Art of God

And begins with an argument of a sort. As I was writing my bio for this blog I was sharing it with a good friend of mine. I wrote "... once one is God". He suggested "when one realizes they are one with God", to which I responded: "there is only God". And he said: "we have to deal with duality as a reality, just to get things communicated in the world, even though it isn't real"

To which I say: we have to deal with reality and communicate it in the world, so that there will be no more need for illusions.

What's the point of being God if we have to pretend that we aren't one?

I went to Poland about 2 months ago. It was my first visit there since I left, about 6 years ago. It was great, terrible, intense, fantastic and awful.

The most impactful moment of this trip was saying good by to my father. It took a moment, we hugged, said good by ... and I crushed, collapsed and broke into little tiny simpering pieces.

It took me over 5 weeks to feel like me again. It took about 2 months for me to see the full significance of what had happened in those short two minutes.

Brooks says that the original purpose of psychology was to describe human's relationship to God. During last few hundred years this purpose shifted somewhat, and we ended up with psychology that strives to understand, describe and correct human behavior so that it fits inside of society's norms and ideas of what is "normal", "right", "moral", "desirable". Psychology makes sure, in short, that we are all good boys and girls.

I had an interesting experience once. It was during my Zen years, one night at the end of a long retreat. I sat in meditation, rather tired and sleepy if I remember correctly, waiting for the end so that I could untangle what was left of my legs and go to sleep, when all kinds of funky things started happening to me.

The disciples were full of questions about God.

Said the master, "God is the Unknown and the Unknowable. Every statement about him, every answer to your questions, is a distortion of the truth."

The disciples were bewildered. "Then why do you speak about him at all?"

"Why does the bird sing?" Said the master.

I am really, I mean REALLY, afraid of snakes. There is something nasty about them, I feel. Something creepy in the way they can sneak up on me, emerge from a crack in a wall, get on me and kill me... well, I don’t like them.

Which is why I absolutely freaked out the other day when I was asked to create an image of a King Cobra confronting an elephant. I sat at my computer with an assortment of snakes on display, afraid to touch the mouse, thinking - I am so screwed! I just can’t do this!

And then I went to work, and made an image. It came out as an image of cobra and elephant being best friends, cobra being somewhat mild, nice and altogether friendly.

I moved about a week ago, my husband and I rented a house on a lane that's a private property of the Theosophical society. The lane is positioned right next to the Krotona institute, which, I believe, is the center for theosophy in the area, if not in US.

It's a beautiful place, up on a hill with a grand view of the Ojai valley, with extensive grounds, occupied mostly by oaks and coyotes, perfect for evening prowling. Being a dog owner I do prowl regularly, about twice a day, and with every day I become more and more aware of the specific energy of this place.

And, as is natural for a woman who just turned 32, I am thinking about growing old, and dying. I thought about it for a last couple of days, in fact, beginning with an analogy that occurred to me when I walked my dog on Friday evening.

I have a very good and a very useful friend. That sounds terrible, but it's true - he asks me all kinds of right questions and I get to really consider them and find out what my answers are. We have the greatest conversations over ichat.

Questions are a good thing! I strongly believe in questions these days, in questioning everything - especially my believes and my "shoulds".
If you have any questions - bring them on!

And here is tonight's question and the answer, that I'd like to share with the world:

China’s State Administration of Religious Affairs announced Order No. 5, a law covering “the management measures for the reincarnation of living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism.” This “important move to institutionalize management on reincarnation” basically prohibits Buddhist monks from returning from the dead without government permission: no one outside China can influence the reincarnation process; only monasteries in China can apply for permission.

Translated by me, written by a german journalist

Two thousand years after the birth of Christ, 1400 years after Mohammed, new religion pervades hearts and minds of the western world. This religion is climaticism. It was created using wikipedia, without any involvement of Moses or Saint Peter, cause here everyone is an expert on sacred scripts and everyone is enlightened.

I had a breakfast today with a man who served in US army special forces. His job was to train foreign governments on how to take down rebels and underground fighters, or to train rebels and underground fighters on how to take down government. Did you know that a small country can be overtaken within 48 hours by 25 well trained man? Well, he would be one of those men that could do the overtaking.

Have you ever noticed that you don't seem to be growing "evenly", that, while having a great spiritual practice, your every day life sort of doesn't work? There is never enough money, you never quite get a chance to do what you would like to do (if you even know what that is), and I will not even get started on relationships!

I asked for questions and I sure got them :)

To see them (questions) please take a look at the comments section of "Why is the rum gone" post. It ends with: "I lived about a half of this short life and I still have no idea who am I, what am I, what is the reason I live here and why is this all happening, and I still haven't found one valuable thing in this world, so how can I decide or choose anything knowingly."

I have been pondering whether to write this post or not for some time now. Actually I wrote it a while back and sent it to my friend, I wasn't sure if I want to make it public. I wasn't sure what holds me back, either, I still am not sure - maybe it's just to personal, maybe there is something "off" about it that I can't see but can sense, maybe it's incomplete - I really don't know. But I do feel that I can't just jump over it, ignore it, move on to writing of other things.

