The Graces

I’m attending a dinner party where the guests have been asked to share a quote, poem, or short story on the subject matter of “allowing grace to flow to us and through us.” No further instructions were given.

‘Grace’ is a ‘suitcase word.’ That is, it must be ‘unpacked’ to determine its meaning in any given context. There are 17 definitions of grace in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. One is “a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance.” Sanctification, in turn, means “the action or process of being freed from sin.” I’m not going there.

Another is “a temporary exemption; a reprieve.” Reprieve, in turn, means “to give relief or deliverance to for a time.” Is this life I’ve been given a temporary exemption or relief from death? If so, then every breath I take is grace.

Other definitions are “a charming or attractive trait or characteristic,” “a pleasing appearance or effect,” and “ease and suppleness.” These last three definitions segue into another plural definition, “Graces.”

In Greek mythology, the Graces are goddesses who symbolize beauty, charm, and goodness. They are three in number:  Aglaia, who bestows brightness or splendor; Thalia, who bestows good cheer; and Euphrosyne the bestower of mirth and joy. According to one version, the Graces are the children of Zeus and Eurynome (a daughter of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys); in other, their parents are Zeus and Hera, the goddess of marriage, women, and family.

The Graces always appear as a group and not as separate individuals. Their main role is to bestow beauty, charm, goodness, and joy to all people. Unsurprisingly, they were usually associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of love

In responding to the request to address the allowance of the flow of grace in and through me I bow in reverence to the Three Goddesses and with an open heart I accept the beauty, charm, goodness, splendor, good cheer, mirth, and joy they so willingly offer. I will open my eyes to see beauty, elegance, and goodness wherever it may be and with gratitude for the gifts of the Goddesses, I will allow generosity, kindness, empathy, and compassion to flow through me.

The Mind's Point of View

The “mind” is a compilation of all of our experiences that are recorded in machine–like fashion. This meticulous recording orders and combines all the sensations, emotions, attitudes, mental states, behaviors, thoughts, and fantasies/imaginations that make up a given experience.  From the sum total of these experiences, the mind generates certain organizing principles that enable it to analyze, explain, and rationalize the experiences in ways that optimally preserve and protect its survival. 

These explanations and rationalizations are conceptualized in the form of a  voice–over “story” that constructs a self-identity (based on the past) that separates and distinguishes us from others, that creates an experience of self-importance and self esteem, and from which the mind decides how to be in the future so as to protect its self-esteem best. This story determines how we perceive, identify, and interpret new events in our lives. Each of our uniquely organized patterns and contents of mind is our “point of view,” the particular place from which we view the world.  This process is automatic and machine–like even though, at times, it appears to be animated and full of excitement. This point of view gives the individual the illusion that he “knows” why events occur and the “whys” are almost always are seen as existing outside the control of the individual.

The ongoing accumulation of experiences, each organized according to previously existing patterns, results in most people’s lives being a monument to the past. Behavior-based on prior experiences is evoked automatically, and the individual plays out his action with no awareness that he is simply repeating earlier patterns of behavior with those minor variations that make it appropriate to current conditions. In this way the mind function acts out a dedication to its own survival, a survival of what has already been stored and concluded.

Some of the common attitudes and activities associated with the protection of identity include (i) the need to be right while making others wrong, (ii) the need to dominate the situation while reducing the effect of others, (iii) the need for self-justification that results in the invalidation of the ideas of others, and (iv) the sense of self-righteousness that provides an illusion of survival. Self-righteousness, for example, can take various forms, such as the attitudes that “I am poorer than thou;” “I'm more stupid than thou,” and “I'm more tragic than thou.” It generates a kind of reverse superiority.

How we perceive the world is a function of psychic principles that have been unconsciously organized from decisions and rationalizations we have made from earlier experiences in our lives. Collectively, these principles are called the mind. Using these principles, the mind unconsciously imparts meaning and understanding to and interpretations of our day–to–day experiences. The mind organizes the memory of our experiences, together with all of the accompanying sensations, emotions, attitudes, thoughts, fantasies and imaginings in a chronological format, then conceptualizes this chronology in the form of a “story.” This story is greatly influenced by our biases, perspectives, prejudices, judgments, complexes, fears, beliefs, and insecurities that also have been formed, for the most part, unconsciously. From these conceptualizations the mind constructs a point of view that determines how we will respond in the future to those situations, circumstances, and conditions that are in any way like the memory of our previous experiences maintained by the mind. And how we respond is how we show up.

Thus, our perception of what we call reality is automatic and machine–like, embedded in the past. For most of us, despite our animated behavior and what appears to be our aliveness, as we stand in the present, our behavior is grounded in the past, a monument to yesteryear.  It is from this place that each projects our point of view. We are not at choice about having a point of view. We all have it; it’s automatic, and for better or worse, it is what it is.

Quantum physics tells us that our intention—the thoughts we direct by our will toward the achievement of a particular goal or result—is a well–ordered, highly coherent energy surge that contains information. Our intention maintained a sustained by the dominant thoughts in our mind.  The brain is recognized as a transducer that transmits our intentions and receives energy transmitted by others.  We can consciously use our intention to create a shift in our point of view and how we experience life and relate to others.

Our overriding need is to transform our protective point of view so that we can interpret, characterize, and conceptualize our environment in a manner that empowers us to see the potential for our vision to evolve out of the present environment.  This seeing is the ability to appreciate the latent potential of the moment. 

Where are we going?

