayed.

Well, guess what? She did just that.
So what is the moral of all this?
It looks like all of us have some sort of a soft spot, a built-in gullibility I would say.

We all like to believe that we are pretty special and that we deserved to be treated differently.
We believe that we can change the people around us, especially the people we like.

We get emotionally involved with those people and it becomes very difficult to see when we are suckered in.
At the same time, if we are not emotionally involved, it is much easier for us to see the true nature of other people.

The truth is that people cannot change their nature. A liar will be always a liar, even if he tells the truth when it is to his advantage.
A cheater is a cheater an ass hole is an ass hole as well as a nice person is a nice person.

If we could step outside of the emotional involvement and look at the true nature of our friends, relatives coworkers or other people involved in our lives we would avoid a lot of bad surprises.

Only if that would as easy to do as it is to say it…

Zen Tales: The Swan and the Swine

Once upon a time in the little community of Hogtown, in the bayou country, lived a little swan and her family of pigs.

I know what you are thinking "How come a family of pigs can have a swan daughter?" but let me tell you, it is more common than you think.

The pigs were quite wealthy and offered their swan daughter the best education money can buy.
The little swan was not only pretty but also very gifted and soon grew up into the most beautiful young lady in town. (Although some of the older pigs thought of her independence and free spirit as unbecoming of a young sow.)

After finishing college she thought of starting a career but her handsome hog boyfriend proposed to her and in the excitement of the moment she accepted. (She also wanted to make her pig parents proud and happy by marrying the most eligible bachelor in town.)

But married life did not turn the way she had predicted.
Away from the protective shield of her parents, she found herself being totally unprepared for the porcine life.

She tried very hard to play the role of a perfect swine but she was failing miserably.
She even went to the best pig specialists looking for help.

They pluck her feathers, broke her wings and cover her in sticky mud, but all their efforts to change her did not help.
On the surface she kind of looked more swiney, but inside she felt more and more inadequate.
She looked at the swine around her all happy whirling in the mud and dreamed she could be like that even for one day.

Her husband seemed to be very understanding of her shortcomings and try to cover up their family problems buy putting up the front of a perfect marriage.

The plans of her adolescence turned to dust.
She gave up all her dreams and she gave up all her hope.
All she was capable of is to survive and carry her pain.

With broken wings, crawling through the swamp she keeps on living, until one fateful day when she met an ancient turtle.
This old hermit basking in the sun atop of a mossy rock had on his face the most content smile she had ever seen.
Somehow it looked like he did not care about the filthy mud he was living in.
Somehow it did not affect him.

She approaches the old man and asked him.
- Why do I have to suffer all my life like this?
Why can’t I be just like the other swine, thick and slow, stupid and coarse?
Oh, why is God so cruel to me, why did he have to put this curse on me?
Or has he made a mistake?

- Oh no, my dear. Said the old man. God doesn’t make mistakes.
We do.
You are a swan and not a swine.
Your life is what you get if you choose to crawl when you are meant to fly.

The Fall of Idols

We are all God.
That is until we develop an Ego and we start thinking we are Gods.
And that ignorant belief throws us in a lot of trouble because your Ego is not God and it cannot control the universe and therefore it cannot control your life.

Sooner or later, like a blind man walking a tightrope, you gonna take a wrong step and your castle build out of cards will come tumbling down.
Then you start asking questions like:
- Why is this happening to me? Maybe there is a God and for some unknown reason he really doesn't like me and is trying to ruin my life.
Or something like that.

Let me start all over again from the beginning.
We are all God, not Gods.
We are born from the De like waves are born from the ocean.
We all have the same Divine nature. Actually, to be more precise everything there is, has the divine nature.

What differentiates us as persons start after we are born.
After our conception, we start a process of indoctrination by our power figures, which I call our IDOLS, into believing that we are something different than God. That we are human beings, a name, a race, a religion or country.
We are taught and learn to identify and therefore to separate ourselves from anybody and anything else. Thus we become strangers to our own divinity.

Furthermore our teachers, our Idols teach us how to lie, steal, hate, judge others, kill, deceive and betray and all that wonderful things that "humans" think, say and do all in the name of protecting US from THEM.
Of course, no Idol will ever take responsibility for this corruption of the Divine in us, for teaching us the evil way, but somehow we all learn and know it by the time we hit adulthood or the time we leave our family nest and start acting out our independent life.

