Serenity

Serenity is an indicator of inner peace, and thus of wisdom. We don’t want to live boring lives, and adventure definitely has a role in a life well-lived. But serenity is an indicator that someone has thought through their life and pursued it with discipline and goodwill. Serenity is an indicator that a lot of other things in someone’s life are working well. I’m reading a biography right now of Abraham Lincoln and perhaps the most thought-provoking characteristic of his life is the serenity with which he conducted his relationships, even when dealing with dishonesty. Abraham Lincoln had a particularly close bond with his stepmother, who is described as being a constant source of encouragement, support and love to him.

Serenity comes from acceptance, including acceptance of one’s own faults and the faults of others. It may be easier to accept life, including our faults, when we are also comfortable in the knowledge that despite those faults, we are valuable to ourselves and to others.

In celebration of the Great Dance of Life,

Rod MacIver

It Feels Good to Be Good, and its Natural

Placing the interests of others before our own activates a primitive part of the brain. In new research, results show...

"that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable."

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Trouble and Growth

We think that God has blessed us if we don’t have too many troubles. In fact, religions have erroneously taught us that pain is punishment for our sins. We often ask, "What have I done wrong?" when things do not go the way we want.
Yet, to become ourselves in the truest and deepest sense, we must face our own duality, which of course includes facing our darkness. As souls we strive for wholeness, not for perfection.

At first, we really don’t know what is going on. We just find life difficult, challenging and often painful. Eventually, after much experience and reflection, we start to find meaning in it all. Eventually, we gladly accept the means whereby we can do the Soul work we have come for.

As we become conscious as Souls, we walk our journey purposefully, embracing the reality of our earthly nature along with the truth of our divine nature.

"When we are conscious of our personal uniqueness and our universal nature we express ourselves creatively. In this way we fulfill our dreams and our life purpose."

-- Andrew Schneider

Life Force

“A human being is a part of the whole we call universe—a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thought and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in all its beauty.”

Einstein

"The spirit down here in man and the spirit up there in the sun, in reality are only one spirit, and there is no other one."

-- The Upanishads

We regard our lives as made up of an infinite number of separate bits and pieces. That is how our senses perceive our universe.

But science has now affirmed what the sages always knew. The life force is the foundation of all, unseen and untouched though it may be. It flows through everyone and everything. It is impossible to exist separate and apart from the source of all creation.

"Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world.
The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same.
Every wonderful sight will vanish; every sweet word will fade,
But do not be disheartened,
The source they come from is eternal, growing,
Branching out, giving new life and new joy.
Why do you weep?
The source is within you
And this whole world is springing up from it."

-- Jelaluddin Rumi

Thinking Critically About "The Secret"

From Scientific American and "The inverse square law trumps the law of attraction" ...

An old yarn about a classic marketing con game on the secret of wealth instructs you to write a book about how to make a lot of money and sell it through the mail. When your marks receive the book, they discover the secret--write a book about how to make a lot of money and sell it through the mail.

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The Quest for Meaning

However much the modern world may pride itself on its triumphs over the follies and foibles of the past, it appears that the progress we credit ourselves with has been bought at a price so steep as to throw into question the worth of our achievements. This price has been nothing less than the shared conviction that our lives are endowed with ultimate meaning. Though in earlier ages men and women lived in a space populated largely by figments of the collective imagination, they could still claim a precious asset that we sorely lack: a firm and buoyant belief that their everyday lives were encompassed by a penumbra of enduring significance stemming from their relation to a transcendent goal.

Present-day attitudes, however, molded by scientific reductionism and technocratic audacity, have combined forces to sweep away from our minds even the faint suspicion that our lives may possess any deeper meaning than material prosperity and technological innovation. For an increasing number of people today the consequence of this militancy has been a pervasive sense of meaninglessness. Cut loose from our moorings in a living spiritual tradition, we find ourselves adrift on a sea of confusion where all values seem arbitrary and relative. We float aimlessly along the waves of caprice, without any supreme purpose to serve as the polestar for our ideals, as the wellspring for inspired thought and action.

But just as little as nature can tolerate a vacuum, so humankind can little tolerate a complete loss of meaning. Thence, to escape the plunge into the abyss of meaninglessness, we grasp after flotsam, attempting to immerse ourselves in distractions. We pursue pleasure and power, seek to augment our wealth and status, surround ourselves with contraptions, invest our hopes in personal relationships that only conceal our own inner poverty. At the same time, however, that our absorption in distractions helps us to cope with the psychological void, it also stifles in us a deeper and still more insistent need -- the longing for a peace and freedom that does not depend upon external contingencies.

