Victor Borge once said, “Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” It’s even more than that. Laughter is healing, a balm for the soul. I recently attended the graduation and performance of a friend who was graduating from Comedy School. Although I knew of her natural humor, the performance was heart opening. I laughed heartily at jokes that told in some cases familiar stories. The jokes were indeed funny, but it was the obvious desire to bring joy to the audience that struck me. Performance is play, and those who play well and often have the best chance of being authentic. Other budding comedians performed as well. The ones who connected most with the audience were those who showed up authentically, not trying too hard to be something outside themselves. Humor is a special connection with our spiritual center. It reveals a passion for creativity and connection. Creative in its emergence, humor surprises us with its ability to open the gates of joy within us. So often, humor highlights mistakes or points to desires, but the “distance between two people” is shortened when a person invites us to see the challenges or frustrations in life as mere stories. We laugh and we are relieved, because we recognize the story as our own. Humor spotlights the challenges we face in life, so that we see them as conditions, not the reality of our lives. We no longer feel shame or embarrassment for what we want or who we are. When the veil is lifted from our hidden desires or perceived imperfections and embedded in the stories, we can accept the moral of the story without moralizing. Terence, a 13th century Ethiopian playwright and poet once said, “I am a human being. Nothing human is alien from me.” We are all in this life together. Humor encourages us rightfully to laugh about it, because our lives are stories.
Monthly Archives: May 2014
To Be or Not to Be
A stirring inner debate about life or death is the subject of a famous monologue in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The question ( I paraphrase) is whether it’s better in the mind to bear the challenges of life or decide to escape those challenges by dying to them. Every day we have a choice to be or not to be, not in the way that Hamlet agonized over his life, but in our choice to be who we really are, or to try to be an image of who we think we should be. We are love expressed moment by moment in the world. The “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” are illusions, ” a sea of troubles” that will wash away in time. Hamlet painstakingly lists all those illusions that cause us to suffer (again I paraphrase): oppression, pride, unrequited love, corruption, unmerited credit, unsatisfying work, and delays of the legal system. All of these “slings and arrows” are invitations to believe that life is a threat instead of the opportunity to be fully alive in the present moment with Spirit. Our being-ness is not a question to be debated. We are spiritual beings expressing love in a conditional universe. We are not human doings, but human beings. Choose to be peacefully present in the Now.
Suffering
The etymological meaning of the word “suffering” is to “bear under,” like a burden. Our attachment to suffering creates a burdensome tension in our lives. It’s an idea, suffering, that gets reinforced in the society’s attraction to what’s not working, and as we identify with conditions in our experience. We believe that we are alone and unsafe, exposed to the negative conditions of life, and that we need protection. Suffering is a contradictory and frustrating attempt to feel better, to feel connected. What we seek is the lifting of the burden.
Some of us blame ourselves for those conditions, or more often we blame others. We blame ourselves for what we call mistakes or omissions, but we blame others to release ourselves from responsibility for something that is uncomfortable in our lives. We see others as the source of our burdens.
We think we deserve a life without challenging events or conditions. When we resist the opportunity to experience our pain, we lose the opportunity to be grateful for our lives! Yes, grateful for who we are – sentient beings who express love even in the face of pain. Our burdens can easily be lifted when we let go of false beliefs about our worthiness. When we suffer, we allow our thoughts to control our life experience.
Suffering is a mind trick that keeps us wary of living. It robs us of the opportunity to live fully, to live mindfully in the present moment. We can let go of the illusion of separation from others that fuels our sense of being alone and vulnerable. Others are mere reflections in the mirror – stunning reminders of an interdependent, holographic universe. We are never alone. We are always in the presence of Spirit, because there is no place where Spirit does not exist.
Trust
There is only one letter that spells the difference between Truth and Trust. I decided that there may be a curious relationship between the two. In order to be trusted, one must be trustworthy and tell the “truth.” In order to know the truth, one must trust that the universe is perfectly unfolding, and that all is well. This is more than a play on words; it has real influence on our sense of peace and purpose in our lives. The first of the nine principles is “Trust in our relationship with Spirit.” In order to trust we must know the truth of who we are. Spirit is universal energy, and since it is all-there-is, there is no truth that lies outside of its power.
Our relationship is with the one love that exists, the one love that is our own essence. When we trust in our relationship with Spirit, we find the truth of our being.
I recently watched a TED talk on trust. The presenter said that we should trust people who are trustworthy. The continual movement of the universe in its unfolding is a testament to its power as the breath of life. I trust that the universe is moving perfectly. There is no condition or challenge in the universe that supersedes the energy of Spirit, because Spirit is all-there-is. The speaker also suggested that trust is a response to trustworthiness. The Spirit flowing endlessly within and around me, ensures me that all is well, always.
The art of trust is turning inward to trust ourselves – our spiritual identity. Loving Spirit invites us to love ourselves in the stillness of meditation. Every breath reminds us that we are one spirit, one truth, one trusted presence unfolding perfectly.
Expectations
Charlotte Joko Beck wrote a provocative essay about relationships entitled, “Relationships Don’t Work.” This is not good news for all of us seeking, building, and appreciating relationships. If we peel away the top layer of that pronouncement from Beck, we begin to understand that relationships are almost always heavily-laden with expectations. We relate to people because we want something from them. We have expectations that somehow we will know happiness if we have a “successful” relationship. But there’s no way that seeing people as separate from us can result in a satisfying relationship. Our expectations get in the way. What we regard as relationships become negotiated partnerships for something. Some people think relationships require work- working to be happy and loved. There is no work to do. Being in a relationship means recognizing what Rumi so artfully states, ” Lovers don’t find one another, they are in each other all along.” When we are kind in our relationship with ourselves, our kindness in the world has no expectations. When we love, there are no expectations of a reward or a fulfillment of some need. We simply love because that’s who we are! Spirit is alive in us, asking for nothing, except an opportunity to express love in the present moment. We can be that love: wanting nothing, experiencing the oneness of life, seeking nothing, being whole in the present breath of life. Only then will we be the love we came to this life to experience.
Forever
The great spiritual teacher Mooji reminds us that all things come and go, even emotions. But some feelings open the door to forever, like the ones that transcend time and space and linger in your heart, not as a painful experience, but as an assurance that some things endure. When my daughter passed away on March 3, 2014, I realized a new meaning of forever. Love is forever, without time to box it in and make it transient. Pain fades. Memories even dim, but love is forever, because Spirit is forever.
nine principles for joy 