It is at this time and point in our life when our disaster scenario programming starts unfolding.
Yes, we all follow the same path of self-destruction with some variants of time, place and circumstances.
It is inevitable. It is our destiny.
The biggest problem is not that we fail but that we keep following our programming again and again, repeating the same mistakes until we die without ever realizing what's going on.

So let me start again from the beginning.
We are all born God.
Everything else following our procreation is an experience of God in this material world.
Everything else you believe you are is just a role you have been programmed by your Idols to play, which in turn have been programmed by their Idols, which in turn have been programmed by their Idols since the beginning of human civilization.

In this process of self-programming, the chaos and error introduced by Ego each generation is perpetuating and amplifying constantly.
Translation: Our dysfunctionality as individuals and society is increasing with each generation and it will end in self-destruction and a spiritual renaissance revolution shortly after.

This revolution will be brought by the fall of Idols.
The personal realization that your Idols, your mother, father, teacher, priest, politicians and scientists, prophets and laymen and last but not list YOU are ignorant assholes. That there are no Idols outside your erroneous perception that everybody is just like everybody else.

I know it is scary to think that our Idols are nothing more than ordinary people doing their best or worst depending on how you see it, but their shit doesn't smell like roses and they are as ignorant and clueless as anybody else no matter how many diplomas, how much fame money or powers they have.

But that is the inevitable outcome the inevitable end of our Ego experience, the liberation act from our Idols and the return to the original truth.
We are all God.
Everything else is just an illusion, the experience of our human manifestation.

The Age of Entanglement

Deep down at subconscious level, we are all connected.
There are very few people that understand that and even fewer people that have made that connection at the conscious level.

There are numerous accounts of the past in which this connection has been made.
Finding out who you are, the true original nature of “I“ was enough to awaken you at a higher level of conscious connectivity.

The sudden realization of the true nature of reality would trigger a chain reaction in which the illusion of the material world would collapse and the individual would be freed from the prison of reason reestablishing the natural supremacy of the Spirit over the Ego.

The Zen literature is full of accounts of people, Zen students, that have attained enlightenment, spiritual awakening or Satori, by simply breaking through the illusion of separation and understanding the nonduality nature of oneness.
It looks like that type of awakening is not possible any longer in our times.

I’ve never encountered or heard about another alive human being enlightened at the present time with the exception of few momentary spontaneous enlightenment, the most notorious and documented being the so-called “near-death experience” which I like to call more appropriately “near life experience”
But even these spontaneous enlightenment experiences were not powerful enough to create a permanent conscience change and reverted after a short time to the Ego-consciousness prior to the event, leaving behind only the memories of the awakening.

That means that even for the people that have broken through the illusion of the material world and have made a total connection with the spiritual world at the conscious level, the awakening wouldn't last very long before reverting to the Ego reality set of mind.
This situation is the result of a very strong Ego dominance over our thinking that has exponentially grown in intensity in our time.

Zen Buddhism developed in Japan in the 8th century in a medieval society. 
Since then the world has become increasingly more interconnected and interdependent.
New modes of transportation and communication have made our world shrink. It took years to circumvent the world, and about as long for the news to propagate.
Now going around the globe has become a matter of hours and the news is transmitted at the speed of light to any corner of the globe. In the last decades, the information revolution has connected us 24/7.
We are practically going to bed with our phones and waking up with our phone in the hand. On top of that, the complexity of our social and economic life has also increased. We are in a situation that our brain is overused and have no free time left in the day. Paradoxically all this development has not brought us together but contrary has made us more isolated from each other and tied us stronger to the Ego material world.

You have to physically break away from any social interaction in order to escape the chains of entanglement.
As long as you are a part of the social system, being in this world but not of this world has become an impossibility.

Happiness

There is been a continuous fight among the scientists about the human nature. Part of the problem is that our science doesn't understand nuances. For the scientific mind, things are either black or white and anything that cannot be classified scientifically falls out of the scientific understanding.
But life doesn't obey the laws of science. Life is nuanced, infinite in complexity and constantly evolving.
You cannot understand human complexity as a simple play between nature and nurture. Life cannot understand, life can only be experienced.

