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.

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 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.

The promise of spirituality

“We cannot solve the world’s significant problems with the same level of consciousness that created them”

Albert Einstein

I was having a picnic in the park with my family.

It was around the Easter and the kids were having fun hunting for the hidden eggs.

I was lying on the blanket next to the remains of the picnic feast when I noticed an ant coming searching for food.

I don’t know if the ant could smell the food, for sure she couldn’t see it, but somehow she knew the food was around and it was determined to find it.

The funny thing about this is that from my vintage POV it was quite clear where the food was and what the obstacles and the clear path was but the poor ant had no idea and no other way to find it than by trial and error.

Eventually after many trials the ant found a crumb of food but I was thinking what if the ant knew what I knew?

What if, just like the ant, we are looking around for whatever we are looking, unaware that all the information, all the knowledge we need for success in life it is already available?

What if we could have a different POV where all that information about life’s obstacles and the optimum path would be clearly visible to us?

This is the promise of spirituality:

To put us in touch with a higher source of knowledge and wisdom.

To transform one’s life path and experience.

To elevate the level of human consciousness to an optimum level.

This is the path I am looking for and if you are looking for the same thing you are welcome top come along on my journey.

But as Albert Camus said:

"Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow.

Don't walk behind me, I may not lead.

Just walk beside me and be my friend."

The Acorn Universe

“Believe those who are seeking the truth.

Doubt those who find it.”

Andre Gide

I was watching this time-lapse photography on YouTube.

It was a vine climbing up a wall, and this young sprout acted like an arm or tentacle probing and searching the wall.

When it found a nail on the wall, something amazing happened.

The vine sprouted a curly ending and grabbed the nail!

That time lapse camera showed not only that the vine was moving but that it was doing something intelligent too!

I had a moment of epiphany.

I realized that instance how narrow and prejudiced we see the reality around us.

Out of the infinite spectrum of electromagnetic radiations we see an extremely narrow band.

Out of the sound spectrum, again we can only hear a tiny portion.

Our senses of smell and taste are even worse, we are nothing compared to dogs or sharks.

Not to mention that we lack some senses totally – like the shark’s ability to sense electrical fields, the snake's ability to see infrared or the bats to see sound.

But the biggest problem is our prejudiced way in which we look at reality.

We look at reality according to our frame reference of time, size, form or function.

For example, we only see things moving at close to human speed, therefore we do not see plants moving.

We see the things the way we are not the way they truly are.

Imagine that you could see 50 years of evolution of an oak tree in a second.

It would look like the oak acorn explodes into an oak tree!

…Imagine that you could look at the universe without the human subjectivity.

Would the universe still look like exploding or would it look like an acorn growing up, evolving not expanding, budding into galaxies and solar systems in an organic way rather than a random blast?

I always had an ambivalent feeling about the big bang theory.

You see, if you would take a can of paint and a stick of dynamite and exploded the paint into an empty white room, you would expect to get just a random splash of paint on the walls. You wouldn’t expect to get anything like repeated shapes or organized patterns.

So to me, this explanation that the universe exploded into being the way it is just by accident sounds totally bogus.

I am not a scientist and I can’t prove my theory, but for me, the idea of an “Acorn Universe” growing and evolving, sounds more sensible than the "Big Bang" theory.

What do you think?

The Chemical Brain

You can look at a human brain and compare it with a personal computer

You have the hardware, that collection of billions of neurons connected in trillions of connections, and you have the software, all your memories, and thoughts firing the neurons creating an electrical storm in your brain.

This is a rather new view of the brain’s functionality. For the longest time, we thought that our thoughts are created by the neurons firing but now we understand that the brain is just a machine and it is the software, our thoughts, that makes the brain think.

So where is that software, that data in our brain that thing we identify as being us, comes from?

We are a quilt of data collected and put together from all over the place.

We start with the data inherited from our parents through our DNA. We add to that the formative learning from our primary caretakers, parents, grandparents or nurses. Then we enter the school system, the media, TV and Internet and of course our own curiosity impulses will make us search and assimilate more data.

