C.G. Jung once wrote, “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.”

We posted this week on Narcissism and the difficulty of coming to see through our self-constructed image(s) of ourselves in order to get to the reality that lay within. This is not an easy task to undertake and actually demands an admirable degree of bravery. But it’s worth it! It’s worth it personally as well as being worth it on behalf of those within our closest circles of fellowship and family.

To love, truly love, means to be open to deep interior exploration of the self. But as Jung observes, we tend to be willing to do just about anything other than launch off into such a soul-searching exercise. Why? Why is it so painful to contemplate what we might find? Why is the thought of being wrong and in need of travelling another direction so threatening? Continue reading…

What western psychologists call ‘narcissism’ Buddhists refer to as ‘self-cherishing.’ In each instance, this concept evolves out of incorrect views of the self. The harm of narcissistic tendencies arises when we view ourselves as permanent entities, the loss of which we fight at all costs. In doing so, often we overlook that we are not independent of those (and the reality) that surrounds us.

So what ends up happening? Our self-cherishing ends up being at the expense of others, and the wake of our relationships closely resembles a tornado. The destruction is everywhere… but hey, we’re happy. Continue reading…

I read something recently that caught my attention. The idea was that the music we make in this life is the same we will make in the next. In other words, if we’re striving and struggling and living lives of lack, want and complaint, don’t expect things to magically change in the next dimension.

Though nobody knows, this seemed like a great point to ponder.

A lot of people live ‘woe is me’ lives, as if they’re banking it all for the next life. But what if that’s not the case? What if this world is the sole determinate of the next one? What if the time we have now is to set the trajectory for all we will experience later?

For many, this would come as quite a shock! Continue reading…

In Christian tradition there is an idea known as ‘the fruit of the Spirit.’ We read of this in a letter that the apostle Paul wrote long ago to Gentile believers located in Asia Minor, specifically in a place known as Galatia.

The circumstances surrounding this letter are probably important to know before (or as) one addresses the qualities of such ‘fruit.’ So up front give me a moment to provide a little background regarding what was occurring in the Galatian situation that prompted the writing of this letter to begin with.

During the rise of Christianity in the first century, for a period of time there were a lot of Jewish people who followed Jesus but also demanded that new Gentile converts to this newfound Jesus-following also convert to Judaism. The main argument stemmed from the fact that the Jewish temple in Jerusalem still stood, that many Jewish Christian believers still attended its services and that, generally speaking, God still dwelt in the most holy place of this temple. For many believing Jews, you could follow Jesus but only on the condition that you continued to closely observe the religious law.

Paul, however, argued that a person was in relationship with God because of the faith of Christ, not law observance or other outward works a person had to ‘do.’ In the process of writing this letter to Gentile Christians, at one point he speaks to something that, in his mind, is apart from law – the ‘fruit’ of the Spirit.

For Paul such fruit is: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, adding that against such things, ‘there is no law.’ I think it’s probably significant that Paul refers to all of these as a singular ‘fruit’ of the Spirit rather than as individual ‘fruits’ (plural) of the Spirit.

From Paul’s vantage point, they all proceed from our living out of the Spirit – the deepest (and simplest) disclosure of who we really are – the true self. It’s like saying that once you ‘get’ or ‘understand’ the story of how Jesus came so show us our unity with the Unnameable, these things tend to naturally flow from such an understanding.

I think the need to meditate on these things is because of how easily they sometimes come and go depending on outward circumstances. In other words, when life gets tough, if we’re not consciously living out of this sort of realization, such fruit will not carry the day – instead, the egoic false self will.

There is an old Tibetan metaphor that describes this process of fleeting attributes by saying that in such instances they prove to ‘consist of many small puddles that can evaporate easily rather than a deep, expansive, long-lasting reservoir.’

I like that metaphor. It helps reinforce for me the need to be constant in my guard against the ego and in the inherent weakness of simply living according to my code of ethic (law) or based upon my own (false) self-discipline.

There is a higher power. A higher Source of discipline and strength. And by intentionally living into this Source, the fruit is more likely to be there when it is most needed. As a result, our suffering and the suffering we cause others is most often averted.

So, is our practice and consciousness indicative of ‘puddles’ or ‘reservoirs’? I like the latter. Today, dig deep!

Blessings.

I don’t know what heaven is – I don’t even know if such a place/concept even bears any semblance to some concrete ‘reality,’ which, in itself, is an interesting idea/word to contemplate! Heaven. Reality.

Geez, I guess both are somewhat in the eye of the beholder.

But all of this contemplating makes me ask, “What if?” What if a person invests their entire life obsessing over politics and political parties and heaven ends up being filled with people of the opposite party… they being the only exception? What if that person were you? How would you respond to this ‘mind-blowing-flabbergasting-God-ordained’ reality? Continue reading…