​A paradox arises when two seemingly contradictory experiences or perspectives end up co-existing in a way that defies logic and reason, like ‘jumbo shrimp’ or being so incredibly mad at our partner or parent that we hate them, and yet behind our anger and frustration is a deep love. Spiritualty is rife with paradoxes. Have you ever heard someone say that they are “nothing and everything”, or they are “nowhere and everywhere”? Or someone that describes holding the entire universe in the palm of her hand. What is that? How can the vastness of the Universe fit in my hand? How can someone be “everything and nothing” at the same time?
 
Our experience of life is subjective: we observe through our senses; we process and interpret the sensory feedback through the archives of our past experiences, teachings and concepts; we judge each experience as good, bad or benign; and we react to attract more of what we like and less of what we don’t like.  The challenge is that we live in a world of duality; a world of paradoxes. In fact, we spend half of every day in light and half in dark. What a perfect reflection of this duality. We are completely trained to see and measure our lives and the world around us in terms of a fixed scale of right and wrong, especially the things that are most important to us. The easiest way to see how polarized you are on any particular issue is to measure how much latitude you allow alternate beliefs. The more imbued your dogma, the less room there is for shades of gray: its black or white, which means vast swaths of life are excluded from your experience.
 
We tend to live in absolutes. I’m sure you could easily come up with half a dozen personal ‘absolutes’ in this moment: ‘killing is never justified’; ‘democracy is the only viable form of government’; ‘I have an innate right to bear arms’; ‘organized religion damages the soul’; ‘marijuana is a dangerous gateway drug’; and ‘chem-trails are evidence of Government control’. Now look at the opposite point-of-view to each of these ‘absolutes’. Regardless of your perspective and no matter how vehemently you hold your view, there are literally millions who are equally committed to the opposite! How can we reconcile the polarities in our world and our relationships and within ourselves to find a deep and abiding inner peace in the midst of such dramatic outer conflict? 
 
The result of living in ‘absolutes’ is that life is rife with conflict. When you contradict my experience or perspective it undermines my belief in myself as someone smart, confident and valued. So, of course, I need to defend myself, which really means defending my position, so I challenge your experience and your perspective, to prove you wrong so that I can be right. The stakes are high because if I am wrong I am not worthy. If I am unworthy I am unlovable. If I am unlovable I am alone. If I am alone I may as well die! At the core of our conflicts is our existential essence because we define ourselves as the collection of our images and beliefs. If they are invalidated, we are invalidated.  My ‘absolutes’ define me as a human being; they are a critical part of ‘me’ such that if I surrender them, I will cease to exist! Think about how many times you have been unwilling to compromise; where you have sacrificed relationships and love and happiness to be ‘right’. At some level all of the conflicts in our life and in the world around us are a reflection of this difference in perceptions and the dis-ease that arises within us when we are seemingly out of step with our community, our friends, our family or ourselves. And yet, the simultaneous existence of different perspectives and opinions, even those that are opposite, are simply part of the unfolding of life on this plane of duality, through these vehicles of apparently independent, individual will.
 
So what role does ‘will’ play in the daily drama unfolding within and around us? Do we choose our ‘absolutes’ or are they chosen for us? One of the great conundrums of all time is the tug between free will and fate. If life is the former, then I am in control. I have dominion over my thoughts, feelings, beliefs and behavior. I am the master of my domain. I adopt my beliefs and perspectives based upon a mix of analysis, experience, intelligence and gut reaction. This is obviously a very appealing viewpoint when things are going well in your life: it’s all because of you, your brains and your hard work. You can feel proud of who you are and what you have accomplished. And yet, how often does life unfold in ways you never planned? We have all experienced amazing synchronicities and heart-wrenching tragedies that defy logic and suggest something bigger than ourselves is afoot, guiding us from moment to moment. Most people have had dramatic experiences of free will where your hand was indelibly on the steering wheel of your life and other times when you were carried unconsciously to a date with destiny. So which is it, because surely in this world of duality and absolutes such opposites cannot co-exist?
 
Interestingly quantum physicists have discovered that the act of observation changes the nature of what is observed. So when you actively observe an energy stream it is a particle; and yet, when you look away, the particle becomes a wave! It’s as if both potentialities co-exist simultaneously and your experience, as the subject, will depend upon where your attention falls. Imagine for a moment that you were in the midst of a rainbow. You would be surrounded by all of the colors of the rainbow, and yet if you look left you may have the experience of blue, whereas if you looked right you may see red. So which experience is “right”? Is one more valid or real than the other? Imagine now that you and I are both in the middle of the rainbow together. As I look right I am totally convinced that the world is red. However you are looking left and you are equally convinced that the world is blue. You can see how these different perceptions can quickly escalate into the conflict and polarity that we see within and around us. However, perhaps you can also see how multiple ‘realities’ can co-exist.
 
