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I hate to be an alarmist, but we’re quite possibly on the brink of the imminent destruction of the human race.

Too bad, because we’re kind of cute (in a furless, spongey sort of way), and we’ve only been on this planet for a very short time. It would have been nice if we had played out this experiment for a few million years.

Oh well.

The cards are pretty stacked against us. There are the obvious dangers, such as blowing ourselves up with nukes or damaging the environment so badly that it falls apart into climatological chaos. We could suffer a collapse of our electrical or informational infrastructure (consider what just a single day without electricity or email would do to the world). There are always pandemics to be considered. There are also a few dangers that are public knowledge, but which most of us don’t know about.

Consider Apophis. This is a big rock (an asteroid, actually, between 200 and 300 meters in diameter), that is slated to make some uncomfortably close passes to the Earth. Luckily for all of us, the 2.7% chance that it will strike Earth in 2029 has been changed to indicate that there is no risk of impact. However, the latest figures for the April 13^th, 2036 fly-by indicate a 1-in-45,000 chance of impact. If you’re comfortable with those odds, then no worries.

There’s also the Supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Geologists say that it won’t erupt anytime soon, but it’s overdue for a bang, and if you read between the lines, it sounds like everyone is actually only guessing since we’ve never witnessed an eruption of this magnitude before. With Yellowstone swelling and subsiding like someone who just ate too many beans, it really could be any day now. An eruption like this would bury much of the U.S. in thick layers of ash, would disrupt global weather, and would basically spell the end of civilization as we know it.

Not enough? How about the reversal of the magnetic poles? Again, evidence suggests that we might be in the middle of a flip, and we don’t know much about how these flips occur. Having north turn into south would be bad enough, but if the magnetic field fails for even a short time, all the sun’s radiation will pour right down onto our planet, turning us all into cancer factories.

Finally, there’s the year 2012, which many people feel will mark a huge shift in the way we live our lives – perhaps including a nice little apocolypse.

If that isn’t enough, there’s the small fact that even if the world does go on for a few million more years, you, personally, are doomed. Yup. Even the youngest people reading this will probably be dead in 70 or 80 years. The rest of us? Much sooner.

So why am I telling you this? No, I haven’t signed a contract with Zoloft. Rather, it’s that taking the time to think about our own death can be quite liberating. It reminds me of a story my brother told me once, of visiting a monastery in Thailand, where the monks had cultivated a beautiful garden. Throughout the garden were signs that depicted a couple walking hand-in-hand. The odd thing? One of the people in each couple was a skeleton.

There is a superficial way to interpret this. In this interpretation, we are reminded of death and loss so that we don’t cling too tightly to the fleeting things of this world – whether they be money, our youth, other people, or any other aspect of our imagined ‘security’. This is a simple reminder that we’re all riding the wheel of samsara, and that in our clinging, we set ourselves up for loss. The greater we cling, the more we stand to lose, and the result is that life either becomes a roller-coaster, or we settle into a sort of monotony where we never love too much, because we’re afraid of what we’ll lose.

On a deeper level, however, meditation upon death opens us to another realization – this realization occurs when we begin to seriously question what is it we think we stand to lose. When one looks carefully at the state of financial security, for instance, one begins to realize that the sensation of being ‘rich’ or ‘poor’ has little to do with a number in a bank account, and more to do with our perception of abundance. For instance, when I was living in the woods, I often felt I was wealthy beyond measure. I’d be lying in the sun next to a raspberry bush, plucking berries and watching the clouds go by overhead. I had nowhere to be, and on that particular day, had all the food, warmth, and adventure I could ever ask for. In short, I had the feeling of being very wealthy, despite the fact that I actually had no money at all in my possession. Conversely, we can have millions of dollars in our bank account, and still feel like we don’t have enough.

The same goes with people. When we love someone, we often become afraid of losing them. If we could see them as they actually are (ever changing, never the same from one moment to the next), we’d have no ‘idea’ of them to latch onto, and we’d discover what it is we’re really afraid of losing.

The answer to this question – “What are we afraid of losing?” – is startling. When we know the answer, our fear of loss evaporates. But we are adept at keeping ourselves in the dark.

The most startling revelation comes when we realize what we are afraid of losing upon our own death. Thinking on this can open level upon level of realizations, beginning with our idea that life isn’t worth living unless there is something to look forward to. In the end, as we puzzle through our beliefs regarding death, we may come to discover what ‘me’ is, what our relation is to the world we perceive outside of us, and how we value the various aspects of our life.

