“There are single atoms and, when they move close to each other, they become molecules, then tissues and then cells. The atoms develop one by one and, as more of them gather together, they get awakened. That’s why we say that everything has life. There is nothing inanimate, nothing lifeless in this world. Everywhere, every particle has life. The life in so-called inanimate objects is not manifested, not seen by our ordinary eye. But everything is full of life, and that life force is the vital energy, which we call prana. Prana is in everything. Once we understand prana and become masters of it, we are able to control it. Then we can then direct that prana any way we choose.

“God bless you. OM Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.”

Experience we should all agree is like a path. Every step greets a new situation, an unexpected turn, an unforeseen situation that requires an unrehearsed response. How do we meet this situation? Do we meet it by trying to make it fit our idea of what is required by God, or do we meet it creatively, exploring all its possibilities. Like when we learn to ride a bike, do we learn too much one way, do we put too much strength into the situation, are we compulsive, impatient, too eager?

Perhaps God’s will is like the balance of riding a bike. You have to discover it through trial and error, but once you have the feel of it, you don’t forget. Then whatever turn the road takes each moment, you stay balanced, you ride through. But if we are constantly checking our balance with a rule book on balance—am I doing it right? Am I sitting straight? We look around for guidance—that means that we don’t trust our own balance and we need constant assurance from some scriptural or church authority.

So there are rules, God’s rules, to be sure, but at some point we have to put down the rule book and just ride. Then we experience the freedom from the law. And I would suggest this is the Kingdom of Heaven within that Jesus pointed to. One has to discover this kingdom through trial and error, but once discovered you know  it because it has always been there. You are actually discovering what you already have. God has never left.

When you learn to ride a bike and God Will, then you are God’s will, you are balance. Oh, you can lose it, but you can quickly regain balance because you can feel it. Balance is not knowledge you learn from a book, from a scripture; one must practice  balance by riding on your own. There is no greater happiness than freedom from the law.

That afternoon a customer who had parked in the driveway next to the house reported with alarm that smoke was coming up beside the house. Quickly doused with water, we saw that buried electrical wire going to the studio sign the yard had caught fire was was igniting the hard wood mulch covering it.

How easy it is to have your house burn down, I thought. There are so many wire buried out of sight and we assumed that are all okay, when one might just be waiting for the opportunity to catch you sleeping. But wait, this smoldering thought now spread to all form that we hold dear, our car, our equipment and appliances, our loved ones and even our body. Sleeping wire are everywhere, like the Manchurian Candidate, a sleeper spy waiting for the right circumstances to rise up and destroy everything. And some day, somewhere, somehow—as BP discovered—it will. Or as the terrorist experts warn, it now if but when they strike again.

We wrap ourselves in insurance against the attack from the unknown, from this devil we call the death of our own. We cling together behind armed walls of ideology and religion; we constantly invent new fail safe devices “so that it will never happen again.” But it does.

We order and constantly improve on the Known, but the Unknown always surrounds the Known like space surrounds the stars. We created science to control the Known, but the Unknown always works against it, as its enemy but also as its teacher. Without the Unknown, the Known would be frozen in time and would die.

We live in a conceptual universe constructed of thought, ideas, and concepts, whole systems of thought and yet no matter how much we know, we are forever being surprised by what we don’t know. And yet we fear this Unknown while in reality it is our best friend. It is our awareness of the Unknown that makes us human and a ray of the divine Light. We can’t see the Unknown, but we know it’s there. The questions is this: do we fear it and cling together shaking around our little campfire of the Known in the night? Or do we embrace the dark as a necessary source of the light?

The practice of meditation is taking your seat in the warrior’s world. Then, throughout your life, meditative awareness shows you how to regain your balance when you lose it, and how to use the messages from the phenomenal world to further your discipline. The practice of meditation also allows you to be completely grounded in reality. Then, if someone asks, “How do I know that you are not overreacting to situations?” you simply reply, “My posture in the sadde, my seat on the earth, speaks for itself.”