As you allow this awareness of multiple, contemporaneous realities to grow within you, your personal ‘absolutes’ begin to soften. An ‘allowing’ arises that makes it okay for someone to have a different view from you without threatening your identity or image. You may even find yourself standing in the shoes of the other to better understand their perspective, which is the birth of empathy. Inner spaciousness is created that can accommodate different views, and as this happens you’ll notice that dramas fall away, hurts will heal and relationships will flourish. With practice and mindfulness fewer and fewer ‘absolutes’ will inhabit your reality which means your reality has expanded to embrace more of ‘what is’, until ALL of your ‘absolutes’ ultimately dissolve into nothingness and you transcend this ‘reality’ altogether.
 
Life is a journey. There are rarely quick fixes and quantum shifts (except when there are). Rather, we ebb and flow through a multi-layered experience and the flavor of each experience will depend upon our awareness in that moment. At the apex (it seems) is the knowingness that ALL IS ONE. There is no other. From here, surrender is complete; there are no ‘absolutes’, there is just pure ‘is-ness’, pure ‘being’. This is unity consciousness where duality is dissolved and all paradoxes collapse into themselves. And yet few of us ever really connect to this vibration in a sustained way, so we suffer. We suffer because we resist where we are; who we are; and what's happening to us. Ironically we blame fate for our bad luck and we blame ourselves for our poor choices, making equal use of destiny and free will to desperately escape our discomfort. We all want the deep inner peace that comes from surrendering to the flow of life, so long as we can preserve our identity and our ‘absolutes’. How do we continue to exist in the comfort-zone we are acclimated to AND lose ourselves in the void? We don’t; we can’t. The ‘you’ that is seeking is the ‘you’ that is being sought. Another paradox!
 
While most spiritual seekers aspire to achieve some abiding peak state we call ‘awakening’ or ‘enlightenment’, do we actually have the skills, the tools or the teachers to give us that presence? Notwithstanding free will, is there any amount of clear intent and right effort that can deliver us from the jail of our ignorance? ‘Seeking’ simply happens and whether the ‘seeking’ is just another attempt to escape our suffering, no different from drinking or drugs or sex (albeit in a more socially acceptable manner), or whether it’s the yearning for some long lost connection to Source, is irrelevant. Like so many other compulsions that arise in us, ‘seeking’ is hardwired into our DNA and there is no force in nature that can release you from it until you wake up one-day and its gone, or transformed.  The same is true of our ‘absolutes’; there they are, bold and beautiful and seemingly immovable, until one day they shift or soften or dissolve. Is it our will that drives our transformation? Or, was it our destiny to transform? Does it really matter whether it’s one or the other? What can I do to facilitate or accelerate the unfolding?
 
Every moment we spend ‘seeking’ is a moment lost to ‘being’; every deeply held ‘absolute’ disconnects us from the vast array of human dynamics that we are here to experience. The invitation is to do the unthinkable and stop aspiring to be this or do that; stop judging everything and trying to change ourselves and the world around us; and to simply embrace where and who we are in this moment, without a goal or objective. To sit, quietly, with full attention on what’s happening within us, recognizing that sometimes we will be more successful than other times and knowing that its not about some projected destination on the horizon, but rather, its ALL about the journey. With practice you will begin to experience the vastness that is you; the depth of your ‘beingness’; and the peace that lies beyond the din of the mind’s ceaseless activity. Be gentle with yourself as you work to reorient your point of attention from outside to inside. Remember how impossible it was to tie shoelaces as a child and how natural and effortless it is now.
 
