Happy Earth Day Everyone!

To celebrate Earth Day and the launch of our Global Alchemy Spiritual Life Coaching , my good friend and Global Alchemy cohort, Ben, and I are holding a contest that runs from Earth Day to May Day (4/22/09 to 5/1/09)

 

5 fortunate winners will be chosen to win a free dual “Become the Change” coaching session and our powerful Relax Now Alchemical Acoustic Audio For complete rules go to http://tinyurl.com/wincoaching

I continously become the change I want to see in the world and express that change into the world through heart centered visionary engagement with it.... or I do nothing as in "the Tao does nothing yet nothing remains undone"  hmmm the dow (jones) does nothing yet everyone panics

To find the Elephent in your livingroom! It is a Budhist saying that searching for enlightment outside yourself is like looking far and wide for the elephant that is standing in your living room. My teacher Lama Tharchin Rinpoche says "People don't even know who the are. How sad is that?" It is a paradox that while in the end there is no inside or outside, to discover this one must first look inward.

Spiritual Entrepreneurship is more or less synonymous with what I call  Alchemical Entrepreneurship, that is to say Entrepreneurship that:

• Is inspired and directed by our spiritual nature to express itself in ways that are meant to be of the highest benefit to all.
• Uses spiritual principles to support business success
• Makes business part of ,rather than a distraction from, spiritual practice

Go here for a more in depth look at Alchemical Entrepreneurship,

Sharon Wilson, a very successful coach for Spiritual Entrepreneurs, or as she says, Spiritualpreneurs, has just launched a 30 day challenge for people to become empowered Spiritualpreneurs. It is free to join and offers a 30 day step by step lesson plan and weekly group coaching calls. - 30 Day Empowered Spritualpreneur challenge

This is Sharon’s compassionate responsiveness to all the doom and gloom economy messages we are currently begin bombarded with. She is challenging us to draw a line in the sand and take a stand for the truth that we can create abundance in any external economic climate. The more people who take this stand and become empowered Spiritualpreneurs/ Alchemical Entrepreneurs the better the situation will be even for those who chose not step up in empowerment. This is a truly compassionate response. While I applaud many of the aspects Obama’s economic stimulus initiative, Sharon’s challenge is “teaching people to fish rather then giving them a fish”. In the long run, even a small increase in the number of empowered Spiritualprenuers / Alchemical Entrepreneurs in the world will do more for the health of the global economy then even the best designed “economic stimulus package”. So I highly encourage everyone to step up and take the 30 Day Empowered Spritualpreneur challenge.    I have…

Posted on Project Global Alchemy Bootstrap Experiment Blog

On the Day of Winter Solstice I did a ritual reboot of the Project Global Alchemy Bootstrap Experiment. I had let the experiment slip away in my fist ever prolonged depression. It was an interesting experience. However I broke out of it on the solstice and I have been doing a lot of Personal Alchemy practice for the last 9 weeks. I wasn’t planning on renewing my posting on the Project Global Alchemy Blog Matrix (and on my gaia blog) until Spring Equinox as winter is a good time for focusing energy to manifest in the spring and I felt I needed to focus on my Personal Alchemy. However spring has arrived early in Colorado Springs, this year and a couple of opportunities in alignment with the experiment have presented themselves so I will be once again making regular posts here. I will be posting on these opportunities next

I'd like to see a section dedicated to news about people doing positive, kind, generous things. This section could include local, national and international events. I am sure their is plenty to have some of each reported every day.

Renewing my commitment to becoming inexuastable benefit to all beings, every morning and evening and anytime during the day I think about it.

Hey everyone. It has been a long time since I post on this blog. Since my last post I have created a whole collection of Blogs I call the Project Global Alchemy Blog Matrix. I chose to create many blogs because while they are all integrally connected to each other, the each covers specific topics of interest to Global Alchemy. Having them more targeted helps with Search engine optimization as well as help those with specific interests find what they are looking for. Since the people of  “Gaia” are the people most likely to  interested in the topics of the blog matrix, I will be announcing the posts to the blog matrix on this blog (with a link of course). I already have some 50 posts to the blog matrix so I will over the next days post the links to catch up (I would like all the post titles on record here)

Oh by this is a big one. For any of  you actualy intrested in this but short of time - sorry. I m going for indepth rather then supercail examination.