All this data put together makes up what we call “I”

Since I can remember I felt that in my head there were to people present. I couldn’t quite understand it and nobody could explain it to me why I felt that way. Later when I grew up I kept it as a secret because of the stigma attached to the people that heard voices in their heads but latter when I start my search for spirituality the question came back to me.

The best I could do is to separate the “I” into two parts. The “Spirit” or “Soul” being the part we are born with, the information carried through the DNA from generation to generation from the beginning of time. The I am therefore I think presence. I look at that primordial data as the BIOS of the brain, the language on all the other languages are built.

The second voice of “I” is the Ego or “Reason. This is the part that is added to us through education and experience. This is the “I think therefore I am” presence. It is a higher language using abstractions like words, written words, and spoken words. This Higher language is specific varying from culture to culture and individual to individual.

I also believe there is a “hardware” duality as well. I believe that the “Spirit” resides in our “primitive” brain the limbic system and that the Ego resides in the modern brain, in the cortex.

Also, the way the two manifestations of “I” have separate ways of operation and interface with the rest of the body.

The Spirit / Soul operates in feelings and emotions and interacts with the rest of the body through hormones: Estrogen, Testosterone, Adrenaline, Ephedrine, Dopamine, Serotonin etc.

The Ego /Reason operates in electrical pulses through the firing of the neurons in the cortex and the interaction with the rest of the body is done also through electrical pulses carried to all the muscle that we can control.

Getting old has its set of problems, especially health-related problems. So, I found myself with a little lower back pain problem. I went to see a pain specialist (OK my problem wasn’t that little) and he prescribed me a large dose of a drug used in the treatment of depression that also has a pain control effect and not like the opioids it is not addictive in long time use.

But my greatest concern was not the addiction part but how this mood/pain control drug will affect my spiritual practice, mainly my meditation.

Since the pain had already ruined my meditation sessions I went ahead with the drug treatment.

I thought I will be like some of my friends that are doing long-term depression drug treatments.

Turn into a zombie indifference to what’s going on without any genuine feelings or creative expression.

What I found very interesting is that the effect was exactly the opposite.

My meditation practice has not suffered I even go as far as to say to say that is better.

That doesn’t make any sense unless the meditation somehow changes the way the drug affects my system. That is a fascinating hypothesis and it would be really interesting if a comparative study will be done to see what is the effect of meditation on mood-altering drugs.

The Ultimate Illusion

"Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue. . .” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Look very carefully at the two triangles in the picture
Are they equal or is the triangle on the bottom bigger by the one white square?

What is the ultimate illusion?
No, it is not the damn triangles – although they are not bad either.
The ultimate illusion is “EGO”

Let’s start with a simple question “Who are you”
And the usual answer would be something like; John or Marry.
But let’s take the question a little deeper than that.

Let’s start when a dad’s DNA and a mom’s DNA first got together.
Obviously, that DNA union cannot be called a child; the best I can think of would be to call it a gate, an open door through which the universe would come into being.

But there is no “John” or “Marry” in a woman’s womb.
There are carrots and peas, beef and potatoes and all that is recycled into a new fetus.
But the fetus is not made of “John” or “Marry” it is simply hand me down matter, it is the universe restructured into a new experience.

That, that once was the experience of carrot, potatoes, and beef is now the experience of a finger or a nose.
Well, I am simplifying all that process but you get the idea.

The notion we have, that we were made by our mothers is completely false.
Our mothers’ wombs were no more than a gathering place for the universe to express itself as a newborn.
Once the gate is open the mother has no control over the process of creation.
The universe acts on its own.

Then after nine-month, the baby is delivered, not borne as the common knowledge falsely tells us. 
All that the parents do is to give it a name “John” or “Marry”

We spend the rest of the childhood being thought that we were made, not that we are self-expression.
We spend the whole childhood into being brainwashed that we are not a part of the universe but that we are indeed “John” and “Marry”

We grow up to see ourselves as individuals separate from nature and to see nature as an enemy that has to be conquered and held in submission.
We grow up to see ourselves separate from all the other human beings and spend our entire life competing, fighting, to win the success race

But we are not “John” or “Marry” we are the universe experiencing a human form.
The “Johns” and “Marries” are parasites growing on this experience.
The “Johns” and “Marries” have no control over this experience.
We grow, mature, get old and die. We have no control over that.
Nobody ever had, not even Buddha in his whole glory; he died just like everybody else, an old man.