Don't ask me why, I have no idea, it's just how it feels and I don't understand and, according to Brooks, I don't have to understand. So here it is:

Let me tell you about another man I had the experience of an amazing connection with, quite the same I described in my previous post. This man was not only a total stranger, but a stranger I decidedly didn't like.

It was back in Poland, I think back when I was in college just getting ready to get my masters in psychology. I worked for a while for a recruiting company, traveling to different cities and running meetings with potential employees, choosing those that would be the best-selling agents. There usually was two of us doing the meeting - me and one other person. One time it turned out to be me and this guy, Grzegorz. He just recently moved back to Poland after staying in America for about 10 years. He talked a lot, with terrible american-accented polish. I thought he was such a show off and pretty much hated him.

Brooks said once: we exist only in relationship. This is something I've been thinking about for a long time, trying to "figure it out", figure out relationships. What are they about, what are they for?

As I was writing the last two posts, as I was experiencing what was coming up as my old friendship came back to light, I started realizing that there is a sort of "common denominator" in being in relationship that's true for all kinds of relationships: to other humans, to things, to events, to reality.

This common denominator is being God in relationship. God will be relating differently to a spouse, to a friend, to a dog, to a thing — but no matter who or what it is that God hangs out with - God is still God. And in that lies the quality of relationship: God is God. No matter what company God is in at the moment - God is God. Fully and completely unique and independent. This, I believe, is how God is in relationship - unique and independent. Always. And by that I mean - it is God deciding on how his experience looks like, how his life looks like. It is God that creates it.

There is an aspect of being God that I rarely heard anyone mention. Brooks talks about it, I might have heard of it during my Zen years a time or two, in passing. This experience may be left out and overlooked in spiritual teachings cause mind has no access to it, therefore it doesn't consider it important. The experience I'm talking about is an absolute, boundless and everlasting bliss of being alive.

This is a fact worthy of notice, as it happens very, very rarely. I walked my dog the other morning during a brief break between one shower and another, and it was an absolutely wonderful experience. The world around me was teeming with life, I could almost hear all the plants and trees drinking, growing, expanding, stretching, swinging, shaking. They made such a riot, I could hardly hear my thoughts.

I am going to write a book. In fact I am writing a book. My entries on this blog from the last few months were intended to be the raw material for my literary adventures and finally, few weeks ago, I have realized that I have quite enough to get to a serious, focused book writing.

I realized today, yet again, how nice, easy and comfortable life is :) One could think that driving through Santa Barbara on a beautiful summer (although in February) morning might have something to do with it, but I felt like that before on other occasions, so I think there is more to it.

When I think about what more could there be that would make me feel that it is so easy and nice to be alive, what comes to me is that I don't need anything. I am God, after all, what could I possibly need? What is there that I am not? What is there that's separate from me, that I could possibly miss?

An Article from "The Guardian"
Pausha's comments on it coming soon

Prozac, used by 40m people, does not work say scientists
Analysis of unseen trials and other data concludes it is no better than placebo

The Guardian, Tuesday February 26 2008

Prozac, the bestselling antidepressant taken by 40 million people worldwide, does not work and nor do similar drugs in the same class, according to a major review released today.

I read an article yesterday about a new computer game which, apparently, is quickly becoming extremely popular among French and British teenagers and children. The game is called "miss bimbo". A player creates an avatar (a sort of a digital representation of themselves) and the object of the game is to make the avatar-bimbo as popular, as fashionable, as famous as possible. To achieve that goal players can take their bimbo shopping, give her various fancy haircuts, keep her appropriately slim using various diets, diet pills , etc., keep the bimbo young and tempting by applying appropriate plastic surgery: facelifts, breast implants, etc. To take care of the bimbo player must also find her a "sponsor" — rich boyfriend who can pay for her.

In Great Britain 200.000 girls join the game within a single month, in France within a year the game had almost a million and a half of players. Players range anywhere from 9 years old to 15 years old.

So are trees "born" enlightened?

So glad you asked :)

Yesterday, during my morning walk, I was passing a tree on the street - and suddenly stopped dead in my tracks cause it occurred to me: this tree is only what it is. It is a tree.

It seemed a wonderful realization at the time, and it does still. Tree is a tree. It's nothing else, it's never been anything else. It is fully, completely and only itself.

I am not sure, therefore, if the term "enlightened" applies to trees at all, or to nature at large. "Enlightenment" describes a realization, doesn't it? A realization of one's true nature. But how can one realize something one always was?

I don't think that, at any point of tree's existence, does the tree "realize" it is a tree. Tree simply ... is ... a tree. And nothing else.

I think that we, humans, have so much trouble being who we are because we don't really want to. We want to understand who we are, know who we are, discover who we are, realize who we are, we want to get enlightened, find enlightenment - we want to DO all kinds of things.

But all we have to do is - nothing. We just have to BE.

We, humans, have refined and perfected DOING. It is my observation that nature has refined and perfected BEING.

What is the opportunity of being in relationship with others as only who you are?

It's the opportunity of anything to happen :) A fairy tale, where magic happens around every corner and all we have to do to create what we want is to decide to do so!

Because there are no limits, no restrictions. Not for us, not for anyone.