As long as we ignore death and imagine that we will continue on into the infinite future, we can never really Live. This is because the fear of death and impermanence is lurking just behind our everyday thoughts, and a part of us is waiting, full of anxiety, for the news that a loved one has died, that our own death is imminent, or that civilization is going the way of the Do-Do bird. This chronic low-level tension clenches us against truly releasing into the joy of living.

But we don’t need to clench – indeed, we can’t clench – if we take the time to see what it is we’re afraid of losing. Here’s a place to begin your journey — ‘What Is Death?’

It’s becoming a pretty regular occurrence for Rebecca and I to be called out to help people when they’re having trouble with their horse.  Usually, the problem can be resolved quite simply, and when you can ‘fix’ horse-problems like that, people sometimes call you a ‘horse-whisperer’.

The funny thing is that what we’re really doing is something much closer to ‘people whispering’.  You see, it’s a general rule that if someone thinks their horse has a ‘behavior problem’, the real problem almost always lies with the human being, and not the horse.  It might be the manner in which a horse is being housed, or inconsistencies in the human’s training methods.  Most often, it’s that the person is clearly radiating excess energy, fear, or frustration – something a horse easily senses and responds to.

Our job then becomes one of changing the human’s behavior, which in turn affects the horse’s behavior.  The tricky  part, of course, is that humans have egos, and don’t think they’re doing anything wrong.  So you have to change their behavior by making them believe that the change is their own idea.

This all comes down to the idea of control.  The human believes that the horse is out of control, and that they should be able to control their horse.  The real problem is that the human thinks he or she is in control of their own actions, but really they are in ignorance of what they’re doing and the effects their actions are causing.

This points to one of the universal truths of spirituality, which is thus –
You Control 100% of What You Call  ‘Your Life’.

The other universal truth is this –
You Control Absolutely Nothing.

What??

Paradox

Most universal truths can only be expressed in terms of paradox.  When the truth is non-dual, it can’t be described by our clumsy, dualistic language.  So our only choice is to use the extreme polar opposites our language allows, hoping that when people examine those opposites, they’ll discover the non-dual truth for themselves.  It’s important to understand, however, that while both of these ideas are 100% true, they are both also 100% false.  If we try to latch on to either idea as a philosophy of life, we’ll fall into a quicksand of problems.  Indeed, if we try to latch onto any philosophy of life, we’ll create a host of problems for ourselves.  The magic happens when we can see the world just as it is, instead of trying to live according to ideas and philosophies.

You’re In Control

This idea is the underlying assumption of those who believe in Intention-Manifestation and the principles of The Secret.  The world around you – all of your circumstances, diseases, wealth, accidents, relationships, and the manner in which the entire universe unfolds – depends completely upon you.  In effect, you are the artist painting the picture that is Your Life.  This idea harkens all the way back to the ancient Hindu idea of ‘God Playing’ as you.  While you BELIEVE that you are at the mercy of the world around you, in reality you are constantly creating it.  This is how you hide from your true God-like nature, by immersing yourself in the ignorant belief that you are an individual entity, alone in a universe of other individual entities.

So what happens when we start to realize that we’re really in total control?  If we live by this idea, miraculous things can happen.  For instance, because I no longer believe that accidents ‘happen’ to me, I take full responsibility for all my actions and start to pay much more attention when I drive.  Because I believe that I am creating the people around me, I stop blaming others, and start to wonder how I can change in order to create less conflict in my life or the world.  I no longer can complain about anything, because nothing happens without me as the creator.

There is a dark side to this philosophy, however.  It’s easy to take the weight of the world on your shoulders, and fall into depression because YOU are the cause of your failing relationship, your failing health, global climate change, and every war, rape, and crime that is committed anywhere on earth.

This, as you can imagine, isn’t a very fun place to be.

You Have No Control

The flip side of this is the philosophy that we have no control.  Here, we try to eradicate the ego, and come to the belief that the world unfolds perfectly all by itself.  We may appear to have the power to change things, but in reality this is only appearance.  We have no proof whatsoever that we’re not just automatons, imbued with the illusion of ego and free will.
The magic of this idea is that we can come to a total acceptance of life.  We can come to see beauty in both life and death, in pain and sorrow, laughter and despair.  Nothing can ruffle us, and we achieve that complete peace and calm that is often sought after by spiritual seekers.

