Desire vs. Attachment

IMHO, experiences are the whole point of physicality. As such, desire for experience is not something which "should" be transcended, nor should the perception of separation. What "should" be transcended is attachment to particular results and the belief in the reality of separation.

Many people don't see the difference between desire and attachment, so let me give you an example. You are on your way to work, and you usually catch the 8:17 train. You wish (desire) to catch this train because it gets you to work a little early, allowing you time to get situated before starting, maybe get a cup of coffee. Today, there was an accident on your way to the train station, and you ran late and just missed the 8:17.

Now the average person, someone attached to results, would get upset now. There is another train at 8:26 which can still get you to work on time if you hustle, but this means you don't get your morning cup of coffee, and you will start the day hurried and frazzled, and this would upset the average person. You would not be upset because of losing your desired outcome, but because you are still attached to that outcome and the experiences that would have resulted from it. Attachment is an emotional state that draws you out of the Present Moment and into the imagining of outcomes which are no longer possible. It is a clinging to the past.

Now, a more "evolved" person can still have desires, but can let go of unmanifested experiences. Take our example. Instead of becoming upset at having to catch the 8:26, you can look and see that no actions of yours could have kept this experience of missing the 8:17. This can now be seen as an opportunity, because no circumstance happens "by chance". Any situation which comes to you not of your active choosing is a situation drawn to you by your soul or higher self, for the purpose of setting in motion a new set of circumstances. Thus the missing of the train can be released, and you can now look around at your new experience and try to find why it has come into your life. Sometimes, such events are the triggers for serendipitous coincidences (what Karl Jung called "synchronicities"), initiating new possibilities.

Thus it is possible to desire an outcome but not be attached to it if it does not manifest.

Totally non-spiritual thing here... Winter Is Coming!

Winter Is Coming

JCS

James Cameron's Avatar: A Spiritual Critique

Hello all,

I don't get out to the movies much. Weird work hours, two preschoolers, long commute, makes it hard. So I usually don't get to see movies until they're out on DVD, if at all. I finally got around to renting Avatar to see what the fuss was all about. Fun movie. Lots of action, visually stunning even on my crappy TV, not the grand and amazing thing it was made out to be, but fun. Reminded me of a mix of Dances With Wolves and Braveheart, with some obvious Cameron touches.

For anyone who missed it, the basic story is as follows. In the not-horribly-distant future humans discover a habitable planet and name it Pandora. It has Earth level temperatures, but the atmosphere is toxic to us. The entire surface of the planet is a vast jungle, teeming with life and inhabited by the Naavi, a humanoid race that looks like 10 ft tall blue cat people. Humans discover a valuable mineral on this planet (called, in a horribly cheesy touch, Unobtainium), and start mining it. The Naavi don't like that so much, and so begins a conflict that closely parallels how the US treated Native Americans, us land-grabbing and driving them back and them fighting a guerrilla war with primitive weapons and stolen guns.

A paralyzed former soldier named Jack gets recruited to be part of the Avatar Project. Avatars are genetically-created human-Naavi hybrid bodies that a person can project their consciousness into via a machine that looks like a coffin filled with unflavored gelatin. The point of the Avatars is to give humans a way to interact directly with the Naavi. No big surprise, Jack falls in love with having a 10 ft tall body that can walk. He meets a female Naavi on his first time out who 1) doesn't kill him on sight because of a floating flower, 2) happens to be basically a princess, and 3) takes him home to Mom and Dad.

You can figure out where it goes from there. Humans do bad stuff, Naavi get pissed, Jack and Princess fall in love, Jack goes native, two secondary characters (who you don't like at first but you like more later) die, big climactic fight where things look bleak and then turn around, humans leave, and they find a way for Jack to be a Naavi permanently. Roll credits.

It was a very fun, if predictable, movie, but something about it got under my skin just a tiny bit, something I couldn't put my finger on right away. It took until a couple of weeks afterwards for me to figure it out. The Naavi are depicted as being very spiritual, very All Life Is One, Earth Mother, give thanks to the spirits kinda people. And yet they never seem to even attempt to extend this spirituality to humans. Humans are depicted as, and assumed to be, irredeemable, motivated by nothing but greed. Even one of the better humans, when confronted with one of the biological wonders of Pandora, replies "I need to get a sample", seemingly motivated by nothing but intellectual greed. Even Jack, in the beginning, really only loves being Naavi for the opportunity to walk again.

This is not to say the depiction of humans was wrong, that's not my point. My point is that, if the Naavi were so spiritually advanced, where was the attempt on their part to extend the olive branch? Why did the Naavi automatically assume that humans were not part of their Circle of Life, not connected to their Earth Mother? Why did the Naavi assume the irredeemability of humans?

Any race that truly embraces Oneness would automatically extend it to all living things, not just those contained on their little planet. I find the spirituality of the Naavi to be incomplete and inconsistent. Just my two cents.

JCS

Now Available on Amazon!

Hello everyone,

It's official, "The Curious Snowflake" is available on Amazon as a Kindle and iPad download! If you have one of these nifty devices, please support my dream and buy a copy for just $5. If you don't, then please help me out by spreading the word. Mention it to people, send out an e-mail, post it on Facebook, anything you can do to help me out, no matter how small, means the world to me. Here's a link to Amazon for anyone who would like to take a look.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Curious-Snowflake-ebook/dp/B003T0GIP4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1276992039&sr=1-1

Peace and joy to all, and wish me luck!