            In 1968, Abraham Maslow, one of the twentieth century’s most respected and admired psychologists, voiced his pioneering vision of a “comprehensive human psychology.” The father of such concepts as “peak experience”, “self–actualization”, and “synergy”, terms now deeply embedded in the wisdom of our culture, Maslow’s vision was the unification of people of different racial and ethnic origins, brought about by a “psychology for the peace table.” In a time of global unrest, Maslow saw the best qualities of humanity—love and compassion, creativity and aesthetics, ethics and spirituality—as the building blocks for world peace. What our society was in need of, in Maslow’s words, was “a system of thought—you might even call it a religion—that can bind humans together” and give our “idealistic young people with something to believe in, . . . something they can pour all that emotion into.”

            But more than 50 years later, a system that binds humans together has not emerged. In spite of the fall of communism in central Europe, the dissolution of the structure of the U.S.S.R., and the unification of Germany, world conflict has not only spread but has been escalated by the interjection of religious ideology, that has brought us to the brink of a global war between Christian and Islamic nations and governments.

            By all credible accounts, the earth is failing as a viable habitat for our species, a failure brought about by the predatory and devouring conduct of corporate and government leaders and the failure of the populous to take meaningful steps to curb such conduct.

            In the United States, religious fundamentalism has exploded; civil rights are under attack in legislative bodies; politics have polarized; the populace has plunged into exorbitant debt; and the Pied Pipers of the media and movie industries have lead the people off the cliffs of violence, negativity, and materialism into an ocean of self–absorption.  

            Giant corporations are exploiting capitalism to the gradual extinction of the middle class while at the same time investing millions of dollars in consultant services to create so-called “inclusive” management strategies, establish innovative motivation techniques, and develop better working conditions for their employees—that is, those who remain on the payroll after downsizing, outsourcing, or contracting for services or manufacturing with foreign workers. Because all the money spent on “corporate improvement” is really about bottom line profits, it is not surprising that Margaret Wheatley, a leading expert in the future of business organizations, has observed that almost seventy percent of the workforce in the United States experiences varying degrees of dissatisfaction with their employment, including almost a third of them who don’t even want to go to work in the morning!

            In his insightful book, The Sibling Society, Robert Bly observes that adults in our culture are regressing toward adolescence, while adolescents, having no desire to become adults, have developed a sibling culture by creating their own rituals and sharing them horizontally with their own age group, while disregarding any use for religion, precedents, or tradition, without which Bly notes, “there is little to prevent a slide into primitiv­ism, and into those regressions that fascism is so fond of.” The population of the Sibling Society has lost its connection with that which grounds us in the historical context of where we came from and how we got here and is severed from the transcendent aspect of life, through which we come to know who we are meant to be.  

Yet voices are being raised within our religious, business, and environmental communities calling for a shift in consciousness that will provide the dynamics for the creation of new realities. Increasing numbers of activist organizations are directing their efforts toward increasing individual awareness and organizing people to protect the environment, counter the rapacious conduct of big business, challenge governmental elitism that favors an ever-increasing wealthy class, and protect the middle class from extinction.  For the most part, however, these activist and grassroots groups are each doing their own thing, failing to find or perhaps even seek out a common ground by which they could connect with one another and integrate their talents and personnel to leverage their strength and energies to bring about results none of them could do on their own. Failing to see how they each fit into a finely calibrated energetic web, these groups and those who lead them continue to voice their own agendas as they drown out and remain oblivious to the voices of their neighbor. Unable to join together in strength and unity, their good ideas and noble intentions do not make a difference.

As a culture, we are more than ever before in need of a system of thought that can bind humans together. In a recent essay, “Awakening Faith in an Alternative Future,” Peter M. Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers speak hopefully of an awakening taking place that they see as leading us “to realize that our future as a species cannot be taken for granted, that there is a real urgency to our present situation, and that the time to start living together differently is now.” The authors cite a 2,100 year–old Mahayana Buddhist writing, The Awakening of Faith, that, they say, speaks of faith and “deep conviction that enlightenment is possible, that we each carry within ourselves immense possibilities for connecting to the universe and participating in its generative process.” Such a connection is possible because we are inseparable from God, with whom “we have the potential to co-create our realities.” The caveat, according to the authors, is that “we must first transcend the myth of separation that modern culture has taught us—separation from one another, from our highest selves, and from the generative processes of nature. Awakening our faith that the future can be different from the past will take nothing less than rediscovering our place and our modern societies and institutions in life’s continual unfolding.”

An awakening, a transition, a transformation, a paradigm shift—whatever it is to be called—that will transcend the “myth of separation,” that will provide us with the system of thought that will bind us together as earthlings, humans, citizens, brothers, and sisters—if it comes at all—will not come from an executive government office, nor a legislature, nor a boardroom, nor a human resource department, nor from a pulpit.  It will come about when individuals begin to think about certain things in a certain way and when the combined thinking of a sufficient number of such individuals reaches a critical mass that causes a shift in the collective consciousness of people everywhere and people everywhere begin thinking about certain things in a certain way.   

Personal Mythology as Gateway to Autobiographical Writing

Before beginning to write your autobiography, it’s worthwhile to undertake an examination of the lens through which your life’s events are interpreted and accorded significance. In this regard, creating your personal myth is the most helpful tool. It acts as a loom on which the raw materials of daily experience are woven into a meaningful narrative that coheres with the collective narratives of all your days.

Our memory is selective. As the psyche attempts to create a coherent narrative over time, many events are left out of the final, remembered story. A personal myth self-organizes our experience of the world. We become conscious of the world through ‘categories of awareness’.  These categories determine what experiences will influence us. Nothing can be woven into our personal myth that we are not first aware of.  A person who has, let’s say, 35 categories of awareness will process and understand a much broader realm of influences than a person with only five such categories. Suffering, loss, and victimization can be huge categories of awareness for some people. Having more categories of awareness doesn’t mean a person knows more; it simply means that person processes more, is aware of more. Through these categories of awareness, our lives are molded and shaped, but not self-determined. 