Bhikkhu Bodhi

Open Source Science

OpenSourceScience is a public space for managing controversial scientific experiments in a way that provides open access to of all phases of the research. We provide a centralized resource for scientific collaboration, and help underwrite scientifically rigorous experiments that contribute to an improved understanding of human consciousness.

The essence of the open source model is the rapid creation of innovative results within an inclusive and collaborative environment. At OpenSourceScience, we bring together the skeptical community, controversial science researchers, and interested laypeople to help design and facilitate high-quality scientific experiments. Our community encompasses multiple points of view joined together by a commitment to "follow the data". This spirit of cooperation promises to improve the long-term viability of our results.

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Gratitude

My seven deadly sins of civilization had fallen away on that pilgrimage. When I had been a glutton, my belly had been full, but I had not felt satiated. When I had been slothful, I had taken plenty of rest, but still I felt tired. When I had been avaricious, I had collected many possessions, but yet I wanted more. When I had been lustful, I had had enough sex, but still I felt frustrated. When I had been vain, I had never felt sufficiently appreciated. My seven deadly sins had all been sins of inner discontent. The discontent made me feel angry; angry at the world, angry at my fellow creatures, angry at myself; and so I had not been happy, and I had not made others happy; but on Art's pilgrimage into the Garden of Eden, the seven deadly sins had fallen away from me -- and by the time Art died, I only felt gratitude, gratitude for the caribou, gratitude for the love of my companions, and gratitude for the peace I felt within. This was the gift I had received on Art's pilgrimage. No greater gift can a person receive…
Gratitude came first in the form of appreciation for small favors, small favors which we now understood to be not so small, the gift of rain, the gift of the sun, the gift of the life of a caribou which had died for us...With the growing sense of gratitude came a growing sense of love: love for creation, love for one another, and love for the grace of God which made us feel so peaceful.

—George Grinnell, A Death on the Barrens

The "Point" of Meditation

"Eventually, meditation will make our mind calm, clear, and as concentrated as a laser which we can focus at will. This capacity of one-pointed attention is the essence of genius. When we have this mastery over attention in everything we do, we have a genius for life itself: unshakable security, clear judgment, and deep personal relationships."

-- Eknath Easwaran

A Song that Goes on Singing

In a recent interview in What is Enlightenment?, Beatrice Bruteau speaks powerfully of the process of spiritual evolution and human consciousness. It is an interview not to be missed.

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Priorties

The bliss of a truth-seeking life is attainable for anyone who follows the path of unselfishness. If you cling to your wealth, it is better to throw it away than let it poison your heart. But if you don't cling to it but use it wisely, then you will be a blessing to people. It's not wealth and power that enslave men but the clinging to wealth and power.

-Majjhima Nikaya


Perennial joy or passing pleasure?
This is the choice one is to make always.
The wise recognize these two, but not the ignorant.
The first welcome what leads to abiding joy,
Though painful at the time.
The latter run, goaded by their senses,
After what seems immediate pleasure.

-Katha Upanishad

The Power of Meditation

The power of meditation to sharpen and even change the patterns of mental attention has been demonstrated by a group of researchers. In this fascinating report,

Davidson and his colleagues investigated the impacts of Vipassana, a roughly 2,500-year-old discipline that is the oldest form of Buddhist meditation and focuses on reducing mental distraction and improving sensory awareness.

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Exploring Near Death Experience

For many years now, I have been interested in Near Death Experience research and its impact upon spirituality and sacred tradition. It is clear that this arena of exploration has yielded immense results in the modern world and is a clear challenge both to the materialist paradigm of the modern world and as well as to some aspects of traditional Christian theology. Below are two links which give new definition to this experience and are worth your reading. The first is an exploration of the research being done today and resistance to it by the modernist paradigms. The second is a first-hand experience by a New Zealander who died and recovered. His experience leads him to a more conservative form of Christianity, but one that still challenges aspects of that perspective.

current research

first-hand experience

Perception

"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend."

-- Henri Bergson

Our entire universe is energy -- vibrating waves of pure potential. The electromagnetic vibrations of our consciousness interact with the energetic potential that exists everywhere as the life force to ‘collapse’ the waves and create matter. So the patterns of our minds create the form of our world.

By simply observing a form, we influence it. We in turn are influenced by others. This challenges us to be more aware of the quality of our being and the vibrations we transmit.

"There is no reality in the absence of observation."

-- The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

Beauty Without Words

A gift from Diane Walker

Light

The Lord illumined the hearts of the pious with the light of certainty that gave them the vision to comprehend the light of all the faiths of the world.

-Abu'I-Hasan, "The Kashf al-Mahjub"