We are continuously evolving. From the day we are born we are both biologically and spiritually evolving. Even scientists are starting to agree that what we think and feel are having an impact in changing our brain structure and our body functions.
We are continuously and constantly being bombarded with information. Our lives are becoming increasingly complex. The rhythm and pace of our lives continuously accelerating. The pressure on our physical bodies and our minds continuously increasing. The result of all these changes is that we are becoming increasingly stressed, depressed and generally unhappy.

So it is becoming trendy now that people are looking for ways to distress, to live more healthy and in general to be happier.
But what are the ways, what is the path to happiness?
It seems that in spite of spending more time, effort and money in the pursuit of happiness our lives, our relationships and careers are not much better than before.
Happiness is not practicing yoga or going to the gym every day.
Happiness is not chanting and meditating and burning incents and wearing crystals. Happiness is not having a safe space or passing new laws in Congress.

The problem with happiness is that we have been programmed to believe that happiness is something coming from the outside world, that happiness is something that you can "get".
We constantly see "happy" people on the media. Happy to buy a new car, happy to buy new things, happy to drink beer or happy for a happy meal. The idea being that having or doing something will make you happy.

If you believe that you need something to be happy then you are screwed, because you will never be happy. You will never have enough of what it makes you happy because even if you get it, the moment you got it you will need increasingly more.
It is the basic tenant of the Buddhist philosophy "desire is the root of suffering"
So how can we get this happiness thing?
You don't. You will never get the happiness you dream of.

Happiness is not something you get. Happiness is something you manifest. Go outside, look at the sun, let the warm sink in your body realize you are alive and let yourself be happy.
Look at a tree, be happy. Look at your family be happy.
When you allow yourself to be happy with everything and anything in your life your happiness will start to flow.

Happiness is this joy of simply being alive. Happiness is you being unbound, liberated from the idea that you have to be, or have to have, or have to do anything to be happy.
Stop looking outwards for your happiness, look instead inwards. You can feel your happiness bottled inside, trying to get out, and probably you will be afraid to let it go because you were never told that you could be unconditionally happy.

Start practicing expressing your happiness every day.
Allow yourself to be happy, to express joy to smile for any reason or no reason at all. Practice happiness until it becomes a habit. Be happy until you start annoying the people around you until they start asking "what is your secret, what makes you so happy?"
And you can tell them the truth "nothing!"

The Tao of Relationships

Relationships are becoming increasingly more difficult to have and to preserve.
From the dawn of history, we have tales of bad relationships.
The Greek mythology is full of stories of relationships gone bad.
From family feuds to tragic romantic love affairs to wars between clans and nations, people had always had a hard time getting along.

But all those Greek tragedies were special, rare occasions, not the social norm. Most of the time people had good relationships. They knew how to start a conversation, communicate effectively, handle differences and settle disputes.
I know this first hand because I grew up on a farm were the social dynamics were unchanged for hundreds of years.

There was a time when everybody knew their neighbor by name when children play in the streets without fear of being kidnaped and when romance ended up in marriages that lasted a lifetime.
Those days are gone.

We are living in the Internet era where everyone has thousands of friends and followers but if you need a ride to the airport you have to call a taxi because you don't know anybody that will give you a ride. We are living in the era where internet dating offers thousand of matches to choose from but not a single one that you would choose to go out with.
Our marriages are statistically doomed from the start. Our best hopes are to find somebody that will stick around for more than a couple of month.
We live solitary lives in cities crowded with millions of people.

What happened?
We build societies and the human civilization to serve us the humans, to make us safer, prosperous, healthier and happier.
In time the roles have changed we are no longer the masters of the social and economic system. We are the slaves.
We have become part of the machine part of the system.

Our relationships have changed into social contracts. Love has become business. Anything that doesn't serve the system is discarded everything that benefits the system is promoted.
And we buy into it because it gives us the promise of success.
But people are becoming increasingly unhappy and all the material success and convenience of the modern life cannot replace the feeling of love and belonging we have lost.

To love is to give without asking anything in return.
That goes against the social construct which is to take, to accumulate without giving anything in return or at least to give back as little as possible. That is the formula for success.
That is the way we live our lives.

This is the Ego reality. The world of fragmentation and separation, the world of scarcity and fear.
We have promoted the worst in us the Ego to be the one that takes all the decisions and directs our lives.
We have created a soulless society where love and happiness come in a pill bottle.
We all want love, we are starved for love, we all are beginning to receive it but who is the one to give?