It is human nature to strive; until our programming changes and we relax into ourselves, and in a flash everything changes…not because of your efforts but despite them! As you grasp this last paradox you will open more and more to the Light that you are and the gifts that you bring. This highest truth of you will simply arise, and as it does, you see the entire Universe there, in the palm of your hand; you will know you are everything and nothing because the ‘you’ that was searching will have dissolved into the ‘You’ that is sought…

A constant theme in my writing is the invitation to see that whatever is arising within you in this moment (or any other moment), is yours...all yours! Whatever you are experiencing is never EVER about the other person, the economy, immigrants, politicians or the weather! It is actually all about you. This is never a problem when we are experiencing love, joy and peace. We like these things and bask in their warmth. But, when we are in the midst of sadness, pain, sorrow, anger and despair we feel uncomfortable. We would prefer to NOT to have these feelings and so we try to escape our feelings (with all of our usual escape routes like a few cocktails, TV, sports, and even meditation - yes, meditation can be just as powerful an escape tool as a case of beer, it just happens to be more acceptable). Of course you can't actually escape yourself, can you? Once we are finished binge watching 5 season's of Downton Abby, lo and behold, there we are, still feeling uncomfortable, empty, bored, alone. So, we flip through Netflix until we settle upon the next numbing distraction.

Alternatively (or in conjunction with our avoidance techniques) we like to blame people and circumstances outside of ourselves for our misery and misfortune. How often do we get angry at our boss, partner, children,parents and politicians? As soon as we experience some feeling that is uncomfortable we eagerly blame the person or event that seems to have caused this discomfort to arise. As if they are insidiously sneaking about, planting 'bad' feelings inside of us because there's just no way THAT (insert your choice of anger, jealousy, rage, sadness, envy etc) came from within me....I am the pinnacle of calm, generosity and helpfulness, right? No one wants to acknowledge that such 'negativity' could possibly reside within them. 

But, what IF the feeling we are experiencing was already there, laying dormant inside of us. What if that emotion that has arisen represents a deep hurt from our childhood that we have been carrying around within us: a hurt that has quietly affected us by holding us back, by reminding us, consciously or unconsciously, that we are unworthy, unlovable and afraid. What if that person or circumstance that has reminded us of our inner hurt was actually placed on your path with great care and love....by you! That we invited that dirty, rotten SOB to participate in our soul evolution by reminding us to look within and discover what is there calling out for attention; for healing; for resolution? That might be a really difficult awareness to grasp - that you authored your life script in such a way as to invite the perfect opportunity for growth to be brought to you by the ideal foil in the most powerful way. What if that other person agreed to be the catalyst for our shift (and to perhaps incur our wrath and vitriol) only out of the greatest love and respect for our soul journey....What if?

Radar is an amazing invention. A broadcasting station sends out an energetic pulse that bounces off an object of density resulting in an energetic signature being sent back to the radar station. What if that person in your life who is constantly getting under your skin, causing you to lose your temper or belittling and humiliating you is just like a radar station. They are simply programmed to send out a particular energetic pulse. They may send out that pulse in all directions in all their relationships, or perhaps just in your company. But in your case there is a density within that gets struck; that gets activated; that results in an energetic signature being sent back. Chances are not everyone reacts as you do to this person. Chances are they having loving parents, partner and children who think the world of them...So why not you? Why does their radar signal affect you and not everyone else? And whatever can you do about that?  You can try and avoid such radar stations, skulking in the shadows, staying out of sight, which really means compromising your life to avoid discomfort. You can attack the radar station and try to destroy it, which is usually hard to do and usually results in all kinds of collateral damage and injury. Or, you can simply accept the invitation to look at the density within that is being activated by the radar and work on healing that density, in gratitude to the other for assisting you on your path of self-discovery and self-realization. With reflection and attention the density will dissolve and that particular radar no longer pings off of you; you have become clear and translucent...until the next ping from another radar station!!

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​I was reading Nisargadatta Maharaj last night. He was a student of Ramana Maharshi and teacher to Ramesh Balsekar, all in the lineage of Advaita Vedanta, or the path of non-duality. Nisagardatta's seminal work is the book 'I Am That'. The insight that captured my attention last night was the recognition that our personality only exists within time, and time only exists in the past or the future. In other words, when you are totally present in the Now, you are outside time; you are timeless and eternal, and you are not bound by or affected your personality, preferences and prejudices. Try it...as you drop totally and completely into this eternal moment of Now, it is impossible to connect to the moment that just passed or anticipate the moment yet to arrive...because when fully present, there is no mind, there is only pure experiencing the 'what is'. Without the affects of mind, there is no personality, in the sense of a collection of memories and life experiences carried forward from the past and projected on the future. How liberating!

 

So I have been asked what exactly is the pathless path. Well, as we all know, a path is a well worn and recognizable route that will bring one to a specific destination. There are literal paths, like the one through the forrest which, if followed, will bring you at a town or lake or a neighbour's house, and life paths like the path to becoming a doctor or engineer. The destination is known and the directions, if followed, will inevitably result in arrival at that destination. However, in spirituality, all bets are off. The destination is elusive and nebulous at best, and the road to get there (wherever or whatever there is) is uncharted.

