What's up, Chuck?

We often grossly misunderstand the real and true nature of our toughest challenges, our snarliest dilemmas, and our most overwhelming problems, while wasting our time bickering with and fighting against the wrong enemies, and trying so hard to be or look good and right and true, or to protect ourselves from exposure, harm, or insecurity, thereby limiting if not destroying ourselves in the process, by strangling the life out of our dreams, visions, and relationships, and by doing this we cut ourselves off from the totally outrageous invitation we are being extended every day to delightfully full, deliriously other-focused co-creation with Him, because we misunderstand how that state absolutely requires those same impossible challenges, conundrums, dilemmas, and problems, and our willingness to lay down our weapons and let Him handle them.

"What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized yet."

"Until you find something to fight for, you settle for things to fight against."

"We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will."

“People have to really suffer and die before they can ever risk being and doing what they love.”

"The only way to find true and lasting happiness is to risk being completely cut open and ruthlessly examined."

"Our real discoveries come from chaos and confusion, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish."

"It's only after we've lost everything (or at least have become totally willing to every day) that we're free to do anything really worthwhile."

"Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re pretending to be awake. But he’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed in yourself and your appearance, not in what's really going on."

"The seemingly unreal (which is actually more real) is way more powerful than the seemingly real (which is actually less real). Because nothing is as perfect as you can dream or imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they up and die. But things as fragile as a new thought, a passionate dream, a miraculous legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think - the way they see themselves - the way they see others and the world - you can change the way people live their lives. And the only way you can do this is by allowing yourself to be radically changed, to change the way you live yours. That's the only lasting thing you can create - your radically altered, dangerously transformed life - that is really and truly worth creating."

-- all from Chuck Palahniuk

"Changing the way people think, the way they see themselves, the way they see others and the world, the way they live their lives," ... hmmm ..., where have I heard something like that before? Oh, I think I wrote it once long ago, in the beginning ...

"helping people wake up and come alive,
connect deeply with God, themselves, and others,
and choose a life of passion, purpose, and self-responsibility"

and it emerged naturally out of my own transformed life, where waking up and coming alive felt something like this:

Moment of ...

I am living a life that I can't explain in words, only in shared experiences, only in the journey itself. It is clearly rooted in God, in Light, in Oneness, in Wonder (WOW, in a state of GLOWing!), in our gradually unfolding hints of understanding of His unfolding plan. Conflict and friction and questioning are all necessary. Answers are not. Peace and beauty are found in acceptance and embracing of all of it. It becomes what we believe it to be. There's that mystifying Mark 11:24 again.

I spent an hour with my therapist yesterday, in our monthly visit and shared celebration of life and healing. She is a beautiful woman of faith and hope, of great tenderness and warmth. She is also a brilliant woman who loves mystery and the search for new insight, and who lives a deep inquiry into the vast unknown. She suggested that, based on hearing about my daily experiences, I am living a Quantum Physics based reality. I said I am just following Jesus.

It was then that we looked at each other with a smile of delightful curiosity and wondered ... are they possibly the same thing? It was an interesting moment of ... I don't know ... What a fascinating space in which to live. The "Adonai space," right, Brucie? What a journey! Time to walk the dog.

It's nice to be seen now and then.

To people acting kooky, I can sound like a Wookie. To a whole world gone screwy, I come across just like Chewy.


[R2-D2 and Chewbacca are playing a holographic game aboard the Millennium Falcon in the movie, "Star Wars"]

Chewbacca: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrgh
C-3PO: He made a fair move. Screaming about it can't help you.
Han Solo: Let him have it. It's not wise to upset a Wookie.
C-3PO: But sir, nobody worries about upsetting a droid.
Han Solo: That's 'cause droids don't pull people's arms out of their sockets when they lose. Wookies are known to do that.
Chewbacca: Grrrff.
C-3PO: I see your point, sir. I suggest a new strategy, R2: let the Wookie win.


Behold the top ten quotes of Chewbacca throughout the Star Wars movies!