One aspect of Buddhist Cosmology that has relevance to “The Secret” is the teaching of the six realms. One of several ways that Buddhist talk about the way phenomena appear to consciousness is the six realms of cyclic or conditioned existence.

The teaching of Six Realms divides the spectrum of conditioned experience into 6 major categories. They are called realms because they are traditionalyl understood first to be Macrocosmic Realms of experience of which our human realm is but one. The six realms are refered to as Hell Realm, Hungry Ghost Realm, Animal, Human, Asura(Demigod) and God realm. Many people, who obviously don’t have a clear understanding of the principle of two truths, feel that the Buddha included this in deference to the culture he was in and that it is not relevant to our time. Some, see that it does indeed have relevance, but insist that it is only metaphor. While, I personally can’t verify directly the existence of other macrocosmic realms that correspond to the Six realms except the human and animal, I think those who adamantly dismiss the more or less literal possibility have not understood the nature of the two truths. I will go more into this later.

In the traditional teachings each realm is described as having particular dominant experiences. These dominant experiences are created by the kind of reaction we have to our basic confusion about the true nature of reality. For example anger creates hell realm experiences of very intense suffering. The Buddhist Teachings give detailed explanations of the mechanisms that eventually creates a macrocosmic realm such as a hell realm out of an emotional response but the details aren’t neccesry for our purposes here we can sum it up as habit. For example, the state of anger itself is one of suffering. The more intence the anger the more intense the suffering. Everytime one responds to experience with anger one is increasing the habit of responding with anger until ones habit is to respond to everything, even expressions of love and compassion, with anger. That is Hell.

One of the Natures human realm is that is formed from a more of a mixture of habits in the other one which makes possible to discern the pattern microcosmically within the realm of begin human. By paying attention one can actually discern the mechanisms in action. When one is angery doesn’t the world feel more hostile then when one is feeling loving. If one is angry all the time do you think the actually instances of begin respondd to with hostility increase. Without even resorting to more esoteric ideas such as Karma on can see mechanisms by which anger increase hellish expreinces both immediately in term of internal experiences and externally in terms of how phenemena tend to relate to the angry person.

Before I go into what all this has to do with “The Secret” I want to make a few points clear about the Buddhist understanding of the Six Realms. First none of them are permanent experiences. There is no eternal hell of torture and no eternal heaven where all your dualistic desires are forevermore fulfilled. Also they are not considered rewards or punishment by some external (or internal for that matter) god or creator. Anger is of its own nature a hellish experience rather then hell being punishment for the offence of Anger to some god.

While the six realms do express a range of experience from the most tortured hell experience to the most delightful heaven experience the ego can imagine, it does not indicate a developmental or evolutionary process. All six realms together are referred to a cyclic existence and within itself it is a closed circle. While 3 realms are considered lower realm and 3 are considerd higher realms this is primarly about the capacity to have even relative happiness. The Three lower realms and Hell in particular are considered to be more or less unrelenting in their suffering while the Three upper realm do offer a certain amount of relative happiness with the God realm represnenting the highest possible relative happiness. Having achieved the God realms doesn’t put you any closer to freedom from the closed loop conditioned existence is experienced as then the Hell realm. Having achieved the God Realm doesn’t indicate in and of itself any more genuine spiritual growth then some one in Hell. In the metaphor of the prison each realm represent different cells that one can find oneself in, microcosmically or marcoscosmically. Not understanding what actually governs what cell one is in people find themselves wandering through each cell repeatedly over time in no seeming logical progression. Of these six cells with out any thought of escape the God realms seems the best and the most like actual freedom. But it is not freedom and this lead us at long last back to “The Secret”

Essentially the Basic description of what a God Realm experience I like is that everything is beautiful and wonderful and all ones wishes are realized as soon as you have them. Essentially, what “The Secret” is claiming to provide and what it encourages you to try to cultivate is having all of your wishes fulfilled. In short, it aims you towards and claims to provide the means to having a God Realm experience.

This, in Buddhist view, is problematic on several counts. First that the God Realm experience is still in the prison block called conditioned existence. There is no way to describe what experience of someone who has even tasted experience beyond the prison walls however the bliss of that experience is such that life beyond the prison is to the God Realms Cell what the God Realm is to the Hell Realm – Yes, my friends compared to the bliss of the reality beyond the Prison, The God Realm and all The Secret has to offer is Hell.

