Well season 5 of 24 is behind me, and I have to say I wasn't disappointed. I'm not sure how they do it but the tension is never eased up. I have a whole new appreciation of Kiefer Sutherland based on this series, so much so that I even purchased this month's Men's Vogue that has him on the cover.

Happy Holidays Everyone:

Noah and Tim two fish working!

The ubiquitous umbrella.
Toronto a town like any other town where people dress in black and carry black umbrellas. Foggy rainy days bring out the device where ever you are. If you don't look black and ready to attack then you are a fish out of water.

Here is a story from my last days of working in Guelph.
I was biking to work and decided to take a side trail that wasn't part of the main road traffic. The trail follows the edge of a forest out in the Hanlon Creek watershed. It is well back from the road and you only see people out walking their dogs.
I was very surprised when I rode past a dead deer. It was lying just off of the trail and at the edge of the forest. My inclination was to keep going because I was running a bit late, but then I thought no this is not an accident.
I went to look at the deer and it was sort of horrific the state it was in. The hind quarter had been basically ripped off, one leg was missing and all of the fur. I was somewhat confused as to what happened. The road was a good ways away but obviously this deer had been hit by one and then somehow dragged itself through the business park across the trail and died right at the edge of the forest. I found this pretty amazing. The will involved to get back home was inspiring.

Life in the big smoke:

I recently started a new job in Toronto which is about an hour and a bit on the train form my fair city. It has been a great change for me and has offered all sorts of little obstacles to overcome, not least of which is adjusting to the new rules of home life.
We told our girls what the new rules were last weekend and I think they apply to life in a general sense:
rule one Pay attention
rule two listen
rule three what did I just say? pay attention.

So I am paying attention. So far I have made a good network on the train and have been listening to what people are saying and doing in their lives. It is fun.

Tim Bits
I was recently at a Tim Horton's ordering my lunch. I was ordering a turkey club sandwich and a bowl of soup which totaled almost $11.00. The cashier saw me fingering my debit card and said oh we don't accept debit here. Now this is not the first time this has happened to me at Tim Hortons but I have to say my reaction was the same this time as every other time: why the *&#* not? The answer, there is an ATM just around the corner.

Well I tried to figure out why a multimillion dollar service company does not provide this service. Is it for speed? I think this is the best possible spin you could put on it, but was my transaction not considered valuable enough, I was allowed to walk away around the corner and go get the money so everyone else wouldn't be slowed down? And yet every other fast food company in the world accepts debit.

Is it because Tim Horton's is only a donut shop and it doesn't make sense to allow debit on such small transactions? Then why was I spending my lunch money at Tim Horton's and why was I spending $11.00?

No the simple truth is that Tim Horton's is very sneakily, well maybe not too sneakily, passing on it's cost of doing business to the consumer. Why should I have to pay Tim Horton's ATM costs? Is it not better business to accept the cost of allowing debit cards from your loyal customers and take up your argument with the big bad boys of the financial services world?

I just don't get it, but I'm willing to look at real numbers, real complaints and see what the real problem is.

I'm listening to a cd by the Dalai Lama. A friend gave this to us and has called it OM His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. It is beautiful. I listen to it over and over when I am working around the house. It is amazing to walk into the house from outside. The trees are almost bare and the colours have been spectacular. And then the deep rich chant of the Dalai Lama. Amazing. I feel reinvigorated after listening to it.

Here in Guelph:
The election has a white knight in the Guelph Civic League. Hopefully this links you to the research on past voting by the current council.

The buddha and the light:


Last night at dinner I decided to light some candles and one of them was a bees wax buddha candle that someone had given me. I had already lit this at some other time and so most of the head was gone. When I put it on the table my daughters both said hey, it's the buddha! And then they looked at it as I lit it and said the buddha's head is gone. This made me reflect on the light and I said it is amazing isn't it that the more light the buddha gives the less of the buddha is present. I see this as part of the occupation of buddhism and enlightenment. Bring more light, be more open to the way, and more and more of the self, the ego, identity seems to disappear. Now, the point is the candle isn't disappearing, it is transmuting, becoming one with the flame, with the air, with everything so there is less of the so called object.