10. Gggggaaaaaaarrrrr. Arrrrhhhn. (Star Wars)

9. Arrrggghhnnn. Grrrhn. Gahr. (The Empire Strikes Back)

8. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhrnnn. (Star Wars)

7. Rhhhnngggnn. Garrrrr! (Return of the Jedi)

6. Ggggr gaarrr grrn rrhnn. (Star Wars)

5. Rrrrrrr rrrraaaahhh rrrrrrggghhhhnn. (Return of the Jedi)

4. Gggggggrrrrrn. (Star Wars)

3. Aaaaaarr Ggggaaaaaarrr. (Star Wars)

2. Gggggrrrrrr rrrraaaahhh rrrrrrggghhhhnn. (The Empire Strikes Back)

1. Aaaaaarrrrr rhhhnnn gggggrrrrr. (Star Wars)




And once in a while, in the midst of my endless groanings and utterances, I feel really heard, seen, understood, and here's a note from a friend who often hears, sees, and understands me, and who "lets the Wookie win" one every now and then:


Jim:

Ok, I’m ordering The Naked Now today. (Oh God, how many more books must I read?)

Do you ever feel like Chewbacca? You know, like an alien blurting out endless seemingly incoherent groans to an audience of another planet. I wonder if Jesus ever felt like Chewbacca? Whose audience most often fails to comprehend, even after translation after translation after translation.

Keep groaning, my friend!

Back to the matrix.

Jas

Yes, in following him, you feel like this often.

The price of peace

"It costs so much to become a whole human being that there are very few who have the audacity, awareness, courage, or willingness to pay the price. One has to abandon altogether the search for certainty, comfort, and security, and reach out with both arms to embrace the ambiguities, challenges, and dangers of life with energy and passion. Like a lover, one has to embrace the world and their being fully alive within it (while not of it). One has to accept both pain and pleasure as necessary conditions of existence. One has to accept doubt, despair, and darkness as costs of learning and having new experiences. One needs a will that is strong but flexible, and one that is always open to accept every consequence of their choices and actions. Only when we embrace dying as a certain and inevitable aspect of living do we stand a chance of creating a truly successful life. And I define success here as 'any long-lasting state or self-sustaining condition in which you are feeling totally content, experiencing real connection to God and others, and living in fulfillment of your purpose.' There is a psychological price people must pay for being at peace within themselves and being content with their lives. Today, most people I know are desperately seeking inner peace and contentment. They are unhappy with their marriages (or lack thereof), their jobs (or lack thereof), their children (or lack thereof), their finances (or lack thereof), the economy in general, or their miserable 'lot in life.' In reality, they are unhappy with themselves. They long for inner peace and happiness, but in practice they believe 'happiness' to be a goal outside of themselves. They are not aware that happiness is a byproduct of the way of life they create on the inside. They seek inner peace, but are unaware of the price it costs."

-- Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D.

"The great paradox of life is that those who cling to their lives will lose them, and those who lose all concern for their lives will gain them. This paradox becomes visible in very ordinary and simple situations and venues of everyday life. For example, if we cling to our friends, being needy, noisy, and nosy, we may lose them, but when we are nonpossessive in our relationships, we will make many friends. When fame is what we seek and desire, it often vanishes as soon as we acquire it, or at least the pleasure of it does, but when we have no need to be known, we might be remembered and thought of often, and long after our deaths. When we want to be in the center of things, we easily end up on the margins, but when we are free enough to be wherever we must be to follow Him, we find ourselves often drawn into the center. Giving away our lives for others is the greatest of all human arts, gaining us lives worth living and remembering."

-- Henri Nouwen

"You will understand and fully receive My peace, and be healed of and released from all childhood emotional pain, if you will choose and allow it, by the eventual letting go and turning over to Me of the adult struggle you have fully engaged against that which you cannot fix or for that which you can never secure, letting Me carry and handle all of it for you."

