Spiritual Chase

An excerpt from Deepak Chopra's "The Book of Secrets".

Seeking is a word often applied to the spiritual path, and many people are proud to call themselves seekers. Often, they are the same people who once chased too hard after money, sex, alcohol, or work. With the same addictive intensity they now hope to find God, the soul, the higher self. The problem is that seeking begins with a false assumption. I don't mean the assumption that materialism is corrupt and spirituality is pure. Yes, materialism can become all-consuming, but that's not the really important point. Seeking is doomed because it is a chase that takes you outside yourself.

Whether the object is God or money makes no real difference. Productive seeking requires that you throw out all assumptions that there is a prize to be won. This means acting without hope of rising to some ideal self, hope being a wish that you'll get somewhere better than the place you started from. You are starting from yourself, and it's the self that contains all the answers. So you have to give up on the idea that you must go from A to B. There is no linear path when the goal isn't somewhere else. You must also discard fixed judgments about high and low, good and evil, holy and profane. The one reality includes everything in its tangle of experiences, and what we are trying to find is the experiencer who is present no matter what experience you are having.

Looking at the people who race around trying to be models of goodness, someone coined the apt phrase "spiritual materialism," the transfer of values that work in the material world over to the spiritual world.

I'd like to add that the limitation of language creates fear of the unknown. What words failed to explain and our minds failed to analyse and understand; we reject. Because to venture somewhere which is unheard of requires undaunted courage and ceaseless effort. Very often we don't look inside because we don't understand at all what it means to search within. It is much easier to look outside. To see what our parents did and we deem to be wrong or right. What our neighbours commited as gossips and invasion into our privacy. If our cousin married a pilot or she married a farmer. We imitate what others do and behave how society tells us to. We all subject ourselves to common sense. But then common sense is what everyone COMMONLY agrees to be a correct standard.

With this attitude we jump from worldly matters like money, status, power and sex to what we believe as a spiritual path. In either situations we forget the taste of bread, the sound of water and the smell of flowers. The experience of being alive. Because we indulge. A person who appreciates life from within and places close to his heart the hidden forces behind what words can speak is more spiritual than one who prays umpteen times a day and recites mantras for 30 years.

Let me share with you another quote from Dr. Deepak Chopra :

"...Christ wasn't a Christian and that Buddha wasn't a Buddhist and Muhammad wasn't Muslim..."

Devilman

Live solely by instinct
to survive is to kill
nothing so distinct
but just have the skill
unleash the animal
locked deep in you
fearless cannibal
because life is cruel
sweetness melts your vision
hatred is the fuel
leap beyond your dimension
perform your plan
carnage those who insult your stand
then success is in your hand
no penance - be mean, my friend.

I wrote this on March 30th, 2003. Surprised? Well please don't be alarmed. I am not a propounder of violence and evil. Let me tell you about a Japanese animation titled "Devilman" (see picture) that was made in the early 1980s. The main character was a kind-hearted young man who would not even hurt an ant. It is said there is always an evil side to everything and everyone. Nothing is absolutely good. But a person can't be neutrally good unless he finds the evil in him and takes control of it. In other words to conquor the demon which leads one astray to the path of wrong is to face this demon head on. Fight and win. Escaping is like hiding from one's shadows. Denying is like running from one's reflection. First learn to accept that there is evil in us and then to sublimate and channel the negative into something positive. I am not asking you to kill so that you will know how it feels and then go down on your knees to seek for forgiveness. That's taking it to extreme. What can be done is to accept and understand one's faults and imperfections. This is a good start.

Anyway about "Devilman" - because of his good nature he was tricked into bringing out the demon in him and then he fought to lay authority over it. Hence he could use the supernatural powers that the demon in him had and exerted it for good.

Some high-ranking meditator finds the demon in him and overcomes it. But I suggest unless we are ready, we shall stay away from confronting our own demons. Because it is dangerous and once we lose there won't be a way back.

