Back in the early 1970s I was working in a hospital for the mentally handicapped. In that hospital was a boy who had broken all the records and puzzled and perplexed the doctors. The question was: with such a severe deformity and compromise to his internal organs, how did he manage to stay alive? His body was so deformed each of his limbs was bent and wrapped around one or two others. He had virtually no mobility. Moving him led to a constant challenge to administer enough soft cushioning to avoid bedsores and set him into some reasonable position to enable him to socialize, watch TV, or engage in some minor task, like eating or reading. In the past his bones had protruded through his skin. Prone to bouts of easily justified depression, nonetheless he had an extremely humorous and witty personality that made his predicament seem all the more pathetic and poignant. Just the sight of him was enough; no one who saw him could fail to be deeply affected.

One day I stood by and watched him as he painstakingly moved himself millimeter by millimeter across a single bed to fetch his hair comb. Combing his hair was extremely important to him. He was obsessively interested in his appearance but his vanity was surpassed by his pride. If you interfered with his independence, slight as it was, at the wrong time, he could be cutting. Watching his epic journey to his hair comb was one of the most excruciating and painful occasions of my life.

I am able-bodied and sound of mind. That wasn’t my point of convergence with the pretzel boy. But I did have one. Typically with me though it was inner. When I was growing up I had a powerful impulse toward the spiritual, toward God, toward the spiritual life. But I was born into a family that may as well have been aliens in this regard. There was no point of reference for what manifested as sensitivity in me toward sacred things. I was humiliated by my father who called me a mommy’s boy and a sports master who called me a Nancy boy, ridiculed when I hung a palm cross over my bed or framed a painting of Jesus for my bedside table, and shamed for asking for a crucifix from a seaside gift store at the end of a family holiday when children my age should want a toy gun or a model of a car. None of these preferences of mine were important in themselves, but what they symbolized was valuable beyond measure and that was the sacred impulse to become one with the Divine.

My personal ordeal was to last for almost twenty-five years. Only then did I encounter anyone who could understand and by that time I had to lever the deeper tendencies out of myself. Over time they were so pressed down and concealed by wounds and scars. Like the pretzel boy, I could only inch myself forward millimeter by millimeter and, like the pretzel boy, I was puzzling and perplexing to others – parents, teachers, employers. Pretzel boy to me was an integral life form, a being, a human, an individual. I have always had this inclusiveness or lack of prejudice to others, not through any unusual virtuousness, but simply because I always felt as removed from humanity as I imagined they did.

If you are a spiritual traveler, an aspirant for awakening, a human being with the heart of the devotee, or a fledgling gnani or mystic, I encourage you to embrace your disability, your unusualness, your greatest wound. For in it you may well discover your greatest gift.

BLOG entry #35

Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Alice in Wonderland

One of the important insights of the Three Stages of Awakening is that you cannot ask a question that’s appropriate to a different stage than the one you’re in and expect any kind of valid answer or any answer that rings true or makes sense to you -- it's impossible. For example, if you are in the process of first-stage awakening, which is where most people are, and you ask a spiritual question, the answer, the confusion or the terms in which you think of the answer will be dictated by the first stage of awakening. Since first-stage awakening is all to do with transcending your family and early conditioning you see the spiritual only in familial terms through the lens of early life experience.

Everything you see will be in a context of dependency, rejection, and disillusionment, because these are the fundamental themes of the first seven years of life. This is really the conditions for creating religions; they have all been formed in this way and that is why they lack true spiritual depth. They are merely extensions of family dynamics and dilemmas projected onto a larger canvas. Thus, God is the father and Jesus is the son, prayer is for receiving what we want when we ask for it in the right way (from our father-god). Hinduism regales us with many different kinds of familial relationships, and so on.

Looking into the three stages as a composite whole, you see contradiction and paradox, which began my work into this model. However, if you dissemble the three stages one from the other, clearly knowing how to identify each, you will see that there is no contradiction within any one given stage. This is an explanation for how we are faced, after fifty years of serious psycho-spiritual effort, with a mostly unsatisfactory result. 

In Alice in Wonderland, Alice may be the voice of reason, while in this case the Queen is the mad one. However, I advocate the impossible, wherever you are inspired to try it. If you are to believe in six "impossible" things before your next breakfast, then try these:

• I can shed my early life conditioning
• My survival strategies have no relevance to my present life
• There is a way through the mire of my character and personality constraints
• Human beings are infinitely more powerful and amazing than I can imagine
• I will live my life in freedom and realize my spiritual self
• Everything is Love

... and you may hear Alice laughing... but don't let that put you off.