-- God's words to me, from last year

Awakening's look and feel

I got completely set free of something yesterday, and it was truly amazing to feel it so vividly. I was set totally free of my "private viewing platform," so to speak, as well as the "private viewing platforms" of others regarding me. It was an ecstatic, extraordinary, and liberating feeling. It reminded me of the "pendulum diagram" that God placed on my heart or dropped into my consciousness a few years ago, and then I reached this point in this amazing book, and it documented it.

"Spiritual guides and teachers are always telling us to wake up - to be alert, alive, awake, attentive, or aware. You might call it the AAAAA recovery program, helping us overcome our many insidious, various addictions to the world and its ways. But 'how can you do that?' is the predictable question. 'What does being awake actually mean? What does it look like?'


Does it mean being happy?

Does it mean thinking about things differently?

Does it mean doing more good and positive and reasonable thinking?

Does it mean being more grateful and appreciative?

Does it mean being helpful and useful with what is right in front of you?

Does it mean being more productive and not wasting as much time?

Does it mean trying harder to do better?

Does it mean reflecting quietly more regularly - like a daily examination of conscience or scheduled 'quiet time'?

In my gatherings and interactions, these are the most common ways that people understand the phrase, and they might well be some of the good results of being awake. But they are not the essential insight. This is not what is meant by paying attention, being conscious, or being awake. It is quite important to understand this. Being truly conscious or aware means:

I drop (or rise) to a level deeper than the passing show and the vacillation of my moods.

I become the calm observer or seer of my human dramas from that level.

I watch myself compassionately from a distance, almost as if the 'myself' is someone else - 'a corpse,' as St. Francis puts it.

I disidentify with my own emotional noise, and no longer let it pull me here or there, up and down.

I stop thinking about this or that and 'collapse (or rise) into' pure conscious of nothing in particular. You don't get there, you land there - 'objectless consciousness,' or 'the great void,' as some call it.

At first, it does not feel like 'me,' and is even unfamiliar territory, because up to now I thought that my thinking was 'me,' and now my thinking has ceased. This is the accurate meaning of Jesus' teaching on 'losing oneself to find oneself' in Luke 9:24. This new and broader sense of 'me' soon begins to feel like your truest and deepest self; it seems solid and unchanging. At this point, God, consciousness, me, silent emptiness, and fullness (at the same time) all start to feel like the same wonderful and previously unimaginable thing! This new perspective and foundation allow me to see things for what they really are, with total acceptance, and also for what they are not. It is indeed a radical perceptual shift that tradition would call conversion. I can begin to enjoy all things in themselves, and not in terms of their usefulness or importance or threat to me. This 'I,' this 'little ol' me,' stops being the significant reference point for anything. Nothing else deserves to be called freedom except this foundational freedom from the small selfish self, which is why even imprisoned people and physically limited people can be utterly free.

This awareness deepens gradually on the cellular level, breathing level, heart level, seeing level, hearing level, touching level, aroma level. This is what is being refined in a regular contemplative 'sit.' The thinking level will be the last to 'fall' because it always overstates its own importance and represses the other sources. So you must consciously practice noticing and ignoring it. I can then later move in to change, fix, or do what needs to be done, but I do not have to do so in order to be content or happy. This shift changes the entire situation much more than you could have possibly imagined. Now there is no longer much room for compulsivity, fanaticism, legalism, trumped-up excitement, or even depression. Equanimity is the very nature of the soul. Jesus would have called it 'the peace the world cannot give, nor take away' (John 14:27).

I no longer use events or titles, roles or opinions, clothing or money, affiliations or contracts, or even churches, temples, or synagogues to define myself. I am free to make good 'use' of them, and can also let go of them on a moment's notice, or even keep them and love them, but I do not 'believe' them as if they represented final substantial reality. They are all passing, relative goods. I stop labeling, ranking, and categorizing people and things and just see them; typically, this will lead to a quiet joy and deep peace and contentment. This is presence, or what Simone Weil would call 'absolute attention.'