 The psyche, or soul, exists in a world of analogy and metaphor. The formation of analogies is a basic law of the psyche and the psyche. The psyche is fundamentally poetic, yet how often are we caught up in literalism, which kills the poetic, assassinates the imagination, and runs a stake through the heart of the imagination. 

 A personal myth frames all of what enters our awareness. The soul navigates through the world of “as if”, constantly finding analogies of itself. It is this “as if” quality of our days that expresses of the mythic principles by which we live.  

When we're in a conversation with someone or perhaps overhear a conversation, we continuously hear people say, "You know, it's like . . .” , or, “It was as if . . . " – that is the language of the soul animating. It's finding an analogy to get at the essence of expression. We all know how frustrating it is when we can't find the words to describe something. And that frustration is the soul’s not finding where it wants to be.  

 A personal myth is flexible, protean, elastic, and organic. However, a myth can become a cadaver, and when it does, it becomes an ideology. All ideologies are once-living myths that have suffered sclerosis. It can't be moved. Ideologies were once organic mythologies that lost their gut, their flexibility, their elasticity. All forms of fundamentalisms are myths that have grown cadaverous and have hardened in place. You can’t have a conversation with a fundamentalist; a real, give-and-take conversation is out.  

 A personal myth is a mode of perceiving that is open, willing to yield, and able to shift when necessary. Myths are attitudes, ways of perceiving.  If you have a lousy attitude, that's how the world's going to come in. If you lighten up your attitude, the world is going to present itself consistent with that mode of perception.

 Our personal narratives are temporal. The primary material of the soul’s experience doesn’t easily accommodate personal narratives, which tend to override, dominate, and ignore the internal processes from which our connection to the ancient myths spring. 

 We continuously navigate between two worlds, the personal and the eternal. One is the world of the ego – of whims, needs, and illusions that are often purely secular. The other is the world of the transcendent. Once we enter the realm of transcendence, ego dominance takes a backseat.

The relationship between our personal moments in which we begin to articulate our own story and the myths that have guided humanity since the beginning of time become a telling of something that connects our life to the lives of all those who have gone before us; it bridges the ego into the transcendent and the archetypal.  

 Writing from the ego is merely a story of the ego, while the work of myths is a telling of the eternal, the story of soul and wisdom that far transcends conscious understanding. These are two very different approaches to storytelling.  We must be able to distinguish whether our story is created for the benefit of aggrandizing the ego or whether they are moments where the self and pure inspiration eclipse the wishes of the ego. These are two different worlds. 

The stories we plot are often unconscious. Nonetheless, they comprise both ways of seeing and mythopoetic modes of knowing and discerning through particular imaginal constructs that are embodied as paradigms. They rely as much on a method or a way of seeing as they do on the content of those perceptions and fantasies. But they need only be true for you. In addition, only you are in a position to tell your story. Others relating your narrative is nothing more than hearsay. What’s important is that each of us takes the opportunity to tell our own story as unedited as we wish and to risk speaking in as authentic a voice as we dare.

A myth is a manner and style of being present to the external world as well as to interior ideas and thoughts. A myth is like a fulcrum balancing two realities: the external world I meet day-to-day and the inner psychic world that has its own objective narrative, not needing me to exist but rather working itself through me so that I may come to a fuller awareness of what I am. 

 A personal myth includes a way that allows things of the world to present themselves to me in a particular style of intellectual and emotional presence. I may react conservatively to one life situation and idealistically to another. We’re each polluted constellations of both tendencies. Discovering our personal myth changes and shifts the contours of our lives and is indispensable to self–knowledge. 

My personal myth, then, is in large measure the consequence of how I structure my images of reality based on patterns that I have developed from my life experience and a deeper understanding of the pre-existing myths that are embedded in the psyche of all of us. The energy fields of the psyche that are unique to me also transcend me by participating in a much larger cosmos than my own micro world is capable of holding. 

To study the contours of one's personal myth is to discern the patterns in the processes of our lives, in the politics that dictate our ways of knowing, and in what shapes reality to conform to the inner terrain or landscape of our being. The more each of us is able to understand the format and energies that shape our fantasies, daydreams, night narratives, modes of perception, what tracks our interests, what repels, what is distasteful, boring, ugly, beautiful, where and what we distort, disturb, and see within those patterns as they unfold, the more honestly and fully we comprehend the deep taproots of our narratives, the elaborate fictions we are, and the more the complexity of our life’s plot reveals itself.

Patterns of images, narratives, and energies compromise the psychic scaffolding of life, both consciously and unconsciously negotiated. In the words of Carl Jung, we may never have an answer to our questions about lives “other than an inner certainty that we are on the way to discovering our own mess”. 

Sometimes the most important aspects of our lives are in the margins of it, and writing may be a way to write those margins into the fuller consciousness. Marginal matters in our lives may become most meaningful through the writing of them in a meditative way. Our peripheral vision picks shards of our myth and highlights them in consciousness: fragments from dreams, parts of conversations, overheard conversations, and ‘for instance experiences’ can yield the greatest insights through meditation and writing. Patterns of energy exist in each of our personal biographies that guide, twist, distort and dissemble us along with gifts of genius and creativity into the individual we are destined to become. Such a journey, however, requires courage, conviction, and knowing that it may take a lifetime to accomplish.