To break this down further, its pretty hard to plan a trip if you don't know where you are going, right? So we begin by trying to decide what it is we are seeking, so that we can then choose the path to us get there. Of course defining what it is we are seeking in spirituality is a very complicated and multi-dimensional question: we may want deep inner peace; freedom from conflict; a sense of purpose or belonging; a feeling of connection; to belong to a community; to touch the face of God; to know the mysteries of the Universe; awakening; enlightenment; God Consciousness...Or, all of these things and more.

The problem is that our idea and experience of all of these things is subjective. Awakening is a subjective experience which will look very different from one person to another. It is also a dynamic experience such that Awakening will mean one thing to you today and something quite different to you in a month or a year. As we evolve in each moment so to does our sense of destination evolve and ironically, while our linear mind is seeking a destination, spirituality is a journey that actually never ends, no matter how high you soar, so we actually never arrive anywhere! 

The next problem is that we are seeking experiences and insights that are ephemeral and beyond our mind's ability to understand and our vocabulary's ability to describe so we don't really know what, exactly, it is that we are searching for. What we usually end up with is someone else's words from their description of their experience which we adopt as just the thing we want. We form well defined thoughts and images about what that will be like for us, based upon the other person's words. But as we know, we are each completely unique individuals and no two people will ever experience the same thing the same way (even if words could accurately convey that experience).  When 10 people witness the an event, there are invariably 10 different accounts.

So we decide we want awakening, for example, and we formulate an idea about what it is and how it will change our life, all based upon anecdotal accounts of someone else's awakening. We then either mimic the awakened person's journey in the hopes that copying their steps will lead to the same destination, or we hunt about looking for anyone or anything that promises to bring us awakening. But awakening is an experience, not a destination. It has no fixed address and its impact, resonance and depth will ebb and flow in intensity and effect, sometime obvious and sometimes not.

The spiritual path is thus the ultimate paradox: there is actually no path or person that will bring us to this ever-changing, mind-projection of a conceptualized destination. This is not to say that all teachers and paths are useless; quite the contrary. Different paths and teachers can be incredibly helpful in advancing our awareness and revealing the Light within; the key is knowing that the Divine alone, in an act of Grace, carries you across the last mile to Nirvana. You can't do it alone and no one can do it for you.

The invitation is to be ever mindful of where you are in each moment and to be aware of when your current teacher or path can carry you no further. See where your 'practice' has become stagnant or rote; feel where your teacher's teachings are no longer in alignment with your own knowingness. And trust your own inner wisdom as it flowers into ever deeper awareness of the highest truths. As you disconnect from the old, you will be amazed at how you create the inner spaciousness for new, expansive experiences to unfold, on the endless journey along the pathless path....
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​In life, our periodic (and for some, seemingly endless) discomfort and frustration is never ever about the other person or the challenging circumstances we find ourselves in. Where ever there is 'blame' there is a failure of intelligence. Whenever you catch yourself pointing the finger at anyone but yourself, pause and reconsider your reaction. Blaming the 'other', or 'life', or 'bad luck', or 'karma', or your parents, is an escape route all too familiar and all too automatic for most of us. It is simply resistance to the situation or the person, and resistance to taking responsibility for where we are, or who we have attracted. And, as you will know by now, what we resist persists! Unfortunately, it is much easier to judge how something shouldhave played out, or to judge the other person as failing to live up to our ideal of how they should be, than to look deeply into our discomfort to see our role in it.

Imagine for a moment, that all of those hard situations and difficult people were actually written into the script of your life, by YOU! What if you created a life plan before you were even conceived that aspired to learn certain lessons through various circumstances and relationships. What if at the core of your being is a perfect and unique expression of the Divine; a Soul Song, waiting to be discovered and expressed, and all of the challenges and difficulties are there to force you to look deep within yourself to discover this highest version of you? After all, our greatest growth and expansion comes through hardship and challenge. But when we get lost in the stories and dramas of life, blaming everything outside of ourselves for our discomfort, we delay our growth and we suffer. We feel stuck; we feel hopeless and despondent. Our energy drains as our horizon looks bleak. 
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Once we embrace life, in each and every moment, we discover that underlying ALLexperiences is pure Love and pure Joy. This is beyond the mind's capacity to understand, but see for yourself; delve deeply into any life challenge and see what's at the core. When this Love and Joy is experienced there is a flowering of Heart, and a flowering of intelligence. Flow returns to Life. You become energized. Reverence for the mysteries and sacredness of life arises. Life becomes fun again, as it was when you were a child, even though the outer circumstances may be exactly as they were before. 