BLOG entry #34

I have been asked to write a clarifying BLOG about me and my work. I am a Spiritual Teacher and a Psycho-Spiritual Psychotherapist. My background is in Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychologies and Psychotherapy, and my lineage comes from the teachings of Soto Zen, Gurdjieff, Ramana Maharshi, Sri Nisargadatta,  and Adi Da Samraj, Vedanta, Sufism, and Taoism, among others. Although these teachers and teachings embodied and paved the way and provided stepping stones for an individual and progressive search, my internal knowing or unknowing springs from the heart-seat of eternal wisdom, truth, and bliss. Thus my search for Self and Reality amounted over time merely to the acceptance of present conditions and an understanding of the human predicament.

I have not been awakened. On the contrary I redefined nearly all my "transpersonal experiences" as heightened psychological events. Although at the time, in the heady days of the search, they seemed to be spiritual in nature and origin. My recasting such experiences as distinctly human ego-bound events has been part of my basic understanding and subsequent development of an innovative way of growth and development for the human being to be liberated in the twenty-first century.

My offering of this psycho-spiritual approach is not merely progressive and neither is it eclectic. I have followed the dictum, separate to join, by distinguishing psychology from spirituality, not because they are separate, but because people are confused and tend to merge the human with the Divine. Human neurosis inhibits the Divine, in the sense that contracting in our divisive ego-conditioning, we resist true understanding. In order to arrive at truth we must stop what we are doing and simply be. Then we realize ourselves. This means that your involvement in this work may be in any one of the following three levels of participation:

• Curiosity, in which your motivation is to add to yourself. You want something from this work and teaching and you are attached to the ego-based development of self and your fulfilment in this bodymind and present stage of life.

• You are inspired to go beyond self-interest and therefore you seek -- still seek -- some gratification, progression, or improvement. The way that this work offers for this progression is authenticity, true nature, and the realization and compassion of sacred practices centered in the heart.

• You possess the heart of the devotee, realized to some degree and your thought and feeling is turned toward sadhana or lifelong surrender and embracing and offering toward reality and truth.

If you have spiritual sensibilities you need psychological clarity in which to grow the spiritual flower in you. Psychology is the soil and the root, spirituality is the stem and the bud, Divine realization is the flower facing the sun. There are no secrets today. Those secrets of spirituality that were only available to the earnest initiate in ancient times are now freely available on a keyboard click. The search, therefore, is over... nowhere to go, nothing to achieve, no one to take credit for any supposed achievement.

However, one all-important aspect remains: lead the sacred-spiritual life centered in your Being, knowing you are Consciousness, that all is God and that wisdom, authenticity and compassion flow through you in receptive emptiness through your Divine soul. For within you lives the heart of compassion, the eternal soul, the ocean of the Spirit and infinite Consciousness. The Golden Thread of Truth has weaved itself into your life and your life is a gift of devotion to its wonder.

BLOG entry #33

A spiritual seeker wanted to find a teacher. He sought out a monastery and his teacher told him: “You can stay here but we have one important rule that all aspirants observe the vow of silence. You will be allowed to speak to me once every twelve years." After practicing silence and meditation for twelve years, the student could only say one thing, and he exclaimed, "The bed is too hard." After another twelve years of grueling silent meditation, he had the opportunity to speak again. He said, "The food here isn't good." Twelve more years of hard work passed. His words after thirty-six years of practice were simply, "I quit." His Guru replied immediately, "Good, all you've been doing since you got here is complaining."

Spiritual practice does not feed the ego-self. It does not reinforce identity, separation, and division. It is not for self-aggrandizement and neither is it for self-abnegation. Spiritual discipline -- or sadhana -- is mandatory for the serious spiritual aspirant and it is of necessity hard... very hard.

Within the effort and endurance of the ordeal the aspirant must simply transcend the suffering of sadhana and enter into joy. Joy is beyond this mere relative plane. It is not of the world of sorrow. This is no mere joy. This joy inhabits the heart like green inhabits vegetation, like the sky dances with the clouds, and like the grace of animals in movement appear as one with their surroundings. This joy is uncommon. It is not sought, possessed, or manipulated.

In your sadhana you fall through the cracks of time. You inhabit the infinite. You are one with the Eternal. Residing in the Eternal is the ultimate being-state in sacred-spiritual life. Gradually this stateless state stabilizes in you as you align yourself with Truth. The Truth permeates you with its fragrance and its essence and you come to realize that this fragrance and essence is what you Are.

Now people ask me, "Do I have to work through these psychological layers of early conditioning? Do I have to practice in second-stage awakening to fulfill the heart of authenticity and compassion? Isn't there some short cut which I can take?"