Today I hooked up the “charged” battery and it lasted about  two minutes. Oh, oh, this battery is bad and I’m going to have to replace it. This, BTW, is my first urge. I learned it from my parents, I guess, but when anything doesn’t work, you just get a new one. I’ve got some great appliances and things around my house that my mother discarded  because of some minor annoyance or obstacle. As I look at this for a moment, it seems to be rooted in the belief that one needs saving, some expert or professional to come in and fix the complicate technology that we live with.

Anyway, before I threw the battery out, I took it back to Advance Auto and he checked it again, and again it was okay, dead but okay. As we talked it was discovered by the “expert” that I had put water instead of battery acid in the battery. “Oh, you mean you don’t add water,” I asked surprised, as I had always just added water, distilled water, to  batteries. But I haven’t seen a batter that you could actually open in 20 years. So that was it.

Somehow I had not followed by first urge and by doing the opposite, which was to look beneath my assumptions, I saved having to buy a very expensive marine battery. Our first urges are always based on our hidden assumptions, and, as George discovered, by resisting that urge we often discovery the treasure that lies beneath it. Instead of being stuck in some tape loop of repeated errors, we break free and sail on the crest of an incredible wave of energy.

First urges, as in my case, always seem to be about applying yesterday’s map to the present moment, and when that urge is relaxed and allowed to deflate, the situation reveals the facts one needs to steer through the obstacles.

But here we are again, this time maybe we’ll use it. Or maybe because of my training as a photographer to always have backup, I can rest with the knowledge that if the house burns down at least we’ll have a place to live.

“Smile at everybody, think well of everyone, speak well of everybody, don’t talk about the bad things or the bad sides of people. Know that, the more you think of the bad side of others, the more you think of the bad side within you. You may be talking about somebody saying, ‘Oh, he is bad that way, or she did that bad thing,’ but it is you who are thinking of those bad ideas in his or her name. Your mind will get spoiled because it invites the bad thoughts. Before you make the other person a bad person, you become the bad one. So don’t ever invite bad thoughts; think good ideas. Rather, think good ideas, speak good words; do something good. Then you will really enjoy the supreme joy.

“God bless you. OM Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.”

“What is the goal of Yoga? Serenity of mind—but you can’t keep the mind serene just by sitting and meditating an hour, then going out and doing anything you want with all selfish and greedy intentions. I would say that you don’t even need to meditate. My own experience is this: I don’t do asanas, I don’t meditate, I don’t do anything that I ask you to do. All I do is to just live for the sake of others. I do everything for the benefit of the humanity, for the benefit of the people. And so, I am young, I am happy, I am peaceful. That’s my secret.

“God bless you. OM Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.”

From Ocean of Dharma: Chogyam Trungpa

Guilt is not fundamentally healthy, because it has the quality of condemning whatever happens and not seeing the inspiration or positive aspect in things. Often a guilty conscience comes from self-hatred, constantly condemning oneself.  The only way to overcome guilt is by seeing that there is nobody to blame for the chaos or the difficulties in life. Chaotic situations are not punishment, but they are steppingstones. Then you can see the positive within the negative.

From Ocean of Dharma: Chogyam Trunga

There’s no need to philosophize your work in order to make it spiritual. It has spiritual bearing anyway. If you regard yourself as a person on the spiritual path, then whatever you do is part of the path, an expression of the path. Decentralization, the absence of ego, the lack of searching for happiness, and not avoiding pain — all of that brings us into the reality of dealing with things directly and thoroughly. Dealing with things in this decentralized, egoless manner is known in the Buddhist tradition as  upaya, or skillful means. Without that, there is no means of discovering the inner guru, or inner teacher, as one might call it, which is the constant instruction that you begin to receive on the path. The daily living situation becomes the teaching; it becomes a constant learning process. There’s no way of developing that sense of inner teacher if you fail to relate with daily living situations directly, because without that, there’s no interchange with your world.