What Bruce Lee Taught me about Religions

“Don’t think…FEEL. It is like a finger pointing to the moon. Do not concentrate on the
finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory…you understand?”

I have gotten so caught up in forms, organizations and dogma that I lost track of what these forms were pointing to.  So I’ve given up those trappings and in that way I’ve returned to my early childhood of just listening and feeling the truth within.

My Religious & Spiritual Journey

Lucid Dreaming technique

Lucid Dreaming has been a challenge for me.  For over 10 years I’ve been writing my dreams down and trying to figure out how to have regular lucid dreams. 

Once technique that has worked has been Laberg’s “Reality Check”.  It consists of analyzing your dreams for regular “sign posts” or recurring symbols, then you make a list.  You then train your mind to respond by asking “is this a dream?” when ever you see the objects you’ve put on the list throughout the course of the day.  By establishing that pattern of behavior in waking life, the next time you see the sign post in your dream you will ask, “Is this a dream?” and wake up.

It seems that the more intensely and consistently you focus on the question “is this a dream?” the more likely you will have a lucid dream.  So I will try to think about the “feeling” of being in a dream into every waking moment of my daily life.  My theory is that I will have lucid dreams more regularly.

10% of your Total Attention per hour: Some Results

First of all here is how I’ve been doing with this experiment:

I am able to dedicate 7 minutes of intense focus in every hour to meditation (I focus on stillness sometimes with a little creative visualizaiton other times).  At home, I have totally slacked off.  I have been able to use conscious action when I’m with my daughters or doing chores, but I really need to intensify this practice at home.

What have I discovered?

I have had a couple of interesting experiences.  I had a couple of meditation sessions in which I felt a very pleasurable warmth surging softly up my spine that followed an out of body feeling in which I felt like an insubstantial single point of what I can only describe as “total acceptance”.  I’ve also been getting more familiar with my inner space.  I am familiar with the pattern of thoughts that rise up inside of me.  I can feel myself triggered emotionally by certain events.  Overall, it has been pretty enlightening.

My level of concentrations has increased as it has become easier to calm my mind.  I will continue this experiment for another month or so.

Radiant Heart of Gold

Radiant heart of gold

With burning bliss and light

Shining through the vail of self

And the souls darkest night

Radiant heart infectious with ”face

Cracking” smiles and viral bliss

Rippling a glowing ever present

Momentary nowness

 

this moment is a miracle

My Religious/Spiritual Journey

I’ve had an interesting spiritual journey. When I was between the ages of 7-11 there was no reason to rationalize religion, meaning, truth, spirituality ect. I just happily knew that all was well. There was an innocent, unchallenged knowing of infinity and all things possible.

I think that all went down the tubes between the ages of 12-13. I had some sort of breakdown. I started really thinking about the problems in the world. I started to blame humanity for all suffering (the planet, plants, animals and of course other humans). I started to really wonder about life. I wondered if life was even worth living because everything seemed wrong. Things were bad at home, but my struggle was more internal. I was depressed and hungry for a knowledge that seemed non-existent. If there was anytime in my life that I could have commited suicide, this would have been it.

Between 13-14 years of age, I started going to my best friend’s Southern Baptist church. The moment I started reading the bible I was addicted to the words in red. Some of what this hippie was saying blew my flippin’ mind. But the Baptist church was so traditional that it seemed like everyone was going through the same old motions they’d done a million times. The spiritual juices had dried up centuries ago. It seemed like ALL tradition even the preacher’s sermon.

I eventually went to a Pentacostal church. These people brainwashed me. I got the “holy ghost” and it was all over. I actually had a spiritual experience. It was like a shot of energy through my body. It reminds me of the song we used to sing, “its like fire shot up in my bones.” I was witnessing to other kids, reading my bible everytime I got the chance. I stopped watching T.V. for a while, I would fast, pray consistently and I stopped cursing for a very long time. Needless to say, those days are gone. According to all my old Pentacostal friends, I am the worst kind of sinner, a backslider. According to them, not only am I going to hell, it’ll be like a cop going to prison.

In the end it was the denominational thing the pushed me away. You see, every sect (denomination) of christianity (i.e. baptist, penocostal, jehova’s witness) believes that all the other will go to hell. So who is right? Further more, what about the billions on Earth who have never even heard of Jesus? Will they go to hell? I guess I just have to many questions to retain a dogmatic view of the world.

The last thing I did as a traditional christian (non-denominational) was street preach. I did that at about 15 with some other insane christians. We went to the most decayed part of Lodi, CA right in the middle of about fifty homeless and start preaching. I was scared out of my mind. Not of the homeless but of giving a sermon. I don’t even recall what I said, but I’m sure it was bullshit.

The first real doubt about the current state of christianity came to me via a book called Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Micheal Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. This book is about Jesus being married to Marry Magdalene and having kids (which by the way is the premise of the Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown). I don’t know whether this is true or not but the mere mention of this sent tears rolling down my eyes. It wasn’t so much the idea of Jesus being less than a pure God as much as it was the culmination of everthing else that I had read. I’d been reading about the beginings of what is today called Christianity.