Imagination and intuition rather than reason and analysis will be the guiding modes of inquiry into your personal myth. The intent is to reclaim a ‘politics of myth’ rather than an analysis of mythology. Mythos will be honored over logos as a motive of knowing. Tension arises between the realms of what is imagined as fiction and what is remembered as personal history. Allow and encourage yourself to enter into a deeper penetration of the self as it relates to the world rather than simply as writing a diary, bits and pieces of your daily plan, or the broken shards of what may becoming. Let your intention be to retrieve that which you are through the death of your ego and the informing instinct of your soul. Inviting a fuller and deeper consciousness through imaginative writing will trump data processing or information herding. Have a fundamental trust in the soul to reveal what is necessary to complete, not analyze, to confront and not flee from, and to recognize as part of your own shadowed and illuminated being, the doors of light opening into your soul’s ambiance.

Wisdom Of The Near Death Experience

I’ve never been interested in the idea of life after death. The idea seemed to be the wishful or needy thinking of fundamentalist Christians. No interest had I in living forever in some disembodied world. But this past weekend I felt not only the presence of an other energetic world, but that for me the membrane between me in this physical world and that other world was tissue thin.

I attended the “Wisdom of the Near Death Experience” symposium in the lazy hill country town of Wimberley, Texas. Sixteen men and women shared their experiences of dying and their encounters with the phenomena they experienced in a world beyond the physical. Two things were common to the experiences of all the speakers: bright white light, interlaced with the most brilliant colors they had ever seen - far more dazzlingly than anything they had seen on earth - and the experience of being unconditionally and accepted.

Although many lessons were brought back to the physical world by the experiencers, a common theme was that our purpose in this incarnation is to remove the obstacles to loving others so as to act upon the love within our hearts. As one speaker put it, “True love is an action. It ‘takes form’ when it is shared, such as being present for or listening to another; speaking words of kindness or encouragement; putting an arm around another or just touching them gently on the hand or arm; or smiling at someone in a way that lets them know they are seen.” This reminded me of words spoken by the Dalai Lama in January 2017: “We don't need to be talking about God or the Creator; no, we simply be need to be talking about being a warm–hearted person. That's the target. Whether we achieve it or not, it is worthwhile and it is worthy of making the attempt.”

Self-forgiveness is the most significant step in removing the obstacles to expressing our love for others. Forgiving ourselves opens the door to our authenticity in the world and empowers us to share the uniqueness of our own wisdom gained from our life’s lessons.

“We don’t need to look for a ‘life purpose’ – there's no score card being kept", said one of the speakers.  "We simply need more opportunities to express love, and they are around us all the time, if we only look for them.”

One speaker said that in her encounter with angels or beings she saw as tall pillars or columns of light, she realized that, “Although my attitudes and judgments are informed by 'my story', I'm not my story. I gained a new perspective - one of detachment and compassionate neutrality.”

These near-death experiences demonstrated to all of the speakers what they had been making of their lives and what they could be making of them, which lead all of them, without exception, to embrace a deeper commitment to express love for others in the work they do. As one speaker said, “I came to understand that life was happening for me, not to me.”  

What touched me the most was that so many the speakers were told by the angelic beings that they could choose to remain there in that world of boundless love and brilliant light, and given that choice they nonetheless chose to return into their bodies, painful as those bodies were,  because of their love for those who were left behind in grief and sorrow.   

My life is different today because of how deeply I connected with the hearts and souls of those speakers and how I resonate with the wisdom they brought back to share with us.

Is Christianity Really A Woman's Religion?

Christianity is the only world religion with a chronic shortage of men. So it’s not surprising that women are the backbone of the Christian congregations in America. Take for example, the facts that women are: 

• 57 % more likely to participate in adult Sunday school

• 56 % more likely to hold a leadership position at a church (not including the pastor)

• 54 % more likely to participate in a small group

• 46 % more likely to disciple others

• 39 % more likely to have a devotional time or quiet time

• 33 % more likely to volunteer for a church

• 29% more likely to read the Bible

• 29 % more likely to share faith with others

• 23 % more likely to donate to a church

• 16 % more likely to pray

This disparity of participation has lead one researcher to query, “What is it about Christianity, especially Western Christianity, that drives a wedge between the church and men who want to be masculine?”

The answer? Men don’t go to church because they’re practicing another religion – masculinity, or rather, the quest for masculinity, which has replaced Christianity as the true religion of men. 

Men seek the holy grail of masculinity with consummate single-mindedness: their work, hobbies, entertainment, follies, addictions, everything they do is designed to prove to themselves and the world they are "men." But, like the ego, it's only a concept and can't ever be proved with scientific certainty. Similar to the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was punished for his self-aggrandizing craftiness and deceitfulness by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it come back to hit him, repeating this action for eternity, a man's confidence in his masculinity is the most elusive trophy in the Temple of Manhood. The attainment of this elusive quest demands (among other characteristics I will address in another post) that men avoid anything that might call their manhood into question. Foremost among personal qualities that may cast doubt on a man's perception of his manliness are those associated with the feminine, such as gentleness, empathy, sensitivity, vulnerability, intuition, patience and sensitivity, to mention a few. Deep in their collective psyche, men believe church is something for women and children because it embraces and/or seeks to express so many of these feminine qualities.

That’s a curious conclusion, because in the Bible a youthful carpenter and 12 robust fisherman founded the Christian faith, following which men constituted most of Christianity's major saints and heroes. Men authored all the New Testament books; all the popes have been men; all the Catholic priests are men, and 95% of the senior pastors in America are men. 

But while the pastorate may look like a men’s club, almost every other area of church life is dominated by women. Whenever large numbers of Christians gather, men are never in the majority. Not at revivals. Not at crusades. Not at conferences. Not at retreats. Not at concerts. Except for men’s events and pastoral conferences, there is no large gathering of Christians that attracts more men than women.

