Am I Checking Out or Checking In?

Last night I had a dream and this morning I remembered it! It is a simple pleasure just to say that, but the grin on my face is reflecting something even better. The dream delivered a profound and timely message to me. This represents a shattering or a movement in me not unlike that of an earthquake, the focus deep below the crusty surface of my conscious mind.

I was in a hotel room preparing to go out into the hallway when I noticed the door was off its hinges and just propped against the frame. It looked like some of the screws had been removed from the hinges cleanly, while others had been violently ripped out. I noticed there was a gap between the door and the frame and I looked out into a richly appointed, carpeted hallway. I picked up the door with both hands, threw it aside, and stepped out of the room.

I noticed a woman, perhaps a maid, but definitely a hotel employee in some capacity, and as I approached her I lightly touched her arm in a non-sexual way. I wanted her to hear what I was going to say. I spoke in a normal tone and told her that the door to my room was broken. I never actually asked for the door to be repaired, but I assumed that it would be. I had no plans to return to the room, so I was unconcerned either way. Although I was carrying no luggage, it seemed likely I was checking out.

I turned from her and faced whiteness. Not whiteness like a blinding light, but softer, more like the whiteness of a blank piece of paper. That was when I woke up.

My interpretation? The hotel room represents a place I voluntarily went to be safe and alone, locked in and protected from outside influence, from other people. I paid a large price to be there in isolation, but I so needed to rest. Obviously, this is not a place, but a state of mind. In fact, I did withdraw from most people several years ago after a particularly rough series of events. In a larger sense, I have always been a little withdrawn emotionally.

The screws that were cleanly removed represent the slow and methodical progress I have made through therapy and self-observation. The screws that were ripped out represent sudden, large shifts towards wholeness, like flashes of epiphany. In any case, the door between myself and the world has been thrown aside. I’m stepping out into the world, but the whiteness of the blank page represents the unknown. Perhaps I told the maid about the broken door so it would be repaired to give me a place to retreat in case I get run over after stepping out of the lobby onto the street.

The timing of this dream is significant because in the last few months I have been reaching out more, volunteering, making commitments. Although my training is in technology, a week ago I decided to go to graduate school – to fulfill a lifelong dream of being a psychologist. I have decided that I like people more than machines. Crazy, I know. In the last two days I have spent more time in cooperation with people than I can remember, and you know what? It feels good.

Then this dream comes along. Thoughts anyone?

The Dreams I Seldom See

When I was around seven years old, there was a period of time in which I experienced the most intense, recurring, full-color dreams of my life. More like visions really. Interactive, lucid, penetrating. At the time it seemed to me that all the dreams were interconnected, but that was a long time ago.

At some point in my childhood the dreams ended, or perhaps I just learned to forget them, disconnect from them, upon waking. Either way, the dreams stopped – actually all my dreams stopped. To this day I go to sleep and the lights go out. I wake up and the lights go back on. Nothing in between. My love Kathy says I laugh in my sleep, and I believe her because the thought of that makes me laugh. Once in a while I remember a dream or maybe a series of dreams, but they usually coincide with a pivotal moment in my life, such as when my father died. But for all the months and years in between those moments there is nothing.

One advantage of this is that when I do remember a dream, I really remember it. I carry each one of these treasures with me, carefully wrapped and packed away for safe keeping. These are the rare dreams that I manage to (or choose to) carry through the veil into my waking state. Usually a remembered dream carries with it a message or a lesson or a mote of something glimpsed through a bright keyhole.

I want to give names to some of these dreams so that later I can call them down from the ether for closer inspection. There are three that come to mind immediately: Cloudy Gates, Left on the Beach, and I’m OK. More on these to come.

Fear Clings But Love Releases

There is a feeling I get whenever I decide to give away something of value. Part of me feels love, a light and airy state I enjoy. But there is another feeling there too, one a bit darker and heavier than the first. This part of me feels fear – of loss, of becoming smaller and closer to nothingness.

Fear clings but love releases. We are like leaves floating in a fast moving stream. The water of Life slips around us and we are carried along in the flow. In their fear, some leaves cling to the rocks and create eddies as the water’s flow is impeded. The water has always moved downstream. Life flows. Fear misdirects and stagnates. Love releases.

Fear looks inward and sees only the self. Love looks outward and sees the great circle that connects all of us. We all fall from the same tree and so there is no reason to fear. As life flows past me it finds you just downstream. It passes you and finds another, and another. Eventually, it finds me again. We are all connected.