Remember always, resistance = suffering; acceptance = joy. We are where we are; we are with whomever we are with. Be with that, fully and completely. Be with the 'What Is'...anywhere else is simply an escape route created by the mind to avoid the perceived pain of the present moment, and yet True Love and Pure Joy are here, now, patiently waiting to be discovered, just below the resistance....

In the West we seem to have a very difficult relationship with death. Notwithstanding its prevalence in popular media, from the nightly news, to all the most acclaimed TV shows and movies, we don't generally like to face it; at least not in a real, personal way. Just think about how awkward it can be when you see someone shortly after they have lost a loved one - do you bring it up and risk reminding them of their sadness (as if they ever forget).  Or how awkward people are around you in that situation. Or how we generally resort to the "It will be okay; you can beat this" comment when meeting friends and loved ones with terminal illnesses, rather than having a real conversation about how little time they may still have on this plane of existence. But, as the Buddhists say, until you truly face the inevitability of your death, you can never really start living. So why are we so uncomfortable with such a ubiquitous subject? It's like we pretend it won't happen to us, or to our loved ones, and when it does we are so devastated, almost surprised, like death snuck past our vigilant veneer of denial and cheated us of the long, healthy life we deserve!

And yet, death is every bit as crucial to life as birth; it is an essential part of nature; an essential part of OUR nature. Bhagavan has a great quote on death: 

The presence of death casts a shadow on every moment of life. Every wrinkle on your skin, every strand of greying hair, and every strained conversation, reminds you of death. Death of what? A dream? It reminds you of the frightening possibility of a relationship that could end; a position that may dissolve; or a security that might be disturbed. But, can you separate death from life? Is there not an arising in every moment of ceasing? The beauty of life is its constant companionship with death. It is in the Oneness of life and death that the beauty of the Universe unfolds. When all divisions suggesting the outside and the inside, the here and the hereafter, the material and the spiritual, existence and nonexistence, cease; an experience with the eternal becomes possible. Let us look into the process of the death of the body. Most people fear the symptoms and conditions accompanying death, not death itself. How could you fear that you have never known? Death is an experience of freedom.


If you look deeply into just about any fear that plagues your life, it is ultimately the fear of death; death of the small 's' self. Look at the fear of public speaking...a very common and powerful fear. In fact when surveyed, most people would rather run into a burning house than give a speech. How can this fear be so strong? Because you will be on display; people will see you, and they will judge you (sort of like how you judge others, most of the time). If you make a mistake, they may find you wanting, unworthy of their attention and friendship, and love. You would be unlovable and if unlovable, you are pretty much worthless, pointless, as you fall down this pit of despair...all the way to the annihilation of YOU. So, you resist making that speech. You decide to avoid that party. In effect, you barely show up in life because you are afraid of being vulnerable, because if you are vulnerable, you may get hurt. And yet within you is the most beautiful Light; the most amazing Presence. There is, at your core, Pure Love. Its what you came from, it is what you are, and it is what you will return to. But that Light and Love is shadowed by your fears, all of which boil down to our fear of death, at least the fear of our psychological death, or the death of the self, which is ironic because if you are reading this, you are a seeker on a journey to discover your highest, truest Self, and yet you can only arrive there when you die to the small 's' self. That is the very essence of Self-realization; of Enlightenment.

Each one of us has a completely unique path through life, marked by a vast array of experiences, challenges and relationships. Every single one of us will die, at least our bodies will die. Some will die young and some will die old; some will die peacefully and some will die violently. Some will die at their own hand and some will die at the hand of another. In every case, that death, in whatever form it takes, is an integral part of our journey through life. It is critical to our learning and healing, and it is equally important in the unfolding of life for every other person we are in relationship with. Some would even say that our time and means of death is written before our birth! Imagine that for a moment....a Divine contract conceived in Heaven where all agree on the exact moment and method of death. Ultimately we can't know the gift that death brings until we pass through that door, but we CAN see how our fear of death, both physical and psychological, holds us back in life. As you see that and feel it deeply....every moment of every day, you will surrender more and more to death, and in that, you will also surrender more and more to life...