I read about how the Roman Catholics set everything up by streamlining the bible (about 100 A.D. there were many sects of followers of Jesus one was Irenaeus who had the ear of the Romans) and burning books and killing whatevery they considered heretical, the nag hammadi, the truth behind christmas and Easter (superimposed over pagan religious holidays which traditional christians oppose). Today, this is just interesting facts but back then it was like someone ripped out my heart. I started to wonder what else was a lie…

At 16-18, I started expanding into other traditions, philosphies and religions. I looked into buddhism, vedic texts, Upanishads, Immanuel Swedenborg, theosophy. I even looked at a book on Satanism (living life via complete selfish ego… fuckin’ crazy). I just wanted to know what was going on and began to feel that there was a connection between all of them.  Some thread of truth stringing them all together.
When I was about 17 or 18, my cousin introduced me to Eckankar. The first book I saw was called, the Far Country, by Paul Twitchell. The cover is something I will NEVER forget. It was a painting of Paul on a mount Everest peak at the feet of a spiritual master who was pointing the way. Just the picture alone brought tears to my eyes. It was freedom. The freedom to come and go beyond the trappings of this world. I dove in with both feet. It had some amazing experiences, dreams and met some wonderful people. Once again my belief was shook. I started hearing that some old master named Darwin Gross that had been kicked out. Then I kept stumbling upon some dude named David Lane who REALLY, REALLY seemed to hated Eckankar. I wonder why. Honestly, I probably would have writen him off as a lunatic if it hadn’t been for Eckankar trying to sue him.

After reading as much as I could stand of what he had to say, I was done with Eckankar and the entire “new age” movement. Basically, what I learned was that most (if not ALL) Eckankar and “new age” movements were almost exact replicas of what religions and spiritual lineages in India. I knew this about most of the new agers, but some of the plaigerism is so bad its hilariously sickening. (check out Path of the Master, by Julian P. Johnson)

Having spent most of my 20’s in the military in spiritual limbo, I am now in my 30s.  I am not willing to throw out the teachings of Jesus just because some organizations have tried to subjugate people for power.  Nor am I willing to toss out the source material on which Eckankar was founded. I’ve learned a lot from both organizations. They have served their purpose as pointers to something greater.  For a while, I was very bitter about religions and their negative affect on people, but the positive affect can’t be understated.  Religion (in my oppinion) is an amazing guide for humanity toward something that is infinite and will always remain unmanifest.  Religions is not really at fault, for every word that seeks to explain and every form that seeks to imitate the infinite is a lie because it is so beyond anything that we can express as finite beings.
Lately, my goal has been to connect everything I’ve learned into on cohesive map pointing to truth. What I have found is the rosicrusian order and the Ken Wilber’s studies on integral spirituality.  The ultimate lesson I learned in what is now a 22 year journey can be summed up in what I once heard Bruce Lee say,

“Don’t think…FEEL. It is like a finger pointing to the moon. Do not concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory…you understand?”
I have gotten so caught up in forms, organizations and dogma that I lost track of what these forms were pointing to.  So I’ve given up those trappings and in that way I’ve returned to my early childhood of just listening and feeling the truth within.

ton of spiritual ppl

I just found a motherload of links on a blog called integral talking heads.  Gotta jack this guys links… the good ones anyway.

Forms Rise from Nothingness

If you don’t believe that thought become things, look at the past five year of your life.  Think about some of the goals you had five years ago and which of those goals you can see, taste, touch, hear and/or feel today.  More than likely, the dreams/goals that you believed in, stuck with and cultivated are in your life today.  You may have even had some doubt about them, yet here they are staring you in the face.

The problem is that we are typically cluttered with too many meaningless thoughts from moment to moment.  And not all those thoughts are good. 

Forms Rise from nothingness.  This is how thoughts become things.  From as clear stillness, thoughts-forms rise and then eventually manifest physically.  The intensity of our “feelings” of that thought is a factor in the speed and accuracy of that though/forms manifestation.

Belief structure is also a factor.  If you don’t believe that whatever you have thought is possible then you that is belief (being a thought itself) may cancel out whatever you have allowed to arise in stillness.  This is why belief is possible. 

We are steeped in a very cynical very close minded (as far as miracles, magic, spirituality, uncertainty is concerned) society.  We are led to believe that miracles and magic are only in the movies see or books we read.  Spirituallity is marginalized and so vague a term as to have almost no meaning at all.  And security, due to fear and paranoia, is valued above uncertainty and the unknown (even though the voyage into the unknown with uncertainty is how the greatest among us such as Einstein, Jesus, Martin Luther King and many others went beyond the norms of their worlds and changed ours decades, centuries and even thousands of years later).      

Our greatest power is our awareness.  The playground of awareness is a clear, infinite, accepting, creative force that frames every particle of our existence.  We are the playground and the kids.  We can create whatever we want.

Choose wisely for whatsoever you believe, think, feel exists on some level of YOU — this law, like gravity, is something you don’t have to believe, but you do have to live with it.