The God Realm also has the problem of being just comfortable enough to dampen any serious motivation to become free of the Prison. However, no matter how pleasurable the temporary experience of the God realm there is no way to complete blot out the nagging feeling that there is something essential missing. Many years ago when psychedelics where a big part of my spiritual exploration, I would be experience state of extreme bliss, ones that I would now characterize as largely God realm experiences, yet I would continually affirm in the midst of that bliss that “it is to a Joy a Million times greater then this that I strive.”

Finally The God Realm has the problem of never being permanent or indefinitely sustainable. The Buddhist Teachings discuss the mechanics of this with much elaboration and from several views. I will touch on only a couple of them. First, due to a great many factors, no matter how much pleasure one is having there is no way to forever ingnore the back ground irritation of the intuition that there is something more , much more then even this pleasure. Eventually, one will begin to fixate on this irritation until it grows into habits that cause one to unconsciously wonder to other of the other 5 prison cells.

The other requires we look at another aspect of the mechanism that create the realm one is experiencing – Karma. Like everything else there are a lot of way to understand the operation of Karma. One that is pretty simple but very functional is to undrerstand Karma as the currency that buys ones experience. Before I go on this is just one metaphor, and I use it because it will plainly indicate one the problems with the Secret, however every metaphor breaks down or has problematic implications that are really intended by the use of the metaphor. In this case the problem is that the one can draw the implication that one is earning rewards.

Basically every action can be considered to create a particular kind of “currency”. The kind and amount of currency created is ‘determined’ by a large number of factors chief among them the mind habit compelling them. Each Kind of Currency can buy certain experiences and every kind of currency created has to be delt with in some fashion, the most common and default choice is for it to be spent and be spent is what will happen if one knows no other method of working with currency. If that currency is the kind that allows you to buy pleasurable experiences then spending them doesn’t seem so bad. (There are however, just as in the world of monetary currency, there are better and worse ways to spend ones currency) However, when it is currency that buys unpleasant experiences then we suffer greatly. All genuine Spiritual Methods give guidance to increase the amount of positive experience currency and reduce the amount of negative experience currency, either directly through explaining the principles, or by proscribing behavior that tends to align with the principles. The former allows much greater skillfulness then the latter, however it wise not to dismiss the latter, often designated moral or ethics, as completely arbitrary. Killing, for example, far more often then not generates suffering currency for the person who did the killing. One who understands the actual principles know that it is not actually as black and white as the moral presentation of the idea tends to make it, that there are circumstances in which killing can create positive currency. However, it takes both a rather deep understanding of the principles and great deal of inner development to ever be in a capacity to kill without generating a large amount of negative currency.

As one is in any realm one is spending the currency related to those experiences. The rent on the God Realm cell in the prison of cyclic existence is very, very, costly in terms of positive experience Karma. Combined this with the tendency of people in God Realm experience to become less involved in the actions that generate Pleasure currency and eliminate Suffering Currency, the end result of this is eventually you drain most of your positive experience accounts and are left with little to spend except for suffering currency. The way the system works is that left to its own automatic processes the accounts with the highest amounts tend to get spent first so once the eviction notice comes from the God Realm ( and the eviction notice is described as part of the suffering of the God Realm) A big payment of Suffering currency tends to follow.

I will begin going into the mechanisms by which one can influence the spending of the Karmic Kurrency (I am experimenting with that spelling as a possible “trade mark” designation) later , suffice to say that it is possible to influence what currency is begin spent, however you have to have the currency to spend and the God Realm is expensive. The main point here is that from the Buddhist perspective, while it is possible to influence what and how ones Karmic Kurrency is spent such that one may indeed create a God Realm experience as the Secret describes (but not necessarily by the method it describes), it can only be done if the currency is already in place ( or one generates it) and it definitely is considered very poor investing advice that will eventually only lead to very deep suffering.

I had hoped to get this out yesterday in conjunction with Saga Dawa but the “the best laid plans…”

One of the claims of the Secret is that it claims to express the highest esoteric knowledge of the ages kept secret from humanity strangely by wealthy supposed masters of the secret who felt so insecure about their wealth they had to keep “The Secret” to “universal abundance beyond ideas of scarcity” to themselves. I hope the complete absurdity of that last statement is obvious. Over time I will be exploring what connection, if any, the Secret has with some of the major systems of esoteric knowledge. I will not, for now be discussing what validity or, perhaps, lack there of, of these esoteric systems, only what relationship the secret might actually have with them. In honor of Saga Dawa and because it is the esoteric systems I am most experientially familiar with, I will begin this exploration with a Buddhist look at the secret.

