Patrick Henry Hughes - Inspirational Story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qTiYA1WiY8What a powerful story of acceptance and making the most of what we are given. Patrick is a reminder of the power of spirit working through all forms of limitations, which we all have in this three-dimensional world. But what Patrick has been given to help foster his abilities is the power of a loving dedicated family. His father, and all that he gives to his son, is a model of an ideal householder. Patrick's story is also a reminder that in a country such as how Nazi Germany was, with a goal to create the perfect race in a Darwinian model of evolution, instead of a spiritually-based view that all children should be celebrated due to the fact of how hard it is to achieve a human birth, Patrick would not have been given a chance.

Dancing Inmates - Michael Jackson's This Is It

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKtdTJP_GUI&feature=PlayList&p=6A9C9AB31A0431C9&index=0

The power of purpose and music. This video moved me a lot. Unless we are free of our conditioned minds we are all imprisoned. It is just those who are behind bars that we can point to and say how bad they are. However, Heaven includes all and is closed to each one of us when there is one brother who is excluded from our hearts. Let us not forget our selves struggling and bless one another.

The Real Jim Carrey

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsQJyKhmqkQ

How wonderful. It is great that one of such a celebrity status wakes up to his true nature so others can hear that it is not the goals of the world that brings us to our happiness, to the end of our suffering. It is only waking up to knowing who we are not.
When I was a tarot reader at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore in Hollywood, as a young man I had the opportunity of giving such people readings. And it was readily apparent that no matter what one attains--fame, money, the beautiful partner--if you don't know yourself there is no happiness, only moments of pleasure with the fear of knowing it will quickly pass with the next threat. May all hear Jim's message.

Vitality Project: Did It Make a Town Healthier? - ABC News

Vitality Project: Did It Make a Town Healthier? - ABC News

Instigated by Dan Buetter, an explorer around the planet in search of Blue Zones, areas of longevity.

Viewing the Conditioned Mind

"When conditioning arises, if it is not claimed as "mine," it arises within an undivided state. This could also be called an unconditioned state of being. When conditioning meets an undivided state, there is an alchemical transformation. There is a sacred miracle."

--Adyashanti, "Emptiness of Dancing"

This viewing of our conditioning or our tendencies is what "A Course in Miracles" calls looking at oneself with the eyes of Christ, the eyes of forgiveness. This becomes a looking at "our" stuff, whether "good" or "bad," with openness and no judgment. This gentle gazing will allow the imbalances to be free to dissolve back into That from with it arose, where there is no entity to claim it as its own. One can work and work on some unhealthy tendency, going to workshops, counseling, etc., but will it ever end? Not if we say that this tendency is me or mine. The true Self, that is One with the perfect All That Is, has no judgment or ownership. It IS and always will Be. When we can continue to work on this individual personality from the point of view of the Great Creative Agent that is always creating and is always untied with the All That Is, then there is just creativity in action on being Human.

Christmas Time

Outside in this city of images of Los Angeles, the world swirls about in madness in this time of celebrating the birth of Spirit and inner Peace. All of Nature, in this time of the longest night, reminds the humans to quiet one’s life and look inside, to make room for contemplation. But in this city, and all the cities of this land, the bright lights of advertisement signs pull us away from traveling upon our breath into the cradle of our souls. And to the malls we run.


O fools, run you hither and tither
To buy things that will only fade away.
With smiles and bright packages
You give gifts that will last
As long as a thought.

You scurry around
Like rats on a warehouse floor,
Cursing and fighting each other
Over crumbs you plan to give with love.

Review your gifts
And see what you wish to get.

What promotion might you receive?
What appeasement of a familial should?

What does the Master give
At this time of celebrating
The birth of the Master?

Nothing more important
Than the blessing of a smile.

Why does the Master smile?
For he sees things as they really are.

He smiles at himself.

Under the heavy foot of time,
As gifts break
Or are torn asunder
Or crumple into tangled shapes,
The smile of the Master never fades.

Why should it fade
When the Master is safe from time?

Smile.

Smile with the knowing of who you are
In the Peace of the Spirit
Of this day.

Go into the quietude
Of the cavern of the Self
And know the Truth.

There is no one to give a gift to;
No one from whom to receive.

Be your Self.
Free from the rampage of time.

And smile.

Smile upon your Self.
And thus smile upon the world.

-- excerpt from my book, Footprints Along the Shore of an Incoming Tide.

No Expectations

"Your expectation of something unique and dramatic, of some wonderful explosion, is merely hindering and delaying your self-realization."--Nisargadatta, I Am That

The mind likes its orgasms and says you are not fulfilled until you have them. So we have created a culture full of O's, with our entertainment, our consumption of things, our vain pursuits. Even in our spiritual lives, when we turn away from the fruitless material quests, that habit of looking for the Wows still holds sway, and we think we have to have Hollywood-like moments where angels descend and burning bushes speak and flying saucers land and aliens tell us that we are the One to become divine, to become accepted by God. Sure these things can happen, just like orgasms can happen, but they come and go. Mere phenomena. Looking for such experiences, which is the allurement of psychotropic drugs, is what Trungpa called "spiritual materialism."

I have a 4-year-old son who finds the wonder in the commonplace as he watches a leaf fall or finds a mushroom on a stump. If we really want the Wows it is all around us because it is within us. We don't need to manufacture it or seek it out. The real ecstasy is just being oneself, whether in a state of excitement or in tranquility. It does not matter. The rider of this physical/emotion/mental/spiritual roller coaster is the one to be focused upon, who smiles enigmatically amidst the screams and ahhs of this adventure.