But look at it from the universe’s point of view.
Birth and death do not exist.
The experience of the universe is a continuous transformation.
What is eternal remains eternal through all the transformations and metamorphoses. 
Only the “EGO” the “Johns” and “Marries” is created and therefore destroyed when the illusion is over.


And that is the fear that we all live with; that when “John” and “Mary” are gone, the experience will stop and there will be nothing left but a big black hole.
Nothingness forever! Aaaaah!!! The horror.
But when the illusion is over and our Ego ends, the universe doesn’t end, it just goes on and on, creating new “Johns” and “Marries”

BTW the bottom triangle is bigger because it is not actually a triangle It is a quadrilateral

The Tao of Internet

"Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth."
Ludwig Börne

If the internet would have a counterpart in the physical world it would be undoubtedly Las Vegas.
Las Vegas is sold to the public at large on the idea of winning money and adult entertainment.
If you want to win or sin (or both) you ought to go to Las Vegas. - Right?
He, he, he!

Well, the next time you go to Las Vegas take a good look at the luxurious casinos and all that glitter around you.
Then say out loud to yourself:
- All this has been built with the money of the people that have come to Las Vegas to win!

Las Vegas might be trumpeted as the win and sin capital of the world but, there is very little wining and sinning going on in Las Vegas (unless you own a casino) – trust me on that, been there done that :)
Las Vegas was built on the mechanics of losing.
Actually, it exists only because losing is guaranteed – it is built into the system.
BTW – They do not keep it a secret and publicly admit to it – they are crooks but they are honest :)

So what about the Internet and the Las Vegas parallel?
Well, the internet is sold to the public at large on the idea of connecting people. - Right?
But if any of you are on the internet looking for human connection, true love or just old fashion sex, you might as well go to Las Vegas to win some money!

The internet is sold as a connecting device but every time you connect to the internet you are disconnecting from reality
Behind every slot machine, there is a person looking for winning money
Behind every computer screen, there is a lonely human being looking for human contact.
You are completely mistaken. The system doesn't work for you, you are working for the system.

There is very little human connection on the internet :(
If you are on the internet right now (Well, you ought to be – you are reading my blog. Duh!)
Take a good look at the empty room and say out loud to yourself:
- There is nobody here except me!
No, I am not here at this moment – unless by a remote chance and even then I am here with me not with you.

Surfing the internet is one of the loneliest human activities, probably second only to masturbation – but not as lonely as surfing and masturbating at the same time – trust me on that, ahem… so I heard :)
The internet was built on the principle of people being apart. If you are with another person or group of people the internet becomes useless.
The internet is booming because the people don't get together like they used to do in the old days.

Every day we rush home or to the office to get in “touch” with the other people rushing to their computers.
But are the facebooks and the blogs, the myspaces, and tweeters actually increasing your human contact in the physical world?
Has the internet helped you getting together with more people or just to create an illusion of that gain?
Do you have more “real” friends since the internet revolution or less?

Is there no better way to disconnect from life than sitting in front of a computer
There is no better way to be alone in public as looking into your smartphone
Are the internet and the new technologies the bridge to human contact, or the wall that keeps us apart?
Are we building a new society a new human consciousness?
Are we evolving into cybernetic organisms or devolving in a source and servants for a higher nonhuman civilization to come?

I don't know - you be the judge!

Love Love

Love has a very bad reputation.

Love has been accused, put on trial found guilty and condemned for a crime it has never committed.

That crime has been written in books and poems, sung in songs, painted in paintings and depicted in movies so much that it is taken for granted.

Love is a heartbreaker.

But has Love ever break your heart?

Don’t just jump to the answer. Before saying “YES” think about it.

Have you ever had so much love that it actually broke your heart?

No? I didn’t think so.

Love never broke any heart.

We broke it and instead of pleading guilty, blame it on Love

First of all, we don’t know what Love is.

You may think what it is but your puny infatuation and libidinous lust are not love.

You have to go to an animal shelter and rescue an abused or abandoned dog.

