The rituals of the modern world

Went to go see fireworks with my brother, his son, my sister, her boyfriend, and my family yesterday. Was a typical rural-America fest: corndogs, funnel cakes, patriotic music, and a lip-synch contest won by 4 teenage boys doing "Bohemian Rhapsody".

Every culture needs it's group rituals, and their choices shed an interesting light upon said culture. From communal fire-pits stories to temple ceremonies to gladiator combat to weekly Mass to high school football games, what a culture chooses as it's communal gathering-point says a great deal about it.

The modern day has fewer and fewer of these. Yes we still have our sports teams and our fireworks displays and our parades, but too much of this has been replaced by the modern campfire pit: the television and the computer. We seem to find it harder and harder to come together with others and actually interact, make eye contact, mingle. Even those we have draw our attention away from each other and towards something else, whether that be a guy hitting a ball with a stick or an exploding skyrocket.

Perhaps this void is being filled to some extent by social video gaming. The popularity of get-your-friends-together games such as the Nintendo Wii or Guitar Hero or Rock Band shows there is a need for such a thing. Even online gaming, whether deathmatching on Call of Duty or joining a guild in World of Warcraft, can be a social interaction of sorts.

Still, interaction through electronic devices cannot replace sitting around a campfire and actually talking. We need to do more of this, methinks.

CS

My Soul, Remembering.

Hello all,

Today is the summer solstice, and whenever the Pagan holidays hit, I find myself looking back at how I had marked them in the past. Once I would have marked the sunrise and sundown with rituals. Today, I slept until 10 am and caught fireflies with my kids at dusk. The older I get and the more my soul remembers, the more I realize that ritual and ceremony are really just foci, chances for us to feel like we belong to something greater, a group of like minds. Once we start to catch on that all this separation and differences of opinion are just window dressing, that We Are All One, all the need to belong disappears. Because we already belong to the greatest group of all.

God.

CS

The Tightrope Walk of Spirituality

It is a razor-fine line we all walk, to hold steady to our own truths, yet to also be open to new truths that other souls may bring into our lives. One one side is arrogance and surety, which are both just disguised fear of being wrong. The other side is compliance and loss of self, which are sacrifices made in order to feel sure, which brings us back to fear again. The deeper we delve into spirituality, the more we hang our sense of self and our self-esteem upon it, and ironically, the more susceptible we are to our fears and insecurities. 

Thus for anyone on the Vertical Path, the most important question we can ask ourselves is "what if this belief I hold dear is wrong?" The more we recoil in fear from this question, the more we must honestly examine that belief. If, instead of fear, we sense a simple feeling of un-right-ness, of lack of resonance with our soul, we know that, at least for now, this truth is our own. 

Problem is, not only is such a question unpleasant to ask ourselves, but the paths of arrogance or compliance are far easier than the path of self-honesty.   It is easy to lock our beliefs into place, it is easy to allow others to dictate our truths.  It is damned hard to always question ourselves.  But if we can get ourselves to a place where we can do this, the rewards are huge. Only when we achieve self-honesty can we truly have compassion for others, because these personal insights allow us to understand the actions of others.  We can see that when someone does something that upsets us, they do it because of their own imbalances.  This compassion brings us great inner serenity, because it allows us to "accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Karma

I was posting on SpiritualForums.com today regarding Karma, and I really liked what I wrote so I decided to repost it here, just for chucks.  Enjoy.

I don't think Karma in the traditional sense exists, as in we get punished with unpleasant lives because of things we did in other lives. That would only make sense if Time existed in the realm of Spirit. But Time is a function of physical reality, a tool that allows us to organize our experiences here. Outside of this Realm of the Relative, there is only the infinite Moment of Now. Thus there can be no "karmic rebalancing" because which direction does it rebalance? Forward in time? Backwards? Randomly?Traditional Karma only works if lives are progressed through linearly, but future lives are just as much a reality as past lives, they're just harder to perceive because of how probability splinters the timelines.

That having been said, there are still consequences and the law of cause and effect. The vibrations of our thoughts and actions draw like energy to us. This is not justice, but simple spiritual physics: that which is sent out eventually returns. The reason for this is incredibly simple: We Are All One, thus what happens to another happens to you. Again, like Time, this action/reaction is a function of physical reality, and thus does not affect the realms of Spirit. Thus nothing carries over from one lifetime to another.

So then, why are some lives harder than others? This is really the question that the idea of Karma was created to answer, the seeming injustice of one person being born to privilege and another to squalor, one with perfect health and another with chronic illness, one living to be a centarian, another dead as a teenager. "How is this fair?" we ask the universe. This only seems unfair if we maintain our illusion of separateness. If we remember that We Are All One, then we do not envy that person for their health or wealth or longevity, we bless the fact that these others are really facets of ourselves, and we, with our illness or poverty or short life, are giving these others a chance to appreciate what they have.

