Banky For President

I’ve got good news for you . . . You are dying.

Knowing you are dying, that today could be, may be, will be the last day of your life is the GREATEST tool to living a healthy happy life ever conceived.

When death is imminent, does it matter what people think of you?  The answer is only yes if you happen to care about those people.  The rest?

When death is imminent, will you wish you had more time with family? or friends?

When death is imminent, will you worry about what your crappy boss thinks about your work?  Will you wish you would have made a move sooner in your job?

When death is imminent, will you wish you hadn’t lingered so long in a crappy relationship?  Will you wish you would have done more in your own life? Got that pilot’s license? Climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro? Written a screenplay?

Resident pimp-daddy, Steve Jobs once said, “If today is the day I will die, would I go and do what I am about to do?”  If that answer is “no” it’s obvious you need to make a change.

Make no mistake about it . . . You.Are.Dying.  You will not live forever.

In Zen Buddhism, teachers use kōans to challenge students minds and open their world up to questions and answers not previously thought.  I have one for you:

Imagine a cliff.  And on the edge of that cliff is a tree, with branches pouring over the side.  You are hanging from a branch right over the crevasse by your teeth, with your hands and feet tied behind you.  There is a man underneath the tree asking a simple question,

“What is 2 + 2?”

If you do not answer, the man below is prepared to kill you in a most horrible way.  However if you do answer, you will surely plummet to your death.

How do you stay alive?

In our effort to seek truth, we have to put our thoughts and ideas into action.  It’s not enough to just believe something and not incorporate it, is it?  Spirituality is about walking a path . . . YOUR path.

In the book, The Secret, it is argued that the secret to happiness is (and I’m paraphrasing) positive thinking.  Having a dynamite attitude but with no way to express it is akin to having your car filled with rocket fuel.  You CAN run like a bat out of hell but not with the vehicle you currently own.  You have to realize you’re a rocket ready to blast off.  If you continue to think like you’re a Pinto and constrained by those limits, that positive fuel will just sit there and that car can’t really go anywhere.   And you end up  . . . frustrated.  You’re burdened with knowledge but have no way to put it into practice.

Case in point:

I recently had a discussion with someone who was lamenting her recent (and not so recent) bad luck with men. She wanted advice on how she could improve herself as seekers are want to do. She wrote:

“What was your honest, straight-up impression of me after spending time with me? Tell the truth and I promise I won’t get my feelings hurt. Even tell me the “not so positive” stuff. If my feelings get hurt, they’ll mend. Some have said that I tend to come off a little “uppity”. Did you feel that? As far as my looks go….did you think I was too heavy? Tell the truth. I’ll do the same for you if you want.”

I wrote back the following:

 ”Ok.

You have 3 missions to do first.

1. All day tomorrow you need to walk around like you are a 10. I mean a perfect 10. This world has been your dream and it is now your reality. You add value to the world by your very existence. If the world is a contest, you are the prize.

2. When you walk down the street, compliment three people on what they are wearing or on something about them. It could be a waiter/waitress or a complete stranger. It should be no one you know previously. Don’t wait for any acknowledgement. Just ninja compliment and walk the fuck on.

3. Call someone in your family and just ask how they are doing.

Just like the lil green jedi says, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Email me back sunday night and:

1. Give me impressions on what it felt like to be the perfect 10.

2. What were the three compliments.

3. How was the family member?

You can’t email me back until you do these three things. If you try I’ll just ignore it. You think I’m kidding? Try me.

Hugs,

V.”

I didn’t hear from her until a week and a half later and this was her response:

 ”O.K. Mister.

Mission accomplished. Finally. It wasn’t easy walking around feeling like at “10″ so it took several attempts. Yesterday, I finally felt it. I got dressed up, walked around the Plaza and had lunch alone at an outside cafe. I loved the entire day. I had a variety of emotions…including gratitude for just being alive. I felt like I was good enough for anyone and could accomplish anything I wanted. I complimented more than 3 people. I complimented the waitress for being so attentive, I complimented a lady I passed on the street about her beautiful long hair, the clerk at the bookstore for having a nice smile, a man about his shirt, the receptionist at my heating and air conditioning place, a friend of mine for being such a wonderful cook (she sent her husband over with a loaf of freshly baked bread) and several other people. “

So here’s the challenge. Go be a 10 and post your experiences here.  Remember:

1. All day tomorrow you need to walk around like you are a 10. I mean a perfect 10. This world has been your dream and it is now your reality. You add value to the world by your very existence. If the world is a contest, you are the prize.