Only people that have done that know what Love is.

Only an animal can love unconditionally

We, humans, can’t.

We used to know what unconditional love was, but then we became “civilized” and losing Love was part of the price for the “civilized life”

The promise of “civilization” to make our lives better was a lie.

Instead, we have become slaves to the “civilization”, to the system.

I remember when my daughter was born.

I was in love from the first second I saw her face.

I thought I knew what love was but I was wrong.

I would have given her everything, my blood my organs my life, but not my unconditional love.

She was about 2 years old. I was ready to go to work when she came to the door and grabbed my leg.

-          Daddy, please don’t go! She said with big wet eyes.

Did you know what I did? I turned around and went to work while she watched me with tears rolling down her face.

She was 2 and I broke her heart. I broke her heart, not Love.

Don’t give me the bullshit that love has broken the heart s of the people you loved.

That you have never done it.

Love has never broken a heart.

It is time we set the record straight. It is time to atone for our crimes.

Before it is too late we have to remember, learn how to love unconditionally.

Before we lose our humanity completely we have to bring it back in our lives in our society.

I think it is time to let the machines do the work and for us to return doing what we were supposed to be doing in the first place.

Let’s put back Love in the formula of our society

Life, Love, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Words to live by

If you are not willing to learn, nobody can help you.

If you are determined to learn, nobody can stop you.

Action without knowledge is futile and knowledge without action is useless.

Don’t despise what you’ve been through. You needed the lesson

All things happen for a reason.

God made you for a reason. Your task is to find out why.

When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.

You don’t need a new day to start things over; you need a new mindset.

Only two people are happy in this world: The mad man and the child.

You have to be a mad man to achieve what you desire and to be a child to enjoy what you have.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

You cannot control what life throws in your path but you can always control how you react.

Pain is unavoidable; suffering is your choice.

The key to being happy is knowing you have the power to choose what to accept and what to let go.

No! You cannot have the cake and eat it too.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

The “old you” has to die and a “new you” has to be born in order to change

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

At the end of life you will not regret the mistakes you have done but the mistakes you have not done

Rather than always focusing on what’s urgent, learn to focus on what’s really important.

The Ego says “once everything fall into place, I’ll find peace”

The Spirit says  “find peace and everything will fall into place”

What would you do if you knew today was the last day of your life?

The deeper the darkness; the brighter the light of God.

You cannot win an argument with an ignorant person. Only an intelligent person can accept a new idea.

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

Is better to have an intelligent enemy than a stupid friend.

Challenges is what makes life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.

Don’t practice until you get it right.  Practice until you can’t get it wrong.

The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

Never lie to someone who trusts you.

Never bite more than you can chew.

Never say never

The Nature of Hell

I was a very young boy growing up on my grandparent’s farm when I had my first thoughts about “Hell”

My grandmother, a very religious woman’ used to take me every Sunday morning to church, to the Greek Orthodox church to be more specific.

I hated everything about that experience. Starting with the Sunday clothes and shoes that were stiff and uncomfortable to my young body use to run almost naked all summer long.

The nauseating smell of burning candles and incents would be the second on my list – I still have a bad reaction to burning candles and I had to explain my aversion several times, which will kill any romantic mood)

And last but not list the depictions of hell that orthodox churches are famous for – If you are not familiar with the paintings you may want to Google it.

Anyway, the whole setup was designed to put the fear of God in my young heart and make me an obedient church follower.

But the whole thing backfired because instead of becoming a zealot I became a rebel and choose not to have anything to do with the orthodox church.

The second time I seriously thought about hell was sometimes in 2012 when I had the fortuitous encounter with chronic depression and when I call it fortuitous I.m not being sarcastic, let’s just say for now that, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

It was one night right before going to bed, I put on my PJs brush my teeth and was ready to go to bed. I was by the door where I turned off the light and suddenly from one dark corner of the room a shadow pilled off and although it was dark in the room this shadow was so dark, darker than dark so I could distinctively see its humanoid silhouette.

That shadow attacked me and although there were no words exchanged I knew instinctively that it wanted to kill me. It grabbed my heart and I felt this sharp pain in my chest. 