Visit a church during the week, and you’ll find most of the people working there are women. Drop in on a committee meeting, and you’ll find most the volunteers are women—unless it’s that small bastion of male presence, the building committee. Look over the leadership roster: the pastor is likely to be a man, but at least two-thirds of the ministry leaders will be women. Examine the sign-up sheets for volunteer work, prayer, Sunday school, and nursery duty. Rarely will more than a couple of men’s names be on these lists.

When men need their souls nurtured, they are likely to go to the wilderness, the workplace, the garage, or a sports bar - someplace where they can be reassured of their identity as a man.  Or, they watch their heroes on TV, in a stadium or a domed-covered sports center; their identification with their heroes reaffirms their own sense of self. Church is one of the last places men go to seek comfort for their souls.

This is not to say that men don’t believe in God; more than 90% do, and five out of six call themselves Christians. But only two out of six attend church on a given Sunday. And while the average man may accept Jesus as a reality, he fails to see any value in going to church.     

As a good old Texas boy has said, “Men don’t go to church ’cuz they’ve been.”

This Is How Anger Affects You

 The National Institute for Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine offers this vivid diagram of the effects of anger on the brain and body. Because all of us can fall victim to this powerful  emotion, understanding just how toxic anger can be to our wellbeing should encourage us to learn how to build and sustain our capacity for resilience, because our resilience is our safety net in times of anger, frustration and resentment. (Read more about resilience below the image)     

Just like tall trees bend and sway in strong winds without being uprooted, each of us has the emotional bandwidth to tolerate situations that would otherwise provoke our anger and upend our equilibrium. And that bandwidth is resilience - the capacity each of us has to prepare for, recover from and adapt to stress, challenge and adversity.          

Resilience is not a genetic thing; it's a capacity, and just like a battery depletes over time, our resilience depletes during the day, from the time we wake up until we go to bed at night. And when we become angry during the day, our capacity for resilience can take a big hit, wearing us out well before bedtime. Building and maintaining our capacity for resilience is like building up muscles at the gym - the more we practice it, the larger our capacity becomes and - here's the really good news - the larger our capacity for resilience, the more tolerant, accepting and balanced we become, not only mentally, but physiologically, as well.

The Institute of HeartMath in Boulder Creek, California, has done extensive, pioneering research in the area of psychophysiological coherence, which measures the synchronistic functioning of all of the body's autonomic systems. The Institute's findings, which have been extensively peer-reviewed worldwide, concluded that the greater the body's synchronicity, or coherence, the greater the capacity for resilience. 

The Institute of HeartMath went further and developed a program of breathing techniques to increase psychophysiological coherence and in turn, build a person's capacity for resilience. These techniques were then computerized into affordable software apps and programs that can be downloaded to computers and mobile phones that will coach users to increase resilience. Click in the HeartMath link, above, not only for details about its programs, but for a multitude of products that can be downloaded and utilized for personal wellness. 

You may also email me through this website or call me at (512) 765-5450 for information about HeartMath workshops and seminars in Central Texas. 

Making Masculinity Great Again, Part 1

Hanging over President Trump’s rise to the oval office on a wave of populism in November 2016, was the shadow of a “corporatocracy” under which, as foreseen by 20th Century social thinkers like Peter Drucker and John Kenneth Galbraith, large corporations exercise substantial control over our federal government and the pulse of beliefs and values in our society.          

This powerful corporatocracy imperils the very foundations of our democracy. Big business directs our federal government’s domestic and foreign policies; controls the national television and electronic media; enjoys unprecedented income tax benefits not made available to the individual taxpayer; and annually receives trillions of dollars in outlays from the federal government. In the last several years, government regulation of corporations has curtailed substantially and now, with President Trump leading the way, these corporations will have an even greater license to rape and pillage the environment for their financial gain.  Under the shadow of these forces, individual civil rights are being are being slowly eroded, xenophobia and racial prejudice are on the rise, and our country is divided as never before. Commentators and political observers in Western Europe and Asia are speaking of the United States as a “failed society”.

As government agencies such as the FDA and the FTC, with substantial, financial ties to big business, continue to permit misinformation and disinformation to be broadcast to the consumer, corrupt corporate executives continue to falsify corporate books and records and steal from corporate retirement funds, financially devastating the very the corporations they direct.           

Notwithstanding the fact that large corporations are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting services to create so–called “inclusive management strategies”; to establish innovative motivation techniques; to develop better working conditions for their employees; and to modernize corporate culture, almost 70% of the workforce in the United States today experiences varying degrees of dissatisfaction with their employment, and one–third of those don’t even want to go to work in the morning.

Trust in corporate America is in shambles. More than seven in 10 Americans say they distrust CEOs of large corporations. Nearly eight in 10 believe that top executives of large companies will take “improper actions” to help themselves at the expense of their companies. A USA Today poll reported that Americans trust CEOs even less than they trust lawyers!         

Even among corporate managers and executives, trust is lacking. A recent survey of 450 executives of 30 companies from around the world concluded that roughly half of all managers don’t trust their leaders. Results from a recent Harris survey in the United States are similarly bleak, reporting that 69% of the respondents agreed with the statement, “I just don’t know who to trust anymore.”

The big corporation, without soul or moral conscience, has created the societal context for multiple, socially debilitating forces to constellate as a collective regression of consciousness in our society. While Deepak Chopra, Thich Nhat Hanh, Eckhart Tolle, and Oprah Winfrey, continue to assure us that we are collectively moving towards a transcendent consciousness that will transform our world into one of care and compassion, it is corporate America, through television and multiple other forms of advertising media, that maintains unyielding control of the minds of the American populous and dictates to it how to think about drugs, medicine, insurance, sexuality, news, political persuasion, violence, fear, birth, death, and war. America today is afloat in a dreamlike culture of consumerism, violence, fear, competition, and religious fundamentalism.  