Now this is a very deep and difficult and esoteric way of looking at things. It's bloody hard to be grateful for our hunger when others have food. So let's look at this another way. At the level of our souls, we choose our lives and our experiences. We draw situations to ourselves in order to define Who We Are in relationship to what happens to us. At all times, no matter how hard things are, it is possible to look into our souls and sense the why of things, to understand the choice we made to draw these circumstances to us. In reality, this is type of reverse Karma. By changing our perspective and understanding, we can draw to our lives the circumstances we choose rather than unconsciously behaving in a way that draws consequences to us.

Thus, traditional Karma only really exists for those who do not go through life making conscious choices. As long as we bumble our way through life thinking that thing happen to us, thing will indeed happen to us. The moment we take the reigns and live consciously, life becomes something that happens because of us, for then we are truly being the cause.

CS

Peace and Joy to all, no exceptions, for we are all One. Thus, my Peace and Joy are also yours, and yours, mine.

Do Vegetarians Really Taste Better?

Good morning all,

I consider myself a relatively enlightened being. If enlightenment were a school, with Yeshua and Siddhartha Gautama and such as doctorate students and the average person in preschool, I'd put myself in about 4th or 5th grade. Far enough along where we can drop the ABCs and 123s and really start digging into concepts and ideas. But there seems to be a common thread in most people on the Vertical Path that I just can't get my head around, that I not only can't grasp, but totally disagree with.

Vegetarianism.

More often than not, those I would consider "enlightened" tend to lean Vegan, or at least tend to stay away from McDonald's Quarter Pounders. People rail on about the health evils of red meat, the horrible mistreatment of agri-business farm animals, the lack of respect for the spirits of the slaughtered, and so on and so forth, and I honestly disagree.

Ok, maybe I should qualify that disagreement. Yes, animals on big farms are treated horribly. Veal calves and geese raised for foie gras are the most disgusting examples, but even chickens and pigs and cows are treated like machines and not living things. This is wrong (as in, I choose to define my idea of "right" in contrast to this "wrong), and those who are part of this system are racking up a whole bunch of Cause. The accompanying Effect will come eventually, and that probably won't be much fun for them.

That having been cleared up, I honestly feel no wrongdoing whatsoever from firing up my grill, making up a nice black pepper/dried garlic/rosemary rub, getting a couple nice big NY strips or Ribeyes, and having me a good ol' American barbecue. In fact, I derive a certain kind of joy from it. Perhaps this cow was mistreated by others, but I am putting my effort and my joy and my love into making a meal for my family, and when I put this love in and get pleasure out of this meal, I feel I am honoring the animal in the finest way I know how. 

Yes again, overindulging in red meat is bad for you. My beloved Ribeyes have a ton of cholesterol and fat in them, I know this. But full-blown vegetarianism is just as bad in it's own way. Vegans usually have to take iron supplements in order to not become anemic, for example. Think of the stereotypical Vegan: rail thin, paper white, big circles under the eyes? Does that sound healthy to you? Some friends of mine are raising their daughter Vegan. Guess what: she has a ton of digestive health problems and food allergies. Of course, her parents are sure that these issues are pre-existing and not a result of their choices. Me, not so sure. So thus my favorite sides with my steaks is some lightly steamed broccoli or asparagus and a seasoned, unbuttered baked potato. Yum! All things in moderation.

I truly believe that part of the point of life is to create our own definitions of right and wrong, and then to define ourselves based off of those definitions. So if your definition of wrong includes not eating anything that has a face, bully for you. But everyone has to remember that their ideas of right and wrong are exactly that: 1)ideas, not truths, and 2)theirs, not everyones. 

Now excuse me, I'm gonna go make me some bacon and eggs for breakfast. 

CS

__________________
Peace and Joy to all, no exceptions, for we are all One. Thus, my Peace and Joy are also yours, and yours, mine.

Frustration

Hello everyone.

So imagine you have this idea, this story, that fills you with joy, that you truly feel in you heart of hearts and soul of souls is important, that you need to share.  So instead of going the usual write-a-query-letter-find-an-agent-contact-publishers-yadayadayada crap, you instead try it the 21st century way.  You post it on a blog, you throw it up on a couple of related online forums, you mass e-mail it out to everyone you have contact info for, telling them to forward it on virally, saying "hey, you do it for dumb jokes, do it for this!"  You tell everyone "give me feedback, don't just say 'good job', be critical!"

Then you wait.

And wait.

And wait.

