If I am empty, what is there to give? If I’m in pieces, what kind of love can I feel for the other?
Living from a whole and complete foundation is the way to live.
Giving from a connected place has power. Living from a connected place has power.
Now, it’s time to become connected.
Not just once in a while.
Not in and out.
Not inconsistently.
Let’s do it.
Now.
But how?
I’m not sure, but, what else is there left to do?
Except to finish the job.
I thought I had reached the end of the road. In one sense, I had. After spending almost thirty-five years with one spiritual teacher, it finally became painfully and everlastingly clear that I had to find another way to go. It became a matter of spiritual life or death.
I had been studying drama and fiction writing. Like a standard movie plot, I had reached the “all is lost moment” in the middle of the third act. Allow me to explain.
I come from a large extended family. I have a few good friends, but I never had to go far when it came to my direction in life and people to turn to for good advice. My father and my uncle provided everything I needed in terms of my physical survival, and I had found my own way to satisfy my spiritual needs. Spiritually, I traveled an unorthodox path, but I was able to integrate it into my conventional lifestyle. I’m not the type to live in a commune or an ashram, and I never discussed my spiritual life with my parents and extended family.
And then things changed. Life moved on, as it inevitably does. In my late fifties, the only close family relationships I had left were my wife and my daughter. With no spiritual community to turn to, I felt terribly alone, rootless, and achingly lost. I felt myself sinking into an abyss of despair.
At this point in 2013, I found Saniel and Linda Bonder through a local Meetup Group in Miami, Florida. I had been actively searching for the next step, but nothing had clicked, and then it did.
The leader of the Miami Meetup group encouraged me to attend a weekend retreat with Saniel and Linda at a private home in the Atlanta suburbs. At the last minute, I decided to go.
The teaching and the experience I had been following involved a long-distance relationship with a teacher who appeared periodically in Miami amid thousands of people. In the local groups, we watched videos of the teacher appearing at events around the world. I never felt I had much in common socially with any of the local practitioners, except one very good friend who I still have lunch with regularly. And the teaching was a one-size-fits-all kind of deal. I wanted something more personal. I wanted something deeper and more intellectually comprehensive. And I wanted the chance to awaken now, not in some distant future if I jumped through all the right hoops.
At the retreat in Atlanta, I sat next to Saniel’s wife, Linda Bonder. The first thing she did was offer me her hand to hold. I suppose she intuited that I was nervous. I was amazed at Linda’s act of kindness. I felt at home with the audience of twenty practitioners seated in an intimate circle in the lovely living room. Saniel came into the room to start the meeting. He took a seat less than twenty feet away from me. This was the kind of personal touch I was looking for, and the transmission of peace/love was powerful in the room.
I learned that many of the people at the retreat had experienced their awakening to consciousness. They were working towards stabilizing and embodying their individual awakenings. I learned that the Trillium Awakening Path is a completely individual process with constant support available from teachers and fellow students. The process does not center on a Guru. It centers on the individual. It is an awakening within community where each person learns to grasp the means to their own realization. Hundreds of people in the community have awakened.
I am deeply grateful that Trillium Awakening exists. I feel that I am holding and being held by the others. I feel personally seen and met. I am deeply committed to the process and the community. Recently, the Trillium Awakening Teachers Circle has created a program of online events to enable anyone interested to participate in daily gazing, meditations, mutuality circles, mini-seminars and weekend retreats.
After eight years of participation in Trillium, I am significantly more rooted in myself and the community. I lead a normal life pursuing multiple interests and avenues of self-expression. There is nothing I have to conform to in Trillium. I am becoming more and more my true, authentic self within the Trillium Community and in my everyday life. Feelings of peace, love and joy dance in my heart intermittently throughout my day.
I’m fortunate to have found this next step. When the river bed is dry, the rain falls, and fresh water flows, once again.
From my terrace
I can see the sun through the clouds.
Is there another choice?
There are always choices.
I can only see the clouds.
I can see my life through a glass darkly.
And be enmeshed in shades of black and gray.
Or…
I can see the sun through the clouds.
I can revel in my time.
Until there is no more.
Or…
I can see the clouds and the sun.
I can see life in all of its glorious colors.
Along with the grays and the blacks.
The clouds will be there.
So will the sun.
I can choose to be a lamp unto myself.
I can choose to submit to the darkness.
I can choose not to choose.
There will be darkness.
There will be light.
I can prance.
Or shuffle.
Or limp.
I choose to prance.
(More like play at every chance).
What is your choice?
Photo by David Gittlin
I’m taking a ten-week online course about awakening to consciousness. One of the teachers in the course made some statements in a video about money and happiness that irritated me to the bone.
The teacher said, in effect, that the pursuit of happiness and money in our culture is the cause of many of the problems we are experiencing today. He also said our pursuit of happiness and money doesn’t work, and that we are undergoing a “paradigm shift in consciousness,” presumably to something better. He went on to indicate that the pursuit of happiness is not one of our primary drives. He said it is something that our culture has conditioned us to do. I thought my earbuds had malfunctioned when I heard this.