That is why I try to give where and how I can. Sometimes love wins but sometimes I find myself clinging to something too valuable, too dear to give away. If I were wiser I would see that this is precisely the thing – the one thing too dear to give away – that has the greatest chance of impeding the flow of my life. Such a thing has the power to misdirect and stagnate the water around me. Such a thing has the power to cut me off from the natural flow, ensnaring me. A snag this big must be released for my own good and for the good of the stream.

It is a mistake to think of anything as if it came in a limited quantity. Scarcity is an illusion. There is enough of everything to go around, but there are those whose fear is stronger than their love. They find ways to gather resources to themselves, effectively blocking the flow downstream.

If you desire peace, then release your desires. Do not fear. Do not gather more than you can use. Help where and how you can. And remember:

You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you might find
You get what you need

Rolling Stones

Does Religion Have It Backwards?

When people mindlessly delegate their spiritual belief system to the pages of an old book (or the words of a religious leader) they insult the creator. Why? Because if God created us in his own image (with intelligence, curiosity, reason, and capacity for logic), then he himself must possess these traits. Furthermore, it follows that he must value them as well.

How disappointing it must be to the creator when someone pushes these wonderful gifts aside to blindly follow the written or oral words of mere mortals, disregarding the tools that God himself provided to examine the world and discern the truth.

Here is a thought to ponder. Religious people generally think that accepting their creed differentiates them from others, those they call unbelievers, infidels, pagans, heretics and the like. I agree! Unfortunately, I think they have it backwards.

Who is the wheat and who the chaff? Perhaps God created religion to find out who among us would be willing to shirk the moral obligation to personally seek him. Perhaps God wanted to see who would have the courage to reject religion and question the status quo (much the same way Jesus was reported to have done when he refuted the Pharisees). It is possible, even likely, that God gave us the gifts of intelligence, curiosity, reason, and the capacity for logic so that each of us would find genuine faith and not accept the pale, man-made imitation of faith that we call religion.

One can choose to blindly be lead by others. As for me, I choose to use my God-given gifts to question what has been handed to me by others before I swallow it whole out of fear or laziness or lack of confidence in my own divinity.

If there is a day of judgment and I stand before God to account for my life, at least I will be able to look him in the eye and say, “I may have been right, I may have been wrong, but at least I didn’t take the easy way out. If nothing else, I tried to find the real you.”

You Can Change the World

I’ve been writing lately about how God’s will intersects with the free will of people. In my view, we do not dance on invisible strings manipulated by some higher puppeteer. A long time ago, our creator set up this whole thing, stepped back (just in case), and flipped the switch on. God started up the cosmic party bus, but left it up to us to figure out where to drive it.

God’s will handles the natural laws that govern matter, and the spiritual laws that govern life. But what occurs within this framework, which road the party bus takes, is determined by the free will of people. I believe that God chose to make it this way for a reason, and the reason has something to do with allowing his children to make their own mistakes. How else do children learn?

By default, the world is a safe place for us. If it is dangerous, it is because we have made it that way – step by step, inch by inch – by the destructive personal choices we have made. There is darkness, but the opposite is also true. There is beauty and light in the world, also brought about by the personal choices of people.

Because people are imbued with the ability to create and destroy, we have a tremendous power as well as a sobering responsibility. Mahatma Gandhi is credited with saying:

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

If you want a kind world, be kind. If you want peace, love your neighbor. Some of us chase after God, thinking to find him in a building or in the pages of a dusty book. We travel great distances to a sacred temple or ancient wall, hoping to feel God’s breath, vital and real. Do you want to feel God’s breath on you? Then love someone.

I bet that right now, as you read this, you are in a unique position to help someone. Someone at work, a neighbor, a friend, whoever. There is something you can do to heal or encourage, something that nobody else can do as effectively as you can – all because of your unique situation.

Do you want to feel God? It’s easy! Just open your eyes, see the need, and jump right in there. Be the change you want to see in the world.

Intelligent Creationism

I don’t know why people argue about opinions. Opinions are like crazy relatives. Everyone has one and none of them is quite right.

For example, the argument between creationists and evolutionists makes me crazy. Grossly simplified, creationists believe that God created the universe, with life pretty much the way it is now, about 6,000 years ago. Evolutionists believe that the universe was formed billions of years ago by the Big Bang, and that life evolved spontaneously from that event.

First of all, are these really the only two choices? Darwin’s disciples scoff at the Christians, dismissing them as zealots – nothing more than mindless religious fundamentalists. The faithful dismiss the scientists, thinking they are lost in spiritual darkness. I think that both the creationists and the evolutionists are religious fundamentalists. Both are lost in blinkered darkness. Both are intolerant of contrary opinions, blind to any position but their own. Both are apt to sweep any dissuading evidence under the carpet of dogma.