What is most significant about these conditions and cultural forces is that they are the direct, incontrovertible consequences of hundreds of years of leadership of males thinking and acting in the way of the patriarch. Deeply embedded in the patrilineal tradition are the energies of competitiveness, power, domination, control–over, righteousness, distrust, greed, shame, anger, lust, fear of men, and last but by no means least, fear of its psychic counterpart, the matrilineal or the feminine, with its inherent energies of compassion, cooperation, unity, nurturance, trust, generosity, and generativity.

To truly appreciate the causes of the conditions that are today the dominant regressive forces in our culture—and we must appreciate them at depth to respond to them authentically—we must take responsibility for those conditions and the extreme challenges they pose for us today. If we don’t, those conditions will continue to not only perpetuate, but to compound and eventually destroy our republican form of government. We can’t step forward and take that responsibility unless we understand the nature of patriarchy, which comes down to understanding the manhood and the driving forces that have given rise to the dysfunctional social construct called manhood.   

Kundalini Rising, Part 2

From ancient times to the present day, sacred esoteric Indian texts have described and revered the Kundalini, a bio-psychic energy that lies dormant, coiled three and one-half times at the base of the human spine. Until the kundalini is awakened, the individual continues to identify himself as separate from God and will continue to rely on his instincts of survival, pro-creation and willpower to get what he wants in life. These survival energies are represented by the lower three chakras – the root chakra (holding the need for survival and safety); the sacral chakra (holding the needs for sexuality and self-worth); and the solar plexus (holding passion, anger and strength).

The awakening of the Kundalini marks the beginning of an individual’s spiritual journey. In its aroused form, Kundalini is Shakti, the Divine creative energy. The Shakti rises upward through the sushumna, the body’s subtle channel that corresponds to the spinal column, and pierces the chakras as it makes its way to its ultimate destination, the Crown Charka, or Shahasra. As it pierces the lower chakras, the Shakti liberates the individual’s consciousness from the control of these survival centers, allowing the individual to engage the higher powers of the fourth through sixth chakras that bring about the ultimate merger of individual consciousness with the Divine Consciousness, or Pure Awareness. 

For centuries, seekers have engaged in austere yogic practices to awaken the Kundalini. Not only does Kundalini yoga demand extreme discipline and total commitment, it is rarely successful. Moreover, once the Shakti is aroused it can cause erratic and bizarre behavior and be terribly difficult for an inexperienced practitioner to manage without the oversight of an accomplished master.

Kashmir Shaivism, an obscure, esoteric philosophy that originated among mystics in the Himalayan valleys of northern India 1,400 years ago, informs us it is the divine function of the guru is to awaken the dormant Kundalini in the disciple. Arousal of the Kundalini by the guru is known as “Shaktipat”, and is considered an act of grace on the part of the guru.

Kashmir Shaivism teaches that the guru is the grace bestowing power of God. Shaktipat can be transmitted by the guru’s physical touch, by a thought from a distance, or through a glance. The very consciousness of the guru enters the inner self, or soul, of the disciple, bringing about an initiation to the path toward the disciple’s liberation, which is the realization that one's true self is identical with the transcendent Divine Consciousness, or Awareness. 

There are said to be few gurus on the planet at any given point in time who can bestow Shaktipat.  One such guru was Swami Muktananda, who traveled from India throughout the United States during the late 1970s.

A Chicago accountant, who is also an enrolled agent with the IRS, experienced a kundalini awakening at one of Muktananda’s public programs in Chicago in 1974, five years before I did, and wrote about it in a book he published:  

Baba had just begun delivering his discourse with his opening statement: "Today’s subject is meditation. The crux of the question is: What do we meditate upon?" Continuing his talk, Baba said: "Kundalini starts dancing when one repeats Om Namah Shivaya." Hearing this, I mentally repeated the mantra, I noticed that my breathing was getting heavier. Suddenly, I felt a great impact of a rising force within me. The intensity of this rising kundalini force was so tremendous that my body lifted up a little and fell flat into the aisle; my eyeglasses flew off. As I lay there with my eyes closed, I could see a continuous fountain of dazzling white lights erupting within me. In brilliance, these lights were brighter than the sun but possessed no heat at all. I was experiencing the thought-free state of “I am,” realizing that “I” have always been, and will continue to be, eternal. I was fully conscious and completely aware while I was experiencing the pure “I am” a state of supreme bliss. Noticing that this dramatic awakening of kundalini in me frightened some people in the audience, Baba said to the audience, "Do not be frightened. Sometimes kundalini gets awakened in this way.”

Following awakening of the Shakti, there arises an inner voice within the devotee that, over time, brings about the identification of his consciousness with Pure Awareness. Through discrimination brought about by the intelligence of the Shakti, the devotee gradually disassociates himself from the defense mechanisms and coping strategies that comprise the ego; frees himself from the ensnarement of the left brain’s compulsive categorization of all experience, which results in duality, or the experience of separation from God; and becomes detached from repetitive, negative thoughts and emotions. The result is the emergence of an open heartedness that embraces the vicissitudes of life and a loving countenance that is both accepting and forgiving of others. 

Your Circus; Your Monkeys

YOUR BRAIN IS YOUR CIRCUS; YOUR THOUGHTS ARE YOUR MONKEYS 

We supposedly have 70,00 to 80,000 thoughts per day, 80% of which are negative. Ninety-five percent of all those thoughts are said to be "rooftop chatter" - incoherent, idle thoughts that mindlessly skip across the top of the brain. For over 50% of the population, these incoherent thoughts take place even while a person is doing something. In other words, these people are not  paying attention to whatever it is they're doing.