From a Buddhist perspective, it is less important to look at whether or not is possible to have the kind of power in your life to make all of your desires materialize that “The Secret” indicates is possible, than whether or not this will lead to actual sustained happiness and freedom. According to nearly every style of approach to Buddhism (the only exception I know of is, perhaps, Nichiren Buddhism – and that is based on a superficial knowledge of their approach), the answer is a resounding NO!

We can start with the utter most basic- The life Story of the Buddha. I won’t be of course recounting here the whole life story, just highlight a few key aspects as they relate to the secret.

When the Buddha Mother, Maya, was pregnant with Siddhartha, who would later be know as the Buddha, Siddhartha’s Father (whose name escapes me for the moment.) consulted a seer about his new sons destiny. The seer replied that the child would either grow up to be a Universal Monarch (roughly King of the world or universe) or a great spiritual being.

Being himself a great king of one of the most powerful kingdoms on earth, the father wanted Siddhartha to become a universal monarch and so conspired to shield the boy from all the sufferings of the world as this was thought to be what initiated the spiritual path.

So let’s look at some of the elements of the first part of Siddhartha life in the Palace. He was the prince of one of the most powerful kingdoms of the day. Every single sensual delight available, he had at his disposal vast armies, servants to do his every biding, and vor the most part there where very few people in his world that would even consider disobeying him. He was loved and cherished by his family, including eventually a devoted wife and son, friends and because he was so natural compassionate, his subjects. Being the Prince meant he also had to excel in a great many skill- various martial skills, love Making, Diplomacy, Law, Debate, Logic, “the Arts” etc. So in short Siddhartha had it all in exactly the same sense as what “the Secret” delivers – Complete Financial Security, Love, relationships in which people behaved mostly as he wished, any sensual pleasure know in his time, Power, achievement, fame, prestige, etc. What did Siddhartha discover by “having it all”. “Having it all” is not inherently satisfying. Because Siddhartha had already cultivated great compassion through many life times, he natural applied that insight to others. He came to realize that “having it all” can’t help provide satisfaction for others either. Driven by his compassion fueled by this realization, he insisted on leaving the carefully controlled world his father had created for him to protect him from suffering (which at this point it had already failed to do – Siddhartha had already experienced the unavoidable suffering that comes from relying on phenomena. Nonetheless Siddhartha’s father still tried to control the routes that his son would take. However, despite his efforts, Siddhartha in successive trips, encounter examples of sickness, old age and death. Siddhartha, in contemplating these encounter realized that No level of “having it all” could protect himself, his friends, his family, or anyone else from eventual suffering these painful experiences. His realization of the inability of “having it all” to protect beings from suffering became so profound that he abandoned all of his “having it all” in order to find what could free begins from suffering. H underwent extreme austerities (which he determined where also in themselves unable to give freedom from suffering), nearly starving himself to death while “having it all” was an ever present choice- his family, friends and subject all would have welcomed him home at anytime.

In conclusion, While there are certainly quotes from the Buddhist Body of Knowledge that could be seen as supporting the “law of attraction” (and I will look at those more closely a few blog entries from now) the Buddha’s life Story Illustrates that The aim of the Secret is not in anyway in accord with the Buddhist Teachings – Whether they be Theravada, Mahayana, Zen, or Vajrayana – the most esoteric form of Buddhism. The Buddhist Teachings are very explicit - with a lot of supporting evidence for the case they present – that having it all is not a way to achieve lasting satisfaction and happiness. It is also important to understand that “having it all” is not in and of itself bad, but rather simply becomes problematic when pursuing “having it all” distracts from engaging in life in ways that do lead to genuine satisfaction and happiness or when “having it all” is just sufficiently satisfying to dampen the motivation to find the true satisfaction – a cold comfort. It becomes a problem when you stop trying to find a way to open the prison door and instead try cover the door with expensive pieces of art.

Coming next : A Buddhist look at the Secret: The Six Realms of Existence.