Back in the saddle.

I was challenged lately at the Eden Mills writer's festival by a friend. We were talking about blogs and I mentioned I have a blog but I haven't written anything on it for a few months. He said that isn't a blog! I said it is an artifact of the blogosphere and realized I didn't want to be an artifact. So I am back.

I think the reason that I haven't blogged for a while is that I am writing about my spiritual experience and to be quite honest things are a bit stalled for me. Not to say I'm not still meditating and thinking about connection with truth but I am not having those so called insights that I was having. Life, stuff like working and repairing the homestead and people getting married and people breaking up, has been getting in the way. Now I am realizing that is all part of the big picture, so out the artifacts and into the art.

Fear is the enemy of learning.
It is the enemy of learning how to live together as one, it is the enemy of learning how to resolve differences, it is the enemy of learning to live in peace, it is the enemy of learning to listen with openness, it is the enemy of learning to let go of the things that we think we need.


Love is the quality that overcomes fear allowing us to be together, supporting one another and helping one another grow! Love is not scarce, love is everywhere for those who are not blinded by fear.

What to use to determine the validity of a subjective experience?
I think Ken Wilbur answers this question by saying that the 4 quadrants must be fulfilled in every quadrant. I think this is sort of like saying that there are natural laws.
How are the natural laws discovered? In the external or physical realm there is the scientific methodology that sets up repeatable conditions and then measures things as they are put through their paces. Of course, you come to the Quantum problem where in the thing that does the measuring affects the thing that is measured and therefore the thing measured is not the thing in and of itself.

The buddhist view is that all things are interdependent and so appearances are illusions created by the mind. This doesn't mean that you can't operate in the world because everything dissolves into fairy dust, but it does mean that if you say something doesn't change and this is the way it is and then make up laws about it or base your beliefs on that thing that you think will not change then you will find your belief eventually washed away by the winds of change.

A nerve thread
Statement: Subjective experience does not lead to facts.

Question: Does this mean that facts don't add up to subjective experiences? Do facts lead to objective experiences, experiences that we all can have or do have or must have? What then is a fact? A fact is something that is perceived and perception is something subjective.

Therefore facts are subjective. Now what to do?

Does subjective experience preclude objectivity? I guess the problem is what to use to determine the validity of a subjective experience? If I can say this is my experience and expect that to be the truth I can say God spoke to me. But how does one disprove or prove this? Through their own experience and the so called nature of the universe. How do you arrive at an idea of the nature of the universe?

Reality
Lately I have been struggling with a couple of different pursuits in my brain. I was able to articulate it last night with a friend and thought I would capture it here now. My tension seems to be the idea of manifesting reality, or co-creating reality in Wayne Dyer's phrasing, and simple meditation. The thing is I see these two avenues of my brain as being not so much different roads as more cul-de-sacs on the same street. My problem it seems comes from the desire to manifest for my family an existence that is comfortable, and of course this means lots of things but mostly it means this idea of bringing forth, of co-creating. Now over on the other cul-de-sac is the hope of enlightenment and manifesting compassion and wisdom. Right away I see that both things involve manifesting. The idea that I Am that I can bring into being what I tell myself I want. But what I have found is that I want is the thing that is confusing the picture. I have desire and I want to be aware and accept abundance, and I want to be non-attached, not have aversion. My friend, who is wise and knows me and that I have kids and that I want the best for them brought to my attention that my kids have their own karma and regardless of what I bring into being they will still have their karma to deal with. I know that already just by being born in North America they have material wealth beyond most of the world. Where my concerns are music lessons, dance lessons blah, blah, blah , a large percentage of the world is looking for their next meal.
So what is my problem? The problem is still one of ego and attachment. The thing is I can manifest reality, the issue is my conditioning to think that material well being is the road to happiness.