JCS

Autobiography of a Yogi

On my continued trek through my accumulated literature, I've come across another gem. Somewhere, at one book sale or another, I picked up a copy of Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi", and it is a wonderfully fantastic tale.

For those who've never heard of him, Paramhansa Yogananda was on of India's premiere practitioners of what's called kriya yoga, and the first major Indian spiritualist to spend significant time in the U.S., specifically the last 30 years of his life (he died in 1952). "Autobiography" was published in 1946.

Kriya yoga is not the typical, twist-my-legs-up-into-a-pretzel kind of yoga (that kind is called hatha yoga). Kriya is more focused upon specific mediation practices with the goal of conscious acceleration of spiritual evolution. PY called it the "jet airplane" path, since each meditative session, properly undertaken, is supposed to be the equivalent of years, decades, or even centuries of typical spiritual progress.

AoaY is half a biography, half a spiritual treatise. PY is very scientific in his explanations of his spirituality, but some of the circumstances in the book are incredible enough to make most people doubt it's veracity: co-location, precognition, faith healings, materialization and dematerialization of physical objects, levitation, people going years without sleep, all happen frequently throughout the book. For those with an open mind, the claims in it are fantastic, especially in the realm of spiritual progress.

The book is quite well written and thoroughly footnoted. I'd recommend it to anyone capable of keeping an open mind about miracles.

JCS

How to change the world

Hello friends,

One of my absolute favorite things in this world (I'd say not as far up the list as chocolate, but definitely beating out sunsets) is how the world conspires to bring you exactly what you need when you need it. Recently, I've begun to feel a little frustration at life, a character trait I try to avoid.

While on break at work a few days ago, I decided to go out and enjoy the lovely spring weather rather than sit in the back room and stare at cinderblock walls and video game cases for half an hour. I took a yellow legal pad and a pen out with me, and when I was done eating I started writing out my ideas on why it can be so hard for me to manifest change in my life. In a nutshell, my thoughts took a form of Issac Newton's Second Law of Motion, F=ma (the amount of force needed to move an object equals it's mass times the rate of change you want) and applied it to will working upon the Universe. From this rather depressing view, the reason I have been unable to change my life is that the Universe is too big and I am too little. I may be able to change the small things, give myself some good luck from time to time, but the greater changes were beyond me.

Well, leave it to the Universe to dispel my illusions. A few years back, I bought a book called "Notes From the Universe" by Mike Dooley at a used book sale, stuck it on my shelf, and promptly forgot about it. I pulled it out yesterday on a whim and fell completely in love. Philosophically, it reminds me of a more upbeat version of CWG, structurally it makes me think of the Messiah's Handbook mentioned in "Illusions". Just a series of 1 page or less thoughts and reminders, many having to do with.... big shock coming..... how to bring your desires into your life.

Someone trying to tell me something? Maybe? :-)

In a nutshell, this book brought me a wonderful, wonderful truth. I have been unable to change my life because I am trying to change what is, which is impossible. What is is immutable, unavoidable, and denying it is nothing more than an exercise in futility. On the other hand, what will be is as malleable as Play-Doh, completely up for grabs for anyone with the insight to realize it. Literally. Realize as in real-ize, make real.

Idiot that I am, I've missed this completely. I've been like a hiker who comes to a big boulder in his path. Instead of just walking around it, I decided "this boulder is in my path, and if I wish to stay on my path I will have to push it out of my way". This book is like another hiker who walks up and says, "Uh, dude, just go around", and I look up, smack myself in the forehead, and say "Duh!"

JCS

Unity solves nothing

I got to a place about 4-5 years ago where I thought I'd figured out The Big One, that my beliefs and ideas had found a final basic shape and everything else from there on out was just details. Unity was the Grand Truth, and our attachment to outcomes was the cause of all our misery. We needed to "let go and let God", surrendering our free will to the Will of All and just going with the flow. Problem was, as time went on I found myself feeling less and less content, less and less focused, less and less at peace. A little over a year ago all that changed, and I can now look back upon that time and put my finger on what the problem was.

My soul was bored.

You see, Unity may be the Ultimate Truth, but Unity is also incredibly, horrendously, cataclysmically boring, at least for your soul. It's great bliss for your mind and heart, don't get me wrong, but your soul just kinda sits there and says "yeah, yeah, been Here, done this, bought the T-shirt, didn't fit." You soul knows Unity already because your soul is Unity, and It/you came here to experience something that was not Unity. That's the whole point of physical existence, to be un-Unified.

We are the otters of the universe, to quote Richard Bach, playful, curious creatures who like nothing better than something new and different. Our soul is our inner child, and hanging out in nothing but Unity is the spiritual equivalent of taking your inner child shoe shopping; all well and good if the shoes light up and do neat things, but gets old really fast. Our soul doesn't want Unity, it wants to jump in mud puddles and sing loudly to bad songs and get the lyrics wrong and chase fireflies at twilight and imagine clouds as turtles and elephants and dragons and have fun!!

Realizing Unity helps us appreciate these things, but it doesn't bring them to us. They're already there, most people just don't see 'em.