For some the answer is yes... Drop it now immediately. The skill of the spiritual teacher is to discern when an aspirant can let go without the arduous task of long psychological preparation toward wholeness, heart-opening, and spiritual preparation. But (s)he cannot bring it about any more than you can. We are born with a destiny, a distinct adventure that awaits each of us. I encourage you to enter into the process of that adventure with destiny wholly, completely, and without reserve. Give yourself to it absolutely. This is the quickest and the surest way and when you are with the guide, your sacred guide and teacher, the manifestation of your own illumination in the field of space and time. Don't complain whether it is twelve years, twenty-four years or thirty-six years, or more. Don't complain, because your freedom lies not in changing anything at all that happens in your life, but in how you meet those events. Don't complain. Don't be resentful, impatient, or annoyed with eternity. It gives you everything if you stop still long enough to receive it. It radiates love, wisdom, compassion, and light to you all the time. Don't complain about this or about anything in this life of Love and Consciousness; rather notice and participate in this...the only appropriate response: gratitude for it all.

BLOG entry #32

In all the time I have spent in the personal growth, therapy, spirituality field, I have noticed the words honored and privileged routinely used by practitioners, therapists, healers, and guides. We are all of us it seems honored or privileged to be working and helping another with their personal process. Does it ever occur to anyone that behind closed doors at the end of a working day of grueling healing attempts at personal improvement and recuperation, feeling  frustrated and at least a bit jaded, the practitioner may in reality feel anything but honored or privileged?

The practitioner may feel exhausted and overwhelmed or think "I wish I didn't have a week of these people ahead of me" or even "I have had enough."

Therapists, counselors, healers, and guides require a lot of resilience to fulfill their roles. Typically they must be ready each day, clear in mind and heart, able to receive, let in, listen -- stay awake! -- process, empathize, resonate, discern, feel compassion, perhaps sympathize, be congruent, confluent, feel loving, accepting, open-hearted, considerate, receptive, responsive -- not reactive, non-judgmental, aware, not critical, authentic, and present... and this list is not exhaustive!

To offer all this, to bring all this and more to the healing encounter, to make yourself available as a practitioner, a healer, and a human being... is this truly an honor and a privilege?

I never felt it necessary for my therapists to tell me this. I never felt it was even appropriate to be thought of as providing them with this honor and privilege experience. I merely thought we were involved in a transaction, a contract, a meeting in an appropriate endeavor.

I am sorry to say I very often feel when therapists and healers enunciate this rather grandiose sentiment that it may be an inverted expression of ego. For example, someone sends me the following from a piece written by a therapist-healer in which among other words and phrases is written:

“I have been honored to witness this unfolding, illumination, and transformation in many over the years, who were kind enough to allow me to accompany them into the inner realms of dark and of light.”

What do we make of this? Let me tell you what I make of this. It is a subtle (and possibly unconscious) manipulation of the unwary potential client whose ego-self is preened on the warm glow of the manipulative practitioner seeking clients, followers, and adherents. Can we not call this kind of presentation out once and for all?

First, what is this "unfolding" and so on he refers to? Well, it's not at all clear from the full text. Perhaps something to do with love, birth, or rewiring apparently. Second, what about this word "many"? This practitioner has been working about half as long as me and he has witnessed "transformation in many over the years." While it is not at all clear how he is using evocative words like unfolding, illumination, and transformation, stating that he is by implication capable of facilitating these states in many is not only vague, but also highly unlikely, as well as powerful self-promotion. And what about "kind enough to allow me to accompany them..."? Wow! If I could be as effective as this teacher in dispensing illumination and so on, it would surely be a privilege and an honor for the "many" to work with me... if I was kind enough...

This presentation (and this is only a part of it) is rife with subliminal controlling suggestions. If you don't feel your ego being unconsciously stroked you are not worthy of the description: an individual human being.

So, if it's not a privilege or an honor, then what is it to work with another's "unfolding"?

It's a necessity. It's a remedial project. It's hard. It's painful. It's full of trust and courage. It's pertinent and apposite in a world of adults who are psychologically children. It's crucial. It's hard work and it may be joyful, filled with elation, and feel like the best thing -- the only thing -- you want to do sometimes, yet at other times it may be the darkest, sludgiest, nastiest, repulsive, nightmarish activity you could imagine.

Let us reserve sentiments like it's an honor and a privilege for other exalted levels of inner work and personal discovery. While we are in the sludge of human existence, let us be unassuming and just say, "This is hellish. Let's get through it as soon as possible." Enjoy it by all means, retain your sense of humor, but suffering is suffering. Beyond the Threshold of Transformation (see Your Essential Self). There's another world of truth and honor, reverence and deep respect for life, responsiveness to life, immersement in life, compassion, genuine love and authenticity shining like a beacon.

Reach that beacon! Swim toward it! Do not be distracted, deviated, or thwarted and when you arrive you will see what an honor and what a privilege it really is to be alive in the realms of Reality itself.