My breathing stopped and I don’t know how I managed to flip the lights back on and the shadow dissolved in the light and when I say dissolve I mean like smoke blown by the wind, not like a sudden disappearance.

After that, I only went to bed with a nightstand light on although my friends give me a bible a crucifix and holy water nothing helped but that light. Maybe because I don’t have much faith in the church, so if you have a similar problem I wouldn’t say don’t try it if it works for you, do it.

That close encounter of the evil kind made me think seriously about Hell. What is Hell and where would be Hell located?

According to the Bible and pretty much all other religious texts Heave is located in the sky ad Hell is somewhere below us.

If you think about it, it makes complete sense.

The Heaven is an ideal ethereal place were old age, disease or physical pain do not exist.

On the other end, Hell has to be located in the material world otherwise how are you going to experience physical pain?

Earth is the only place where you can burn, bleed, drawn, be tortured, raped, abused, starved and generally speaking experience all imaginable pain and suffering?

I mean if you don’t have a physical body how are you going to experience physical pain?

So, the only unresolved mystery about Hell remains the location. Good news I figured that out.

Hell is in Australia that is if you live in North America if you live in Australia it will be the opposite.

Tadah!

I know hard to believe but I figured that out too.

We don’t believe in Hell on Earth because we don’t fully accept or understand the nature of Hell.

The nature of Hell is punishment, not retribution.

In other words, we believe that we should be punished for the crimes we have done not for being a sinner.

For example, you stole a car then a car should be stolen from you.

You beat up somebody. somebody should beat you up

You cheated on your spouse your spouse should cheat on you.

But that is not punishment that is retribution

If you stole a car and the same thing happens to you and you knew why it wouldn’t be much of a punishment. You would simply accept it as a fair punishment, but when you get lung cancer and you have never smoked in your life then it is very painful. 

Then you ask yourself why is this happening to me? You demand an answer and because you don’t get an answer you get mad at God, not at yourself.

If this doesn’t make it clear let me explain the nature of Hell in another way.

You come home and your wife or girlfriend has that mad look on her face.

You know that you have done something wrong but you don’t know what.

So, you go through your memory banks. Is today her birthday or an anniversary and you have forgotten?

Did she find out you used her toothbrush or did she find out you slept with her best friend?

You don’t know what your sin is and you don’t want to give any unwarranted information.

Now just replace spouse or girlfriend with God.

God doesn’t want an admission of a specific sin. God wants atonement, your admission of being a sinner or in the spouse/girlfriend scenario the admission that you are a jerk.

That is the nature of Hell.

Retribution is not going to save you only atonement, total and absolute acceptance of your punishment will save you

In other words, you should accept your pain and suffering without any mental reservations.

You should accept that whatever it is, you deserve the punishment.

The Metaphysics of Money

So, are we spirit with a physical body or are we animated material bodies with a spirit?

The little voice inside my head is screaming “I am a spirit, you dummy!” but my lower back pain is killing me – old story – and it is damn hard to ignore the pain no matter how enlightened I think I am.

So I’ll have to leave the answer to you – other people he seems to know better who and what I am.

Either you are a spirit or not, you can’t ignore the things around you.

We depend on things, we need and buy things, we crave and desire things, things are a necessity, they are part of our life and like it or not, they define us as individuals and as species.

We are humans because we are the only animal that can make and use things. Right?

It is only when we started to build and use tools that the human civilization took off and brought us where we are now today.

Some will argue that is the brink of extinction but nobody will argue that the human success as a species on this planet is due to our ability to make things.

But what are things and why do we need them?

Things are “Enhancers” they amplify, magnify, expedite, intensify, speed up and multiply.

Cars, trains and airplanes are nothing but things that make us go faster.

A gun is nothing but a human killing amplifier.

Although cars in USA are killing more people than guns and that might put a hole in my theory – hey let's ban the use of cars! - just a brain fart :)

But you get the idea. Things are making our life easier in a way or another.

At least in theory.

What about money?

Money is a piece of paper to hard and too small to even wipe your ass.

Why and how is money so important and so good and evil at the same time?