Business is good for business but life is not a business transaction.
The business rules do not apply to life and relationships and if they are applied, the results are always a disaster.
The business model is based on competition on having winners and losers. Love is not a business affair
In love, you can't have a winner and a loser.
In a bad relationship, both parties are losers.

The Age of Righteousness

As we were discussing in my last post, in the Western culture we see time in a linear fashion, we see the society evolving on a never-ending ascending path, like climbing an infinite mountain.
That vision, of a linear timeline, is not shared by all cultures.
Some people see time as a circular trajectory, they see the society evolving in cycles of growth and decay and according to that philosophy, we are now experiencing an age of decadence, the Kali Yuga.

One of the symptoms of a decaying society is the polarisation of spiritual beliefs, part of a larger trend of social fragmentation.
The middle way of thinking has been abandoned in favor of the hard-line extremism.

According to Buddhist teachings, things and actions are not "good" or "bad" - for example, guns and killing are neutral.
You can use a gun to rob a bank or you can use a gun to protect the bank from being robbed. Or the second World War, the Germans use guns and killing to subjugate people and destroy democracy and of course we used guns and killing to liberate the subjugated nations and reinforce democracy.

So all things being equal, the middle path is always the wise path to follow.
That could be summarised in a simple statement:
"Everything in excess is bad" or "Everything in moderation is good"
This middle way path is a path of harmony, of balance rather than this, is "good vs this is bad" path of righteousness.

It is very hard to convince anybody that democracy is no better than dictatorship, that actually a political, social system is only as good or bad as the people that are running the system.
A democracy run by corrupt people is not a good thing at all, and we are starting to see that in our own government at this very moment in history,

A dictatorship run by intelligent concerned people will always be superior to a democracy run by corrupted politicians.
I know, that idea is very unpleasant and unacceptable to us Americans born and raised to worship democracy and freedom but the truth is that China, a communist dictatorship, is kicking our democratic asses, at this very moment, on all fields, economic, educational, healthcare, research and development and basically, military power would be the only thing that we could say we are better  at, but even that is a very relative assumption.

That is just one example but the problem has become an epidemic. The "my way is the right and only way" philosophy is embraced by almost everybody.
You cannot have a decent polite argument anymore, therefore all the paths to progress and reconciliations have been shut close. The only solution left is the frontal confrontation. The only outcome acceptable is the total annihilation of the opponent part.

This polarisation of beliefs will continue covering the lad, will continue to grow, especially with the help of mass media that thrives on chaos and negativity.
The only good thing about this darkness is that will allow a lot of people to finally discern the light of spiritual teachings we have lost or forgot.

The Fascination of Time

There is a common thread in all ancient cultures, the very unusual fascination of the old civilizations for astronomy and time.

From the primitive paleolithic cultures like Stonehenge to the Greek antiquity, from the Mayan civilization to The Egyptian pharaonic empire, we have found very concrete and powerful evidence of their preoccupation and fascination with astronomy and time.
There is no doubt about it the only question is "Why?"

There are some attempts to explain it like "They need it to keep time because they needed to know when to plant their crops and when the rainy season will come" and stuff like that.
But that is a very weak argument not false but incomplete.

If you are familiar with the Vedic scriptures you have probably heard of the "Yugas" or cycles of time.
Yuga in Hinduism is an epoch or era within a four-age cycle.
A complete Yuga starts with the Satya Yuga, via Treta Yuga and Dvapara Yuga into a Kali Yuga.
Our present time is a Kali Yuga, which started at 3102 BCE with the end of the Kurukshetra War (or Mahabharata war)

Not coincidentally the Greeks divided the time into a similar 4 ages structure: The Golden age, the Silver age, the Bronze age and the Iron age.
According to the ancient wisdom, we are now living in the Kali Yuga or the Iron age which is the last of the periods - the end of time.

Two things.
One: the Yugas are based on the Galactic precession, the Sun circular movement around the galaxy.
How the hell that they know there is a galaxy and the galaxy is rotating. How did they measure it when we, the modern civilization, thought the Earth was the center of the universe till  Giordano Bruno and Galileo? 
What does the galaxy moving have to do with planting the crops or tending the cows, or anything else?
Why did they do it? There has to be an explanation for it.