Out of the Box

I wonder if it is worth doing something or refrain from doing something. I woke up feeling the need to burst out of my cocoon. The environment is closing in and thus blocking my potential and screams for growth. I have to admit that I am someone who can't remain at one position for too long. I get horribly bored. Things must be on a move and new creations must burgeon.

Not that I don't want security and stability. I do. Actually I want both. There must be a stillness in my life, from where I can give everything my best shot. The point of stillness is inevitably my family; to be more direct my late mother. I can face all types of challenges because I know my mother will be there to support me and to knock my head when I indulge and to comfort me when I fall. But now that my pillar is gone for good, I have to stand on my own two feet. It's not that easy because I have to be supernaturally strong. But I believe that my mother has given me enough trainings and lectures to keep me going even in her absence.

Perhaps it is not a total loss. Perhaps she is always there watching over me. Perhaps she also wants me to take the rough rides because that will replace the hard knocks I received from her each time I erred. This whole journey that I partake simulates the relationship I have with my mother. If all mothers are symbolic of Mother nature then each breath I take, each step I make, each word I speak and each tune I hum; I do it for my very own mother and I do it for me.

My dad is a nice man. That's about it. One word says it all. He is a nice man. I shouldn't lament and comment too much because he is my dad and I know it was never easy to play his part. Sometimes I do know that he tries very hard and I do appreciate his effort. Although I don't say it but I hope he can understand.

The cocoon that is closing in is probably a mental one. Therefore a physical shift will not get me anywhere. It's merely escaping and denying.

I will listen to some music and read a book. Good night.

Literally a Metaphor

I couldn't possibly voice this better than Ms. Rachel Pollack in "THE FOREST of SOULS". I'd like to share an excerpt from this profound book of hers.

"The great mythographer Joseph Campbell once commented that the world is full of creation stories and all of them are wrong. The tarot is like that: full of origin stories, and probably all of them wrong. They are wrong because they take a compelling idea as literal truth. Wrong because they need that literal belief to take the idea seriously, and if someone should dsiprove once and for all these origin tales they will have lost their hold on its meaning and value. But if we can learn to take these origin tales as myths, as divine play, then not only can we let go of this need to prove the superiority of one to all others, we also can appreciate the poetic truth of each one. And we can marvel at this amazing work, this pack of seventy-eight pictures that somehow adapts itself to so many spiritual and historical traditions. "

Just like religion, if they are taken as parables then there is no need to prove that one religious system is greater than others. Because there is a need of humans to triumph in all they do, what they believe is always correct and what others do are always wrong and of lower levels. Because there is a need to stick to "MY" principles - MY principles override everything else that are equally important to others.

Just like everything else, MY origin is the BEST. How sad, isn't it?

Wendy's List

I am greedy for books. I want to read every book that I come across and find intellectually stimulating and spritually fortifying. I ordered Karen Armstrong's "The History of God" from Amazon and it arrived today. I bought Aldous Huxley's "The Perennial Philosophy" two days ago from Kinokuniya and read a few pages here and there. I will love this book. Speaks directly to me about life. And I have a long list of books that I bought and read half way or not read at all sitting on an about to explode bookshelf or on the floor. See, I am even running out of space to store them.

"X" (who is a casual friend) asked if I have to read books that no one has even heard of? Can't I plough through a simple title like The Da Vincci Code? I stopped reading popular books nearly 6 years ago. It is not that I don't enjoy reading them but I am more selective because my priority is set on reading non-fiction, new age, literature, mythologies and religious writings. I know "non-fiction" and "mythologies" may contradict each other. My little understanding of mythology seems to indicate they are stories / archetypes that link to our mind and higher self. Myths are not lies. They are stories told many generations ago that relate to the civilisations and development of mankind. These stories are about us in our raw material form; not the polished-hip socialites who grade ourselves by using materialistic fashion grids.

I sound like I am complaining about the way we are. Actually I am not because I have my books to keep me intact.

Happy reading!