Money is a thing that can be anything, therefore its “enhancing” power it is not limited to one thing; it could be speed if you buy a plane ticket or shelter if you buy a house, it can even be unconditional love. No not a hooker... I was thinking more like a puppy :)

Because of this potential money has, it makes it into an amplifier of your whole life, of who you are as a person.

Hence, a nice person will be 10 - 100 times nicer if he has money while an asshole will be 10 - 100 times a bigger asshole if he has money.

This little metaphysical trick was used by some charlatan guru – I don’t remember his name but I know he had one Rolls Royce car for every day of the year.

So this crook promised to make you happy if you renounce your money – and obviously give it to him.

The truth is that he did not make anybody happier but rather by removing the magnifying power of the money, his victims just felt less miserable.

You can see the reverse of this power on people that win millions of dollars on the lottery.

Within a year from the big win 99% of them are worse than before!

Money does not lift them up out of their misery it is the other way around, it makes their misery even bigger!

So now here is the answer many have asked since the invention of money:

Why doesn’t God help me with money when I am down, bitter, unhappy and miserable?

Because God loves you! That’s why.

And also:

Why does God suddenly blesses me with all this money when I am happy and content with what I have and my life?

Because God loves you! That’s why.

So before you ask God for money ask yourself.

Am I happy? Am I content and at peace within and without?

Because if your house is on fire you are just asking God to pour some gasoline on you!!!

Yep, be careful what you wish for:

– You might get it.

Where is the love?

Rose was hefty 250 lb + of voluptuous blubber flowing out of every piece of her clothing. Her spandex pants clad so tight to reveal every detail of her anatomy.

Don’t get me wrong. I am an Eastern European and skinny is not my idea of a beautiful woman, but Rose was more than Rubenesque. She was obese.

That did not stop Carlos, our security guard, - who also happened to be over 250 lb – to follow her around like a love-stricken puppy.

I have no idea what he was telling her, but she was laughing and flirting and purring like a kitten.

I watched them and try to imagine how in the world they would have sex – being their round shapes - but I digress with my sexual fantasies.

It was not long before Carlos proposed to her and they got married and pretty soon after that Carlos was walking around passing cigars letting everybody know he's gonna be a father.

There are over 6 billion people on this planet.

Some fat, some not, some toll, some small and some midgets and giants.

We have white folks, black folks, yellow, red and green – they visit us from time to time. We have educated, uneducated, rich, poor, smart, genius, stupid and George Bush.

We have beautiful, handsome, plain or butt ugly people and they all have one thing in common.

They all have a mate and they all have sex – otherwise, we wouldn’t be 6 billion.

Would we?

Yes, folks, even the toothless woman you sometimes see shopping at Wall Mart has a guy who believes, and tells her, that she is the most beautiful woman in the world and given the chance will knock her up in a heartbeat.

Love knows no boundaries. Love works in mysterious ways and somehow it pairs us two by two so the species would survive and flourish.

Or if you prefer the other explanation: Love is blind, deaf and dumb.

So in this world that came out of love, and exists for love, how come we have so many lonely people, so many people that seem unable to find their right soul mate?

In this day and age of the internet, cell phones, jet planes and global connections why do we have so many lonely hearts, so many broken hearts, and so many sad love songs?

Where is the love?

The NFL quagmire has begun

There are no more controversial and explosive subjects than religion, politics, and sports.

Nothing else makes people lose their common sense, reason, and temper like the three.

So what do you think will happen when you mix politics and sports?

Nothing good for sure. People will lose their minds and the whole debate will be just accusations, insults and irrational screaming tirades in a raging storm of emotions.

Well, brace yourself because the NFL quagmire has just begun.

I’m not a sports fan and I try as much as possible to stay away from politics but with today’s media intruding in every corner of our lives it would be impossible to miss the big news:

NFL has declared war to Donald Tump.

If you missed it, this is what’s going on:

A large majority of NFL players are upset with Mr. Trump whom they consider being a racist and have decided to protest by refusing to stand or show up during the National Anthem.

I just want to know who is the genius that came up with this idea?

I’m not saying that the NFL players don’t have the right to protest or that they should not protest but before protesting before starting a war did anybody thought about how to win the fight?