We have no control over these thoughts, however, until they are given substance by our feelings. And theses feelings come from one of two sources - fear or love. Thoughts that are given substance by fear-based feelings (such as anger, frustration and anxiety) will become physical life events that we experience as "negative" or "bad". Thoughts given substance with love-based feelings (such as gratitude, peace and happiness) will become events we experience as "positive" and "good".

But how do we control the feelings that give our thoughts substance? We now know that the average human brain has something on the order of 100 billion neurons. Neurons are cells that are specialized to pass electrical signals (information) to other neurons; synapses are the means by which the neurons pass information to one another.  Each neuron is connected to up to 10,000 other neurons, which means that the number of synapses in the brain is between 100 trillion and 1,000 trillion; that's 100,000,000,000,000 to 1,000,000,000,000,000.

Over time, neurons "wire together", which means that synapses that repetitively fire simultaneously with each other create pathways of information that become solidified, or wired together. A neural pathway that is wired may consist of 100,000,000 neurons; when any one of the neurons in the pathway is stimulated, the information carried by the entire pathway will become activated and will produce a behavior corresponding to the dictates of the information carried by the neural pathway.

The brain is neuroplastic. This means that neural pathways can be changed or modified by behavior, environment and newly acquired neural processes. A fundamental principle underlying neuroplasticity is that individual synaptic connections are constantly being removed or recreated, largely dependent upon behavior, repetitive thinking, environment and physical trauma.

"When something difficult happens, emotion drives,” Brown told the crowd at the Smith Center. “And cognition, thought and behavior are not riding shotgun and telling emotion where to go. When something difficult happens, thought and behavior are tied up in the trunk and emotion is at the wheel.”

Who Thinks For Themselves Anymore?

If most people were asked to say what they were thinking, they’d be speechless. Who thinks for themselves anymore?

Over the last few decades, behavioral economists and evolutionary psychologists have demonstrated that most human decisions are based on emotional reactions and heuristic shortcuts rather than rational analysis, and are woefully inadequate for dealing with life in the real world.

Has the idea of individual thinking become a myth? People rarely think for themselves anymore. Instead, they think in groups. Just as it takes a tribe to raise a child, it also takes a tribe to invent a tool, solve a conflict or cure a disease. No individual knows everything it takes to build a cathedral, an atom bomb or an aircraft. What gave Homo sapiens an edge over all other animals and turned us into the masters of the planet was not our individual rationality, but our unparalleled ability to think together in large groups.

Today, individual humans know surprisingly little about the world. As time has gone by, they have come to know less and less. What they do is rely on the expertise of others for almost all their needs. People think they know a lot, even though individually they know very little, because they treat knowledge or information in possession of others as if it were their own.

But the real problem here is that providing people with more and better information isn’t going to change their minds. Why? Because their ideas and viewpoints are shaped by their individual thinking but by communal groupthink, and they cling to these collective views because it’s safer to be part of group dogma and be wrong than risk thinking for themselves and being wrong. So, bombarding people with facts and exposing their individual ignorance isn’t going to work; in fact, it will only make them angry. Most people don’t like a lot of facts, but they also don’t like to be made to feel they’re stupid.

 In the coming years, the world is going to become far more complex than it is today. Individuals will consequently know less and less about technological gadgets, the economic currents and the political dynamics that shape the world.

How are we to expect these people who are so ignorant and susceptible to manipulation to be intelligent voters? Providing them with more and better facts isn’t going to solve the problem.

Kundalini Rising, Part 1

On a hot Saturday afternoon in July, I was jogging along the Buffalo Bayou on the edge of downtown Houston.  I’d been running for about 45 minutes when out of the corner of my eye, up and to the right, an image appeared in the sky. I couldn't believe what I was seeing: floating well above an old three-story building, like a balloon tethered on a string, was the image of a naked, baldheaded man sitting cross-legged. His entire body was a light blue color.

I stopped in my tracks. I watched. In a matter of moments, the image disappeared. What the hell was that? Okay, let me think about this – my body was over-heated, right? I had a heat-related hallucination, right?  Wrong. In two years, I would receive a shocking revelation. 

It was 1977. I had recently resigned my position as an assistant U.S. attorney. For seven years I prosecuted a wide range of federal crimes. I was disenchanted with the game-playing, lying, and negativity that are indigenous to the office of a criminal prosecutor. My interest in practicing law came to a stumbling halt. I was fed up with the game. Professional turmoil bled into my private world, and my life became progressively less energetic, confused and unsettled. 

I quit practicing law altogether. On the run, I drove to San Francisco, hoping to find solace in the Golden West. But once there, I confronted the hopelessness of my life: I was running from myself and from everything else. I had no idea where I was going. My world was dry and lifeless.  I was empty and hollow. Eventually, I ran out of track.

On a cold Friday morning in December 1978, I drove to the edge of the Pacific Ocean at Point Reyes, north of San Francisco, sat on a cliff below an iconic lighthouse, and prayed, something I hadn’t done since I was a naive teenager. I didn't know exactly who or what I was praying to, but I acknowledged for the first time in my life that I couldn't do it alone; I needed help in dealing with my life.

Eight weeks later, in February 1979, a friend from Los Angeles telephoned me. She was in San Francisco and wanted to have dinner. On a Thursday night, we met in a small Chinese restaurant on Nob Hill. She as on her way to the Oakland ashram of her guru, a Swami Muktananda. She knew I was struggling with my cigarette habit and told me that Muktananda could take away my tobacco addiction and suggested that I go with her to see him. Absolutely not, I told her. 

The following Monday, she called me from the San Francisco airport and told me she told her guru about me and he want to see me. No way, I said. 