I propose a compromise, not only because I like compromises, but because in most cases a compromise actually comes closer to the truth. This may not be a new idea, but it is something I have thought about for a very long time. It is an idea I call “Intelligent Creationism”.

Assuming there is a creator, isn’t it possible that he created the universe by way of the Big Bang?

Maybe that is how he chose to get this party started. In this version of intelligent design, God set up a perpetual system of natural and spiritual laws that would govern the formation of the stars and the planets and of life itself. Among the many processes that God set into place was evolution. So if it is the case that Homo sapiens evolved from lower forms of life, then perhaps that was how God intended it to be.

So stop fighting about it. Maybe you are both wrong, or right.

Thoughts Are Things

I have heard that perception is reality. To me that means that pure, actual reality is happening all around me, but I never see it, not really. I am separated from it by the imperfect lens of my perception – although it might be more accurate to say I am protected from it by the shield of my perception.

In that sense, I have to say no, perception is not reality. Yes, my lens is imperfect, and I love how I can shape my world through the practiced use of selective perception. Yes, perception filters our experience of reality, but I think that our link to pure, actual reality is a little more personal than that.

There is a fundamental, transcendent Creator that exists apart from the physical universe of space and time. Its existence does not depend on our perception, nor does its form or its character.

And then there is Creation. Creation, by design, is a pool of unlimited potentiality. It is a state of ordered chaos in which all things that can be imagined are possible. In this place, perception filters reality, but our thoughts (and the thoughts of God) create it.

Thoughts are things. Thoughts have the property of bringing things from the pool of unlimited potentiality into existence. Isn’t it true? Of course there is the ordinary link between what we think and what happens. First the idea, then the action, then the result. I think everyone would agree on that.

What I am referring to is something a little harder to accept. What I am saying is that there also exists a direct link between what we think about and what happens. First the idea, then the result. Automatic. No action required. Before you brush this aside, what about positive thinking? Don’t we all believe in the power of positive thinking?

This idea puts prayer into a different light. Why would God set up a system that would chain him to his throne, forever having to listen to our needs and desires, innundated by one prayer wave after another? I don’t know, but I think there is another possibility. I think God created a system that allows us more control (and demands more responsibility) than that. Prayer works, just not for the reason that many people think.

When we pray (or meditate or hope or send out positive vibes… whatever) our thoughts shape events and change people’s lives because of the system God set up, not because God himself somehow grants your request. God is our father, but not our daddy. We were created in his image with the power to create – and destroy.

When you pray, I am sure that God hears you – if that is your intent. He knows your needs will be met and that all things will, in the end, work out for you, because that is how he set up the system. The reset value – the default setting – is for you to be whole.

So when you pray, do it however you feel comfortable. Be specific and if you can visualize what you want, so much the better. However, be careful how you pray. A prayer full of need only serves to reinforce that need.

If you pray “I need money” or “please give me money”, the message you are sending into that pool of infinite possibility is that you are broke. The universe will then work to make it as you have spoken, and you will tend to remain broke. Remember, the Bible says that God spoke the universe into existence.

Instead, imagine yourself as already having what you need or desire! Picture yourself paying the bill you are concerned about. Pray as if you already had the money. Thank God or the universe (or the lotto) for sending the money in time. This is where faith comes in, for it is really our faith, more than our thoughts, which make reality.

What if God Was One of Us?

Circles are perfect. They have no beginning, no end – yet they are whole, lacking nothing. Circles are pure and simple – yet they wield the power to contain and define complex ideas. One example that comes to mind is the yin-yang symbol.

Dark and light interlocked in a balancing embrace. Together, light and dark are in harmony and yet that is not enough. Within the dark is found light and within the light is found darkness.

Each side contained by and containing the other – each by its opposite defined.

Could this be the nature of God? Good and evil, light and dark, creator and destroyer – together as one? Two sides of a single coin, spinning in eternity, never to be caught, both heads and tails and yet neither? Immortal brothers wrestling on the line between order and chaos?

Familiar strangers, unable to blend or to separate, neither able to win or to lose…

If people were created by such a being (one containing both good and evil), wouldn’t it follow that we would also contain both good and evil? And don’t we?

If an omnipotent and omniscient power of good pre-existed evil, then the power of good must have created the power of evil, or at least have watched it come into existence, allowed it to be. Perhaps God needed evil to exist and so he created the serpent, knowing that Adam and Eve would fall into temptation. Perhaps evil is a variable in some cosmic experiment, and we are the lab rats. Perhaps evil is necessary for us to grow spiritually.

But the more I think about it, the more I look at the yin-yang, the more I wonder. Isn’t it possible that good and evil have always existed together? That possibility gives God some humanity and makes him a little more accessible. Such a god would be keepin’ it real. Know what I mean?