Emptiness
I'm reading The Tantric Mysticism of Tibet by John Blofeld right now, along with Eye to Eye by Ken Wilber. I love both of these books. The subtitle of the Eye to Eye is The Quest for the New Paradigm, and it certainly does the job.
But back to Blofeld for a minute. Last night I read a line about visualization, particularly the tantric practice of becoming the deity that you are visualizing. Blofeld contextualized this by saying that visualization is something that is quite foreign to the western mind and that usually the idea of manifesting reality is seen as hocus pocus. But he says the idea is really based on the concept of emptiness, that the meditators emptiness and the deities emptiness are one and so that is why it is possible to become that visualized deity. I just found that one statement to very profound, put the book down and started meditating!

Learning Organizations
I'm developing an interest in learning societies. Otto Scharmer has developed a very clear model that shows the incredibly valuable connection between transforming both self and the culture. Another good book that I'm reading which has been around for a while is The Dance of Change. A bunch of co-authors on this one but Peter Senge is the one that stands out. Now this book is more specifically about business culture but I find it very encouraging reading these ideas from top business leaders and the insights that they have had that point to the benefit of decentralizing authority.
Change is inevitable but it seems that organizations truely resist change and this is what can cause so many problems within organizations.
One change that I've brought to my approach of going into meetings where I usually feel nervous or appathetic is to keep the wisdom mantra in single pointed concentration. It helps me apply myself more to the problem and be more attuned to energy issues within the group that is meeting.

Being present plus non-attachment equals freedom:
I suppose the first thing I have to do is practice. I need to practice being present. It is an odd fact of being human that being present, being in the NOW, in the moment does not come naturally. Or maybe more to the point being natural does not come naturally. The innate inner state of being human is one of calm abiding and yet we don't get to experience this calm abiding unless we tame our wandering mind. The wandering mind is the thing that not only wanders but then gets attached to things that are wandering by. Without practice, practice, practice, I am easily blindsided by my thoughtless, unskillful, uncompassionate behaivour.
I have been mulling this over since I made the comment that just being present does not necessarily lead to freedom. You need to be present in nothingness, non-attachment. Nothingness is the sense of total interdependence, not oblivion. So you can sit and be present but as soon as you become attached to one of those flowing ideas/objects that are going through your mind you are no longer free.

This morning I woke up with every intention to write for half an hour. I didn't sleep well as my one daughter climbed into bed with my wife and I and then proceeded to kick the blankets off every 10 minutes. Our other daughter woke up and I had to go in and stay with her for the rest of the night. Then my dreams were anxiety driven sales performance, ebay store intoxicated. I woke up at 5:30 with my daughter clinging to my arm. I tried to extricate myself from her grasp, finally by 6:00 I got out of bed and started to write. I wrote for 5 minutes when who should appear but my kids wanting breakfast.
I screamed inside, but let out a grunt... can we never have any time alone!
On the bus to work I was reading The Spiritual Teaching of Ramana Maharshi, and just coincidentally, was on a chapter about solitude:

• The disciple asks: Is solitude necessary for sannyasin?


• Maharashi replies: Solitude is in the mind of man. One might be in the thick of the world and yet maintain perfect serenity of mind; such a person is always in solitude. Another may stay in a the forest but still be unable to control his mind..... solitude is an attitude of mind.

The universe is a good teacher!

Mantras
I recently came across a couple of really good books on mantras and mudras. The one is by Lillian Too.

This I am finding is a great resource for lots of mantras especially two that I've been looking for: 35 prostrations mantra and the Praise of the 21 Tara mantras. My wife is reading a feng shui book by her, which I suppose is her real specialty but the mantra book is good too.
The other book I've actually had on my shelf for a while but decided to pull it out again. It is Mudras, Yoga in your Hands. I find hand mudras interesting ways to approach the whole opening of channels and shifting energy. This one is by Gertrude Hirschi.