But she insisted that I take down the phone number of the swami's secretary and call him to make an appointment to see the swami. As a courtesy to her, I took down the number, never intending to make the call. 

Two weeks later, for some reason, I called the number and spoke to the swami's secretary. 

“Oh, yes, Henry, Swami Muktananda wants to see you. When can you come over?” Good grief, I thought. He wants to see me? “Come to the ashram, attend an evening program, and if you like it, you can come for a meeting with ‘Baba’”

A few days later, on a Sunday afternoon, I drove to the Oakland ashram, arriving there around 3 o’clock. I was met in the lobby by a young woman wearing a sari. “We were expecting you, Henry.” That was nice. There was a calming peaceful about the ashram.  A pleasing fragrance of a sweet incense permeated the air.

My hostess gave me a tour of the ashram. The last stop the large meditation hall where evening programs were conducted and Muktananda delivered spiritual lessons and give individual blessings to those in attendance. We entered the hall at the very back. As I looked toward the far end of the hall there, hanging on the wall, was a large painting of the image of the man I saw in the sky in Houston two years before. I froze. Chills ran up my back and down my arms. My eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t move. The painting was of Bhagavan Nityananda, Swami Muktananda’s guru.

“Are you okay, Henry?”, Saraswati asked, softly.

“I'm just a little shocked", I said. "I had a vision of the man in that painting a couple of years ago in Houston, Texas.” She nodded and smiled, as if to say she wasn’t surprised.

The following Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock I was kneeling before Swami Muktananda in a small room in the ashram. He was sitting cross-legged in a velvet-covered armchair. Two of his swami assistants were in the room with him, one of whom was his interpreter. After my introduction, he asked me what I wanted. 

“I've heard that you take addictions away from people. I smoke cigarettes and can't quit smoking. I'd like your help in quitting.”

As a symbolic gesture of my desire to quit, I timidly offered up to him my last package of cigarettes. He took it in his hand and put it on a small table beside his chair. He motioned for me to come closer to him. I scooted forward on my knees. His chair sat on a carpeted deck about eight inches above the floor.

He looked me straight in my eyes. His eyes were intense, unlike any I’d ever seen. Looking into them was like peering into the depths of the universe. Time stopped. 

He leaned forward. His face was about 18" inches from mine. He cocked the middle finger of his right hand inside his thumb, then flicked it outward, striking me right between the eyes.

“Cigarette smoking is bad for your health,” he said.

At that moment, a searing pain shot over the top of my head and down the back of my neck. My shoulders contracted.

Then he flicked me again, harder. “Cigarette smoking is bad for your mind.” More pain.

Then came a third flick. “Cigarette smoking is bad for your heart."

The fire inside my head was so intense I wanted to cry. Muktananda looked at me for a moment, then said, “Come with me.” He stood up and took me by the hand. I arose in a stupor.

He walked me to the center of the small room. He let go of my hand, stepped toward the wall, picked up a big floor cushion and moved it to the center of the room. He motioned for me to sit on it. I sat down cross-legged. Standing behind me, he placed one of his hands palm down on top of my head, and caressed my head in a clockwise direction five or six times. The pain stopped immediately and a light, tingling sensation arose on the top of my head.

“Sit here and be very still,” he told me. “Close your eyes and don’t move.”

In a matter of moments, he and his attendants left the room. They turned off the overhead lights as they left. There was absolute silence.

My mind became tranquil. I felt like I was floating. I had no sensations. There were no thoughts. I slipped into a state of deep relaxation. It was 90 minutes before I opened my eyes and regained consciousness. My god, I thought, what happened? It was my first-ever meditation.

I went to bed early that night. I was laying on my side, drifting off to sleep, when a loud sound erupted from the base of my spine – a popping sound, like the sound of a cork popping out of a champagne bottle. And at that same moment, my entire body jerked involuntarily. Spooked, I lay there, still as I could be, without moving a muscle, waiting, listening, to see if it would happen again. It didn't. I fell soundly asleep with no idea of what had happened.

The next morning, I was up before six o'clock. I brushed my teeth, put on comfortable sweat clothes, and sat down for meditation. I’d never done it before; well, at least before yesterday, but this morning it was the spontaneous and natural thing to do. In less than a minute, I sank into a deep meditation, losing all consciousness of my surroundings. That meditation lasted more than an hour. When I came back to consciousness, I got up, went into the shower. As soon as I stepped into the shower and began to cry. I cried, and cried, and cried. I couldn't stop crying. I wasn’t sad, or unhappy, or depressed. I was crying tears of joy. Tears of release. Tears of letting go. For so many years I had been uptight and holding on, hanging on, afraid to let go. Now, I was releasing and had no control over it. It felt so good

I cried on and off for the next four days — on cable cars, while at apart-time job I’d taken, or just walking the streets of San Francisco. No matter where I was, tears were only an instant away.

Morning meditations continued to be deep and peaceful, lasting anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes. I experienced a love for God deep within myself. I knew the Divine had answered my prayer for help.

A week later, I went back to see Muktananda to thank him for the gift he had given me. I told him about my body jerking, the popping sound in my lower back and the profound crying that followed. He smiled, nodded his head in understanding, and said, “Ah, Shaktipat.”

The several months following Shaktipat were a curious mixture of joy and pain – my heart was full of joy and my body was full of pain! I had headaches, a lingering, excruciating sore throat, chest pains, and aching joints and bones. Over time, the faded away and my days were saturated with the experience of joy and well-being.

I meditated faithfully every morning for more than half a year. My meditations were so intense that when I came out I was in a daze for several hours and unable to do anything productive until the afternoon. But, with the passage of time, I knew I would have to go back to work, and I began to reflect on what I was now going to do with my life and whether I would ever return to the practice of law.