Because these statements are broad, they open the door to misinterpretation. I may have misunderstood what this fellow was saying, but the statements moved me to bring up a few points.
This teacher may be talking about the way we seek money and happiness, and there is a certain truth to this. But I also picked up from the discourse a bias against the acquisition of wealth and our traditional pursuits of pleasure.
It’s easy to get lost in the wilderness when we are breaking new ground.
While we can always do better, we have to use discretion in the ways that we effect change in ourselves and the world around us. Positive change is gradual. We don’t want to drive off a cliff and explode in a ball of flames. We want to be careful not to “throw the baby away with the bath water.”
We all need pleasure. We all need love. We all need happiness and, dare I say it, joy. We need them as much as food, shelter and clothing. And there is nothing wrong with having all of these things, not just marginally, but amply, in any pursuit, including awakening to consciousness.
I’m sure, at least in myself, that the search for happiness is my primary drive. The big “shift” came when my experiences as a young man taught me to look for happiness within myself first.
If I am happy and fulfilled within myself, then I will have something worthwhile to share with others. It may be that I can’t grasp and hold onto happiness, but I can surely point myself in the direction of experiencing more feelings of joy, peace, and love which, in my book, are foundational to well-being.
This teacher also makes a point that money does not provide security, peace of mind, or happiness. While it is true that money alone cannot provide these things, I am certain that a solid financial base contributes substantially to our individual and collective health and well-being. Not having enough money is a distraction. If I have to constantly worry about where my next meal is coming from, or the roof over my head, or having enough clothing to wear, there will be little or no time left for achieving anything besides survival goals.
And the sad truth is that most people in this world today are financially vulnerable to the point of distraction. With the added burdens of the pandemic, our survival needs are more than a distraction. We are faced with the threat of severe illness and death every day. Life was hard enough before the pandemic hit. It’s nearly impossible for many of us now.
However, if we take the pandemic out of the picture, and, at the risk of sounding unsympathetic, our economic problems don’t stem from our democratic government, our culture, or any other external factors. As Shakespeare’s Cassius said, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
We have the freedom to choose what we do with our lives. If our opportunities for economic advancement are limited, we have the power to change those conditions.
We all have resistances in our bodies and minds to the realization of personal happiness. With the application of intelligent free will, we can overcome these barriers.
Having enough money is a blessing. It is a resource that enables us to feed and protect our families, to have a semblance of peace of mind, to achieve higher goals, and to help others.
I’ve managed my life so that I am free to pursue higher evolutionary goals. I am not a slave to anybody or anything. I am relatively free. I’m certainly not free in the sense that the Buddha was free. But I’m free enough to operate in the way that I want to operate. If I screw up, it’s on me.
I’ve seen too many broke and unhappy “spiritual seekers.” They use their spiritual quest as a haven for their failures in life. It’s an easy trap to fall into. It’s a cop-out.
Whether or not we are actively pursuing an awakening to consciousness, there is nothing wrong with striving for happiness. Happiness is a choice and an attitude. It doesn’t fall down from the sky into our lap. It’s a constant learning process. It can be extremely tricky. It can be very simple. It requires discretion. It can be a struggle. There is only one obstacle that can prevent us from realizing our vision of happiness. That obstacle is ourselves.
If we are on any consciously intentional path to awakening, there is nothing wrong with striving to attain financial security. We only have to know how to use money for our own betterment, and the betterment of mankind.
There is nothing to hold us back from achieving our goals besides the worn out saying that goes: “You can’t have your cake and eat it.”
You can.
It’s down to you and me.
I’ve been avoiding it, but it had to come.
Sooner or later.
Starting out as a drip, drip drip.
Blossoming into a thundering torrent of voices.
Voices inside of me.
Voices outside of me.
I have to stop listening to the outside voices.
I am the only one who can take it from here.
I have a singular path.
Lit by a glimmering light source.
One step at a time.
I must walk alone.
With no guide posts.
Listening only to whispers.
Hints, if you will.
Going where?
I wish I knew.
I only know I have to go there.
Or die of an empty heart in a grave of my own yearning.
I pray that my journey leads me to a graceful end and a new beginning.
It is a place of peace.
It is a place of fulfillment.
It is a place where my spirit can plug in and know what to do to bring peace to this world.
I do not have to be concerned with the magnitude of my actions.
I just have to feel that they are given in love.
I can let go of the results. The results are whatever they are.
There is love in this place and a feeling of enfoldment and unfoldment.
My heart feels that it has come home.
There is strength and a quickening of the spirit in this place.
The answers to the mysteries of my life are revealed.
This is a place of generosity where so much is given.
I touch it almost daily.
It is not yet stable.
The universe wants us to prosper in joy.
Still, so many of us are outside of the gates.
The world is broken.
As am I.
What can I do?
First, I must find this place alone.
And then, I must do whatever I can to help my brothers and sisters find it too.
Three Days to Darkness 