Second: All ancient civilizations saw time as a cyclical occurrence not a linear one.
It is funny that even now at this moment 2018 AD we believe in a linear time. We believe that progress and growth just keep on happening forever.

That view is obviously false. Nothing keeps on growing forever sooner or later we will run out of natural resources and space to expand and a collapse of the of the human society is inevitable. ( I know; if we learn to live in harmony with mother Gaya we can attain a sustainable symbiotic existence. The humankind will destroy itself in a global war before we learn to live in harmony with anything.)

But the old wisdom tells us that time is cyclical and all are warning us of the inevitable decay of the human civilization.
According to the Sanscrit texts, we are now living in the Kali Yuga the age of the Kali goddess of destruction.

Kali Yuga: The final age. It is the age of darkness and ignorance.
People become sinners and lack virtue. They become slaves to their passions and are barely as powerful as their earliest ancestors in the Satya Yuga.
Society falls into disuse and people become liars and hypocrites.

Knowledge is lost and scriptures are diminished. Humans eat forbidden and dirty food.
The environment is polluted, water and food become scarce.
Wealth is heavily diminished. Families become non-existent. By the end of Kali Yuga, the average lifespan of humans will be as low as 70 years.

I know what you are thinking "this is the same BS as the Mayan end of time calendar" You are right in the sense that time cannot physically end but "the end of time" is a metaphorical expression, it is a warning that time is running out and we have to wake up before our civilisation will colaps due to our ignorance and greed.

The Chain

How clever an animal the human being is.
So clever he doesn't even know.

We take a baby elephant and tie it to the trunk of a sturdy tree with a heavy chain.
The baby elephant doesn't have the submission in his blood. He is a wild free beast, not a domesticated servant.

He tries to get free.
He tugs at the chain with all his might but the chain is heavy and the tree too strong to unroot.

The baby elephant grows up chained to the trunk of a tree.
After failing to free itself, again and again, he gives up his freedom.
He stops tugging at the chain. He believes that his situation is inescapable.

After years the baby elephant has grown big and strong.
The elephant handler uses him to lift up and carry heavy trees.
The elephant could easily escape his master and run in the jungle to freedom, but he doesn't.

After the work is done the master takes the elephant back to the village.
He ties a chain around the elephant's leg and the elephant stays there obedient.
In its mind, the elephant is still tied to a big tree with a heavy chain.

What holds the elephant from his freedom is not the flimsy chain tied around its ankle but the belief in his head that he cannot escape. The chain is just a clever make-believe, a trick of the master.

How clever an animal the human being is.
So clever he doesn't even know.

I've seen the elephant handlers logging the rainforest for precious wood.
They are poor people, uneducated people, doing what they are taught to do by their masters.
They have no idea of the impact they have on the lives of the elephants they have enslaved, the rainforest they have decimated or the planet we all live on.

The people living on the threshold of poverty in misery and slavery have no idea that they are free.
Free to take control of their destiny, free to pursue a better life, free to build a better future, a better society.
They have been brought up wearing the heavy chains of social rules they masters have put around their ankles.
They don't see that like the elephants they ride they have the real power, not the masters that keep them in slavery.

How clever an animal the human being is.
So clever he doesn't even know.

It is easy for us as Westerners to see what's happening to our brothers and sisters in the poor regions of the world.
Thou, it is hard for us to see how we the Western culture has created this social injustice and build our wealth on the back of the exploited nations.

Who has the money to buy elephant ivory trinkets and decorate our lavish house with furniture made of exotic rare woods?
Well somebody does and that is not the elephant rider or the logger cutting down the rainforest.

Don't be too hasty to judge.
Yes, we are all just doing our jobs, doing what we are told.
We all have our ankles tied with flimsy social chains. We all obey our master handlers.
True some of us have better larger cages and get better food than the others but still, we wear the same mental chains.

Are you living the life you want and deserve to live?
Are you living in the place, the neighborhood, the state or country of your dreams?
Are you pursuing your dreams, working the job of your dreams doing what your inborn talent is?
Are your relationship, healthy and loving as you want them to be?
are you free to do and live as you please?

There is an unspoken feeling every time you try to escape your current situation. We all have been chained, domesticated, beat into submission by social rules and laws.
We are no better than the elephants we have subjugated.

How clever an animal the human being is.
So clever we don't even know.