I am no longer emotionally jerked around by things that do not matter (If I am personally identified with my private viewing platform, every event has the power to snag and control me.). If I cannot detach from a person or event or feeling when it is needed or appropriate, then I can take it as certain that I am overidentified, overly attached, or even enmeshed. This could be called unawareness, the unawakened state, or blindness. Seemingly, this is true of most people, only because no one told them there was another way.

I am now on a solid, unchanging viewing platform, apart from the usual level of small self, where I can see things as God sees them, because I am seeing from within Him. That is the beginning of nondual thinking based on a single eternal reality (vs. the dualistic version based on apparent reality) and is surely 'the mind of Christ' that Paul says we can participate in (1 Corinthians 2:16), or the 'inner revolution' (the essence and theme of Revolution Consulting from the very beginning) that leads to an utterly new self (Ephesians 4:23-24).

When this happens to you, you are now a living paradox (or one C.M.F., J.S.): at one with and at the same time utterly connected to everybody else in a compassionate and caring way, while absolutely free to be your own self. Your identity comes from deep within. You will want to love and serve others, but you do not use them or need them to define yourself either positively or negatively. This is surely 'the freedom and glory of the children of God' (Romans 8:21). Such people know how to love you very well, because they are out of the way.

The aware mind allows you to enjoy the inherent aliveness in all things, and in yourself, before things and people are categorized, labeled, and deemed worthy or unworthy, important or unimportant, acceptable or unacceptable. This mystical seeing is the thinking without thinking of the older traditions. This is identification with the awareness behind thought, consciousness itself, pure 'being,' or the perspective of 'the soul.' This is the beginnings of joy, and sometimes even the joy that Jesus calls 'complete' (John 15:11). This is the fulfillment of Socrates' 'Know Thyself,' yet much deeper than any mere psychological knowing of your personality traits or motivations.

This is the Third Eye, the eye of the True Self.
This is what it means to pay attention and to access the One Source.
This is contemplation and dwelling in the Naked Now, through His indwelling in you.
And it is available always and everywhere, under any circumstance.
It is available to you right here, right now."

-- Richard Rohr, in The Naked Now


How strange is this that we even look alike?





Pendulum.ppt

My appreciation of God's ongoing intervention

"The Bible’s purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life. The Bible’s purpose is to show you how God’s grace breaks into your life against your will and saves you from the sin and brokenness that you otherwise would never have been able to overcome… Religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the Gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted, and totally sure you’re accepted, only then will you ever begin to truly obey’. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference."

-- Timothy Keller

I had someone tell me the other day that after checking out my website and seeing my old recommended reading list, that they might choose not to meet with me because of my disconcerting "New Age" views. This is not the first time that has happened to me, when a "casual observer" happens upon me. I can only laugh at the surface response and say "que sera, sera." I will go with God's flow. The fact is, that from the place of my last website update over 6 years ago, I have been totally "broken into," been "had," been radically "intervened on," and quite literally "saved from the world, from myself, and my feelings about things" over and over again over these last 6 years, and that retrieval and revival story is only captured in the coaching journal part of the site. It's the only "living" part, really, and the only way you can really get the whole story of my walk with Him is by reading the whole thing, and if you happen to start and stop at the introduction and onset of the journey, then you are missing a really good story and the whole point of leaving it out there in its existing mysterious form, and that's totally OK by me. His story is way better than mine, anyway, and I am living completely inside it, and I feel His total acceptance, which is truly the wellspring of my total obedience, and the freedom of that is astounding. It is really cool not to have to clean myself up, dress myself up, explain myself up, pretty myself up, or update myself up for other's consumption anymore. His opinion of me, and His amazing love for me over the long and stunningly beautiful haul of my life, is the only one that counts. And getting me to this amazing clarity is a story about Him, not me, about how cool and powerful He is vs. me. He is the fabulous Creator and daily Re-Creator of my everything, and I so appreciate His every intervention into my feeling, thinking, and interacting world. He has stepped in and set me free from my lifetime of stress and worries about whether I'm good enough - or this or that enough - for others to connect with. With the connection to Him, all else happens or doesn't according to His will, and I can totally relax into that.