2. When you walk down the street, compliment three people on what they are wearing or on something about them. It could be a waiter/waitress or a complete stranger. It should be no one you know previously. Don’t wait for any acknowledgement. Just ninja compliment and walk the fuck on.

3. Call someone in your family and just ask how they are doing.

Now go be a “10!”

Howdy! I’m back.  Let’s get back to work, shall we?

Open Source Spirituality is a collaboration of ideas that  educates “seekers”  by giving them a process for seeking truth.  It is a way of looking at the world with a critical eye,  but the process is only as strong as the contributions made by other seekers.   People should know how to question long-held beliefs because only then will those beliefs be truly worth believing.  The most precious metals in the world are made into very beautiful things but only after they are forged in hot fire.

Let the hot fire of ideas govern your beliefs.

Before we begin, understand one thing.  I’m not trying to convince you, in this post at least, that “god” doesn’t exist.  You can figure that out for yourself.  This is merely a process you can use to apply before you accept something as a belief.

Off we go:

2 Thessalonians 1:6-9 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)

“God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power”

Assuming we are reading or hearing this passage for the very first time we can use our previously defined process to put to the test whether or not it should become a belief.

First off, we recognize that everything should be questioned before we deem something worthy to become a belief.  Its not good enough to accept as truth something someone says or has written.  We must recognize that we are smart people and if common sense is a gift from “god,” like compassion or intelligence, then we must apply common sense where it is warranted.  And because beliefs define us to the core of our being, there should be an element of common sense applied.

Secondly, to do that, the purported belief should make sense to you.  If you derive from the passage in Thessalonians that God will reward his followers and punish the non-followers, and you decide to hold that as a belief, it should be because it makes sense to you at some level.

Thirdly, does this belief reflect the best qualities humanity has to offer?  How do you deal with people who feel differently than you?  Do you tolerate those who feel differently?  Is it right or just to punish those who feel differently than you?    Shouldn’t the ultimate authority we refer to as “god” reflect the best qualities in us?  Aren’t they gifts from “god” as well?

Fourthly, if this purported belief doesn’t reflect how you think a challenge should be met, you should reject it as a belief.  Ask yourself what kind of person behaves in such a fashion as to punishing those who feel differently:  Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Hitler?  Is that reflective of your image of “god?”  Does this sound “just” to you?

Lastly, we understand that though we are wise, we don’t know everything.  Is there anything else we can derive from this lesson?  is there something we missed in the initial summation? The beauty of seeking is that you can continue to apply this process ad infinitum until you have the truth you seek.

Thoughts?

There are two conversations I love to have with people, one on politics and the other on religion.  There’s something to be said for those uncomfortable moments in life where you’re not quite sure if you’re going to tear someone’s head off for feeling differently or give someone a hug because you’ve found common ground. 

Spirituality is my focus today, inspired by a Catholic believer by the name of Logtar.  He posts about his search for truth and how he has landed in Catholicism, a religion he grew up believing.  Not surprisingly, religion is intricately tied to where you live.  For instance, if you grew up in America, it’s quite likely you were baptised Christian.  In India, it’s quite likely that you are Hindu, Thailand, a Buddhist, and so on.  So one can surmise that our search for truth is typically one of convenience or comfort.  And one can further surmise that our search for truth is dependent upon what our parents told us.

I have come to understand that our times of greatest clarity and understanding comes right after we’ve been challenged.  If sprituality is the fire of our lives, than those uncomfortable challenging moments are the gasoline.  And rather than avoid those moments and take comfort in just what we know, why not dive head first into the unknown, all the while knowing that you will emerge different and more evolved on the other side?

Being an Athiest, a Catholic, Presbyterian or Hindu is not the pinnacle of enlightenment. It is merely a stepping stone to the truth that is inevitably out there waiting to be discovered. And isn’t discovery exciting?  It’s the same reason we stay to the end of a movie when we know the ending ahead of time (Titanic anyone?).  It’s discovering “how” it ends that makes all the difference.

Life is more than a movie (even Star Wars, peeps).  And its exponentially more exciting discovering the answers for yourself, especially when you contribute to the end of the story with each passing day.