On your blog, your friends and family pretty much all say "good job" (with a few exceptions, thanks Sam and Pete).  The forums get a few vanilla replies the first day or two, and then it gets buried under all the people talking about crystal readings and relationship problems and how they've been meditating for a whole week now and nothing's happening and all the crap that you outgrew a decade ago.  That alignment, that synchronicity that you were so sure would happen doesn't.  And all this time that wonderful high, that rightness you felt when the story first flew out of your mind, down your fingers, and onto the screen easier and faster and better than anything you've ever written in you life, starts to fade.  You get sick, have a hard time kicking it.  You here more news about old friends going through hard times.  You think about the past, and all the dear people you miss, and wonder why you've had such a hard time connecting with anyone out here at the ass end of nowhere.  Basically, the peak fades, and now it's the hard scrabble to keep the plateau as high as possible, and every little banal thing seems to be working together against you. 

Frustration seems to be the greatest obstacle to gaining any kind of enlightenment.  Look at Jesus, for example.  How many times did he get upset because his disciples missed the points of his parables?  How often did he lose his temper with the authorities?  How many of those tears of blood wept at Gethsemane were not tears of fear, but tears of frustration at having so little time left and so much more he wished to share?  Quite a few, I think.  When the Buddha held the lotus blossom up in silence in front of 1250 of his followers, and only 1 understood why he did it, did he get frustrated?  Probably.  And I am nothing compared to these.  I am, as John the Baptizer said, not even worthy to help one of them on with their sandals.  They are graduate students working on their doctorates, I am in kindergarten still trying to learn how to tie my shoes and count past 10.  But this does not mean I cannot try to help my little brothers and sisters to stack up their blocks or draw circles.  And if my siblings would rather scribble than draw circles, or knock towers down than build them up, am I allowed to get frustrated?  Yes.  But are they also allowed to scribble and knock things down?  Yes, and that's the hard thing to remember.  Eventually, I will find others who will want to play my games, who will also want to learn to tie shoes and count past 10, and then we shall play wonderful games of make-believe together.  Until then, I just have to keep my temper.

CS

"There is really no death."

"The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, 

And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, 

And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. 

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, 

And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier."

Walt Whitman wrote that in "Song of Myself", and five years ago I read it to the congregation at my brother's funeral. My brother was only 47 years old. He died suddenly while on a trip to California with friends, from a rare virus that attacks the heart and enlarges it. He left behind a loving wife and two adolescent children. By any normal measure, this was a tragedy. But his funeral was a celebration, and one of the most amazing experiences of my life.  

My brother and I were exactly the same except in the ways we were complete opposites. Well over 6 feet, broad-chested and deep-voiced where I am a slender tenor, he was known as "Big Mike" by just about everyone, and just about everyone knew him. While I have always been drawn to alternative religions, he was very traditional. He spent 2 years in a Catholic seminary before going evangelical, and spent most of the last third of his life traveling throughout Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, founding bible studies, youth ministries, and church music groups everywhere. Especially the music, which was a first love of both of us, and our strongest bond. Politically, we saw eye to eye in a strange way. I'm a good ol' fashioned liberal, while he was a William Jennings Bryant-style Populist: social conservative, economic liberal. We had the usual we-are-family-so-we-won't-talk-religion unspoken agreement, which is my only regret: I would have loved to really talk with him about it. 

Needless to say, his death was a shock, but if anything, his funeral was even more so. The whole family knew he had "devoted his life to God", but had no idea what it really meant. The service was held in a big old Lutheran church he was a nominal member of, and it was good that it was held there, because it was literally standing room only: we later estimated there were about a thousand people there. Members of every church he visited, every group he founded, every life he touched showed up. After the initial service, the mike was opened up to everyone, and people talked for nearly 3 hours about my brother, how amazing he was, how he had touched and improved their lives. 

I thought long and hard about what I was going to say beforehand, and finally chose the 6th stanza of Walt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself", part of which I quoted above. It was strange to walk up in front of all those strangers who knew my brother, strange to stand in front of a church congregation for the first time since I dropped out of my church choir at 18. But in sharing those words, I felt myself heal. In reaching out to all those people with these sentiments, that death is not an end, but a change, the wound in my heart in the shape of my great mountain of a brother started closing, just as I helped all of those strangers to close theirs.  

So what does this all mean, and why do I share it here with you? Because despite all of our faiths and beliefs, we don't actually know what happens when we die. We think we know, but it is all conjecture and intuition. But if there is one lesson I brought from the untimely death of my brother, it was this: that even if we do wink out like a candle when we die, what greater and truer immortality is there than to leave behind a great mass of people who remember you fondly? The kindly actions of my brother will echo down through the years, carried on by all the people whom he helped, inspired, and brought peace to. In this, he lived a thousand years. In this, he found heaven.  

CS