Sort of like that song originally released by Joan Osborne, One of Us:

What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home

If God had a face what would it look like
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that you would have to believe
In things like heaven and in Jesus and the saints and all the prophets…

The Underlying Theme

The actual core of a thing is usually simple. For instance, the foundation of a home is pretty straightforward as compared to the things that are built on it, around it, over it. On the surface, the eye sees a complicated arrangement of roof and walls, doors and windows. Just below the surface, under the vinyl siding, run unseen rivers of electricity, water, and air. Deeper still, buried within the structure’s core, lies its foundation – the intrinsic mechanism that makes all the rest possible.

Is life any different? On the surface, life – including all the systems that make life possible – is very complicated. Thousands of scientists around the world spend their days working hard to uncover the mysteries of life’s roof, walls, doors, and windows. Priests and philosophers attend to the flow of life’s electricity, water, and air. And yet there are a few who seek to know life’s very foundation, its underlying theme.

How does the mechanism of life work?

Does God sit on his throne, picking which prayers to answer, weighing the devotion of each child before deciding who gets blessed that day? Is God really that interested in my day-to-day life that he knows the exact number of hairs on my head as the Bible claims? Religion has cast God as some kind of spiritual micromanager, complete with all the “omnis”: omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful), omnibenevolent (seeking the good of all), and omnipresent (present everywhere, in the past as well as the future).

Omnis, by definition, are transcendent, meaning they are as limitless as life itself. God gave us the capacity to choose from a limitless set of possibilities. Why would God micromanage such a creation? That would be predictable, downright boring. Everyone loves a mystery. God already knows the outcome of the things he has chosen to control. He gave us free will so we would have the capacity to do something unexpected. God wants to be surprised by life! That is why he made us and our world so variable, so chaotic. For it is only within a state of chaos that all things are possible. (Of course, some order is required too – yin and yang.)

In this context I believe the very purpose of life can be understood a little better. God created the universe and put billions of people in it, all different, yet all created in God’s image. Because God creates, we create. In a sense we are all just like life itself. Each of us builds a unique life on a common foundation. Simple.

Deep down we are all made of the same stuff. The differences between us are something to be celebrated, encouraged, nurtured, for they are the very reason we were created in the first place.

Some You Win, Some You Lose

My mom lives in SW Florida. A few weeks ago Tropical Storm Fay hit her area from the south. There was no mandatory evacuation and my 78-year old mom rode out the storm alone in her one-story, built-to-take-it, concrete and block Florida-style home. I love that tough old lady and I love that tough old house too. I grew up there, on that three by seven mile barrier island, with nothing else around except narrow asphalt roads, sand – and a massive capillary network of canals. A few homes stuck up here and there like mushrooms growing up from a manicured lawn. Back in the day, we endured good old Everglades thunderstorms that caused more damage than Fay.

Even so, when Hurricane Gustav started to look like it wanted to follow Fay on her heels, I decided to make one of my many “hurricane week” visits to Mom. In her garage, leaning against a wall and covered with cobwebs, was a familiar stack of old, heavy, difficult to install, plywood hurricane shutters. I still have no idea how many times I put those up only to take them down again. My father made the original set just after the house was built in 1978 but we ended up wearing them out. (I guess it would be more accurate to say we “weathered” them out.) Have you ever heard of someone weathering out their hurricane shutters? That says a lot.

About ten years ago I made a new set, and there they were, still stained with my sweat and my blood. I sighed and looked slowly away in resignation. As I glanced across the street at one of the two-story monstrosities that now populate the island, I noticed the lovely, lightweight, aluminum storm shutters across its many large windows. An idea immediately formed in my mind and I was off to Home Depot.

Do you know how many 86-inch aluminum storm shutters you can put in a 1999 Chrysler 300M? A bunch. The hard part is getting the 12-foot pieces of track in there without them sticking out the back too far. Oh well, that’s what the little red flags are for.

As Gustav was cutting into Cuba with hurricane force winds, I was cutting aluminum with a fine-tooth radial saw, drilling holes in concrete and fastening countless tapcons. The sweat and the blood still flowed, but now I was smiling as I thought, “No more plywood.” The plywood shutters required two people and several hours to install but the new aluminum ones can be installed in about an hour by one person. I feel much better knowing I can swoop in there, shutter the house, and get Mom the heck out quickly, all by myself. I guess I did this as much for myself as for her.

Thankfully, Gustav passed us by. A few days later, with Hurricane Ike bearing down on us, I thought the new shutters were going to get their first test. Ike decided to ravage Cuba instead, as it passed well south of us on its way to strike Galveston, Texas.

Some you win, some you lose.