The dark side here is that it’s easy to fall into the idea of total victim-hood and complacency.  If we have no control and nothing is better or worse, then why take action to ‘improve’ life?  We watch from the outside, taking no responsibility for our actions.  Everything unfolds the way it does, and that is that.

What We All Believe

As you can see, both polar extremes can create positive changes, but both hold great pitfalls.  So what should we believe?
First, let’s look at what we do believe.  Our current belief is a combination of these two polar opposites.  It goes like this – we live in a world where we have partial control over a largely unstable and unpredictable environment.  Mostly, we have very little control over the universe.  But as events come ‘closer’, we have more control.  For instance, we can do very little about the war in Iraq, but we have much more control over our personal health.

We harbor the idea that we should have more control over our lives.  We feel like we should be able to maintain a healthy weight, be emotionally stable, and keep ourselves financially secure.  But while we feel we should be in control of these things, we keep messing up and failing to control them.  Which plunges us into a feeling of helplessness or being overwhelmed.  In short, we feel like we should be in control (which indicates a leaning toward the first of the polar opposites above), but we have a sinking feeling that we’re really not (which indicates a leaning toward the second of the polar opposites above).

The result is a general sense of confusion, because we’re trying to hold to two opposing beliefs at the same time.

So What Do We Do?

The key is awareness.  Can you see how we’re living by totally unexamined belief systems?  This is at work throughout our lives – we live according to rules that make perfect sense because we learned them when we were little and we’ve lived with them all our lives (in other words, they are basically habits).  But few of us have ever taken the time to examine many of these beliefs.

If we examine all of them – each and every one – we’ll begin to discover that the philosophical house we’re living in is pretty run-down and shoddily built.  It was never carefully crafted in the first place.

Most of us, if we take the time to do this, will then try to replace our philosophies with new ones.  This tends to be a frustrating endeavor, however, because if we’re trying the replacement method, it means that we haven’t examined our original beliefs adequately enough.  You see, when we look carefully enough at any belief, we have the potential to see beyond the belief to the very nature of the belief process itself.  We then come to question this process – which precipitates the ‘Awakening’ when all of our beliefs tumble away (because we have removed their foundation).

This is a call to examine where belief guides our lives.  A call to question why belief is necessary.  And a call to question whether any belief can really be said to be more ‘true’ than another.

You’ll find your own answers to these questions, and the exploration can be very liberating.  This is our time to explore.

I remember once reading a quote –

“All rocks are broken rocks.”

While perhaps not a complete geologic truth, this is very true for most of the rocks we encounter. They are broken portions of larger stones, and have been worn and weathered by untold years of adventures. This is what makes a rock a rock.

We don’t think of ourselves as rocks. Instead, we convince ourselves that we are only worthwhile if we engage in a constant struggle for improvement. We battle unhappiness and frustration because we are not what we want to be – we’re not healthy enough, or rich enough, or emotionally balanced enough. So we go searching for the guru, the book, or the path that will finally make us better.

What we fail to see is the nature of our desire. Though this nature has long been recognized, and though many teachers have repeatedly pointed it out to us over the centuries, we refuse to see it. The nature of our desire is thus – it is never fulfilled.

Perhaps Eddie Vedder said it best in his soundtrack for Into the Wild. In the song ‘Society’ he sings – ‘Until you have it all, you won’t be free’.

Blindly, most of us spend our entire lives in pursuit of this elusive ‘all’, missing the fact that if for a single moment we stopped the quest and saw what is right here, right now, we’d discover the freedom we’re seeking.

Our salvation doesn’t lie in transforming ourselves. The key is not to alter our relationship with our emotions, or to gain or change anything. The key is simply to see, right now, the true nature of our desires.

For we are like rocks, shaped and given reality and ‘self-hood’ by the very forces that we feel are eroding our lives. When we have emotions, or experience ill health, or feel our life isn’t ‘as it should be’, our calling isn’t to try to change. Change will seem effective, but then we will discover that the change has only brought us to a new place which is just as tainted by our desire for more.

The miracle occurs when we see our life as it is, right now. It’s not about learning to appreciate our faults – it’s just about seeing ourselves as we are, in the same way we pick up a rock and turn it over in our hands and notice the curves, the pits, the colors and cracks.

When we see our life with clarity and awareness, change will happen without the struggle we always felt in the past. Able to see our lives, we can appreciate every moment, whether we are laughing or crying.

The time to stop trying to make your life better is now. The time to discover your innate awareness is now. Take up a stone – any stone – and look at it. Are you ready to fault it, or is it just as it should be?

Why are you any different?