Holographic Universe beyond matter

The Holographic Model is presented at lenth by many renound philosophers.  It actually goes in much more detail then what the video summarized about our reality being an image in our brains and into realities beyond, layers of reality and the complete illusion of reality.  Ken Wilber talks about it in his book, Holographic Paradigm.  You can also read more about it in Holographic Universe, Mike Talbot.  Many other scientists (neurologists, physicists, ect) use this model because it does well in explaining the “holon” nature of  reality. (Holon = a whole as parts of another whole. Like whole molocules forming a whole organism)

What is really Amazing is this:
Spiritual teaching have been explaining the nature of reality as layered deminsion of illusions for HUNDREDS of years:

plato -
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_1/plato.html

Hinduism -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(Hinduism)

Christianity -
*gnostic roots - successfully destroyed by Roman Catholic church who used to be pagan:
http://www.leaderu.com/popculture/gnosticmatrix.html

islam - http://www.secretbeyondmatter.com/islamicscholars.html

perenial philosophy-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy

There is something beyond that neither science or religion can adequately explain.  Mystics, shaman, spiritual teachers, and madmen (like eckhart tolle) of nearly every culture have had glimpses of it.  Their explaination is so transformative these beings typically gain a following of fans, disciples, apostles, priests (ect.) that end up starting a religions.  The religions (without fail) get subjegated by whoever is in power so that they can gain more power.

This is true for Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam.  At their core, the mystics behind these religions are actually saying the same thing.  Religion is chock full of BS like ethnocentricity, sexism, tribalism and other methods of control.

Whether you believe in the now mythic figures who brought the truth or not is really irrelevant.  The beauty is in what they were pointing at.  Science is on the very begining edge of that.

All the stuff about Allah at the end was getting into some of the more deeper ideas about the universe being a reflection of something infinite and perfect.

Ken Wilber’s book signing *INTEGRAL SPIRITUALITY*

Time: Saturday, November 4, 2006 1:00 PM
Location: First United Methodist Church, Boulder, Colorado
Title of Event: KEN WILBER *Off-site event*Tickets are $28, which includes admission to the event AND a copy of INTEGRAL SPIRITUALITY. Tickets can be purchased at our store.

More info:

Boulder Bookstore 

ken’s blog 

Why School Shootings? (a theory from some guy)

School shootings are one of many indirect results of the decay of culture. Culture provides a necessary foundation for individual, families, and every society.

Whether we like it or not culture, belief systems and religion have a major impact on shaping each individual, family life, laws, foreign and domestic policies. These belief systems and traditions are pass down from generation to generation allowing for a certain level of stability, comfort and establishing an informal agreement among individuals in a social system about what is possible, acceptable, moral, right and wrong.

In the passed few decades, world culture (particularly American culture) has been going through a revolution on all levels (scientific, spiritual ect). With numerous advances in science & technology, changes in the social & economic climate, accepted diversity of religious preferences and other great changes, there is a social shift that is like the equivalent of an earthquake happening in society and within individual lives. While there is nothing wrong with innovation and diversity in and of themselves, there is a serious problem with a lack of development in social structures to keep up with the recent changes of human life.

Combine a lack of social values (caused by a decay of culture) and a new super empowerment given to every single individual and you have a particularly dangerous situation. The danger is from the mentally/morally unstable, the extremists and the power hungry. The combination of cultural decay and individual empowerment has created predators and even empowered them to attack soft targets (such as schools), those who can not defend themselves and the unsuspecting. Observing recent and past high profile cases of school shootings will reveal that predators usually do not pursue those who are prepared (such as schools on a military installation).

These predators are empowered by the vast information of the Internet, by high powered weapons, and by a moral corruption. But the Internet and guns are only tools the real problem is from moral corruption. The moral corruption is not only popularized by the negative and violent conflict focused media, video game, movie, music and television industries, but it is ingrained in society itself (particularly Western, 1^{st world society). Where has culture gone? And why has the social morality become so corrupt?Social structure has become like shifting sand. Stable ground on religion and belief is broken up by modern and post-modernization. A portion of behavioral science, for example, discovers a spot in the human brain that when stimulated creates “mystical experience”. In depth research on religious and spiritual phenomenon is often marginalized and scoffed at causing an imbalanced (very unscientific) discrimination on traditions that have held humanity together for thousand and thousands of years. On the other hand, many religions are ethnocentric, denominational and/or partial to certain groups (a violent combination in a globalized world). The imbalanced discrimination and exclusivity of these two most influential schools of thought (scientific and spiritual/religious) are the underlying cause of the decay of social and family structure.Some individuals have fallen through the cracks and holes in world culture. The result is more subculture (violent, non violent and indifferent), moral decay, and the loss of some misguided youth who might otherwise have led decent lives rather than wallowing in a life of violence. But the negative impact goes beyond school shootings, human culture is suffering due to an intolerant behavior of nations around the world.}

Along with the rest of the world, American culture is in a state of fluctuation right now.  This change is causing a few weak minded, unmoral and/or extremists predators to slip the cracks and kill/molest/terrorize the public and their kids (those who need the most protection).  Since this maybe consistent with the natural evolution of human social development (consistent with some of Ken Wilber’s work on Integral Psychology), the only thing to do right now maybe to take proactive security step to protect kids and citizens. 

 

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