This is very much like what happened after 9/11 when everybody was really upset and decided to go to war just because it “felt” better but without thinking about the consequences.

You know what happened; we are still mired in the quagmire of war.

So this NFL political fight is a very, very bad idea and it will end in a very, very bad outcome.

This impulsive emotional outburst will backfire and will do un-repairable damage for NFL.

Once again just to make things clear; I’m not debating the validity of the NFL players complains, I’m debating the method and strategy of their offense.

And here are two very good reasons why:

One:  No one will become a new NFL fan just because the NFL players are protesting Mr. Trump.

 A lot or at least some of the NFL fans will be driven away to other sports because a lot of people think that disrespecting the National Anthem and the American flag is insulting and unpatriotic.

Two: The NFL has started a war they cannot win. They have no exit strategy; they have no way to win.

How long are they going to sit or kneel? One month? One season? Two. three, four?

Sooner or later they will have to quit and that by definition is a defeat.

You see my point? How are they going to win? Nobody knows, nobody has thought about it.

Just like Afghanistan and Iraq, the war was lost before it started.

Don’t start a war before you have figured out how to win it, and that applies not only to NFL but to all the wars and battles in the world.

So congratulation NFL players for handing Mr. Trump another unwarranted victory.

I think I figured out the Trump strategy; he doesn’t have to be good just better than the opposition.

Just like the guy running from the bear; he doesn’t have to run faster than the bear just faster than the fat guy.

Spiritual Resonance

Since I can remember I love music. All kind of music rock, pop, folk, jazz, blues, country or classical.

To me, the music is only of two kinds; good or bad.

When I arrived in the USA one my dreams was to buy a state of the art HiFi system and as soon I was able to afford it I did just that.
I don’t want to brag and get into technical details but it was a sweet system with large tower speakers and awesome subwoofer, the best I could afford.

I also bought mint, pristine LPs of all my favorite bands, artists, and composers.
Over the years my investment paid out handsomely, giving me hours and hours of musical bliss.

But none of my musical experiences can compare with the live concerts I’ve attended.

Well, maybe one, I had an almost religious experience listening to Mozart’s Requiem while I was really high.

In 1994 Pink Floyd came to Pasadena’s Rose Ball.

I immediately went online to buy tickets but the tickets sold out so fast the only thing I could get was a really shitty seat.

I was up in the bleachers. The only way to see the band was through a high-powered pair of binoculars and the sound quality was at best mediocre.

But the experience was unbelievable. What I felt was an equaled by any HiFi recording or music system.

There is something about a live performance that transcends sound and sight.

A concert will always be better than a recording. A theater play is always better than a movie.

There is a spiritual experience taking place anytime you are in direct contact with special people or places.

Actually, I believe the feeling is always there but the intensity varies from experience to experience.

Have you ever been in a church, a temple or a spiritual place and have this feeling of enhanced spiritual awareness. It feels like you are surrounded by a higher vibration like you are in contact with a higher realm of existence. It feels like you are in a divine presence.

I call this experience “Spiritual Resonance”

Being a born skeptic I always fought this notion. I always explain it as something that happened in my mind, that in fact, it wasn’t real, that I was the one creating it.

How cannot have overwhelming emotions when you step inside the Notre Dame in Paris? Right?

But after a lifetime of this kind of experiences, I realize that majesty of the site doesn’t always translate into a spiritual experience.

I don’t know if you are familiar with a place called Sedona in Arizona.

By all accounts, this is a native American holly place. A spiritual place where energy vortexes are supposed to manifest. I visited Sedona many times and I was always been blown away by the beauty of the place but I have never had any spiritual experience related to the place.

On the other side of spiritual resonance experience I had, I once joined a friend who was a member of the Agape Spiritual Group and although the gathering place was a warehouse that they rented for the night being there and listening to Michael the reverend, I believe was nothing short of amazing.

Too bad I don’t like organized religions.

So is spiritual resonance real or is it just an experience in your mind?

The answer is Yes and Yes, because reality itself as all the other experiences we have, is created by your mind.

If you don’t believe me go buy some concert or theater tickets and do some scientific experiments on your own.

If you get any other conclusion be sure to share it with the rest of us.