True Love's Chance

Well I'm still going through piles of stuff but I'm happy to report that they are dwindling and becoming more organized. I was looking through an old notebook and ran across a poem I wrote more than a decade ago. I kind of like it. It's simple yet whimsical. I hadn't even thought about it until just now. As soon as the words spilled off the pen and on to the page, it was closed and shelved and forgotten. And now that the binder has been cracked, it is free to live again.

Rivers, sonnets, poems and sands
Seashelled walls in foreign lands
Footprints, roses, song and dance
Take a bow for true love's chance

Synchronicity – not just a great song by the Police

Yesterday I was going through all the boxes of stuff that I’ve accumulated over the years. I will be moving soon and wanted to simplify. Being confined to, pretty much, one room, the accumulation was starting to affect my mood. Since a continual motto for me is “out with the old, in with the new”, I decided to get on with the purging process. I started pulling things from boxes and making piles; recycle, garbage, garage sale, e-bay, keep, give away, etc. I soon found myself so lost amidst my mountain range of life-time possessions that I had to triangulate my location (luckily my GPS was amidst the piles ;-). I located myself somewhere between Mount Kilimanjunko, Mount Never-rest and K2muchstuff. This is where I ran across a book that was given to me by a friend many months ago. The title is “Simple Abundance; A Daybook of Comfort and Joy” by Sarah Ban Breathnach. This book has a short entry for every day of the year meant to be read to help your “daily life” be “an expression of your authentic self.” I figured that since I wasn’t moving anywhere soon, and since my brain could really use a simply abundant break from the chaotic mess, I decided to open the page to the May 18th entry and see what wisdom Ms. Breathnach had to impart on me. Mind you, I had never even opened the book until that moment, so imagine my surprise and delight to not only find the attached satin ribbon book mark was already marking the May 18th page (weird) but also in reading the following entry:


May 18

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

Out of clutter, find simplicity. --Albert Einstein

After a morning spent sifting and sorting through the beautiful, the useful, and the useless, I glanced around our living room floor. It resembled and archaeological dig with small stacks of artifacts all separated according to their domestic categories. I wondered what a late-twentieth-century anthropologist considering the juxtaposition of junk and precious mementos (such as my daughter’s last pacifier) would tell the world about the woman whose life was now reduced to a series of neat and pleasing bundles.

Soon it became time to return everything to where it belonged. This, believe it or not, was a source of great contentment. As I wandered through the rooms of the house I began to search for the common thread in the lives of the world’s great spiritual teachers and traditions: Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Lao-Tzu, The Hebrew prophets, The Moslem Sufis, The Catholic saints, The Hindu rishis, The Shakers, The Quakers, The Amish. None of them had junk drawers. That’s because all embraced simplicity. Spirituality, simplicity, and serenity seem to be a sacred trinity; three divine qualities of the orderly soul. Henry David Thoreau believed “our life is frittered away by detail.” I disagree. I think our lives are frittered away by lack of focus. But how can we focus our attention on what’s truly important when we’re half-crazed because we can never find anything? However, Thoreau’s remedy for the frittering frets still works today: “Simplify, simplify, simplify.”

This week, consider that with a little bit of courage and creativity you can find the breathing space you crave. You may think you’re only clearing clutter from a junk drawer or juggling commitments to find a few hours to get your house in order. But your soul knows better.


Thank you for the synchronistic reminder Sarah. I’m glad I ran across your book. I can’t wait to bump into it again. This time it won’t be buried under a mountain of stuff.

Saved By a Jehovah's Witness!

As I was doing my nanny duty of feeding the toddler today, there was a knock on the door. I answered and there stood a lovely woman with a bible in her hand. She asked me what I thought about the “Kingdom of Heaven”. I told her that the Kingdom of Heaven is right here, right now. It is all of us. She went on to ask if I attend a church and I told her I go to Christ Community Church in Spring Lake then paused for reaction…for those of you who don’t know, Christ Community (C3) is a progressive Christian church which embraces all faiths, beliefs, sexual orientations and…gasp!...”encourages independent thinking” (murmurs among the crowd). It is a place where I’ve sung Hindu bhajans and Buddhist chants during service with great reception. And, although I don’t consider myself to be a Christian, it is the place where I’ve felt the most connected with the philosophies and the people here in west Michigan. Now, as I was telling this woman which church I attend, there was that familiar egoic voice just chomping at the bit waiting for the response. I so wanted her to start asking me about the bible and trying to impose her views on me just so the ego could have its chance to tell her my very progressive views. That voice that I’ve tried hard to do away with somehow finds a way to rear its ugly head every now and then. Generally, I’ve done pretty well with keeping it in-check, but today, it made an appearance. Not a grand appearance, but an appearance none-the-less. The well-intentioned lady asked if I say the “Lord’s prayer” and I answered “nope, not since I was catholic”. She looked a little confused. Then she started talking about the meaning of the word “kingdom”…”a land with a king. It’s really kind of like a government with a ruler” she said then pulled pamphlets out of her bag and asked if I wanted them. I said that they “weren’t my sort of thing but I’ll leave them on the counter in case the family wanted to read them.” (huh?) She left in, I’m sure, a confused state and I went back to the business of feeding the child. But, for some reason I was feeling unsettled this time. The ego didn’t feel that usual sense of satisfaction. There was nothing overly harsh said on my part. It was just the way the ego was talking with the intention of getting a reaction that left me with that feeling of unsettledness. What surfaced next, I wasn’t prepared for. What surfaced was me, the Divinely True me, the I am. That part down deep inside decided to come up closer to the surface and shut the ego up before it had the chance to revel in its small victory. Instead, I felt completely defeated myself. I don’t want to be that person. Isn’t that being exactly the thing that I was against? Isn’t that, in a way, imposing my views on others? Isn’t that being judgmental? I completely believe that we all have our own truths and every single one of them is real and true. Being a Jehovah’s Witness is exactly where that woman is supposed to be at this point of her journey. It’s what works best for her in this moment. Shouldn’t I love her instead, and cheer her on for the journey ahead? There was a time when being a catholic worked best for me. But we grow and progress. And today, I did a little bit more of that. But there I was with my feelings of shame and guilt realizing that, once and for all, I didn’t want to let that ego-voice rule the roost. All of a sudden, everything seemed so much clearer. I felt so much love for that woman who came along and gave me that experience of Divine Love and connection and acceptance. I’ve forgotten lately how that felt. It’s time to re-awaken that part of myself and move forward.

Now, there are many who say that one of the ways the Divine feminine (Mother God) shows her love is by sending flowers…and do you know what? 5 minutes after that lady left the front door, there was another knock. A lady delivering flowers! And she happened to be the mother of a friend of mine! Ahhhhh Divine timing.

Thank you Mother. Jai Ma!

Lynx

He was a loveable little kitten with a grey/brown tiger-striped fur. He’d been at the animal shelter for 3 months in the same cage with his brother and sister. They’d all managed to escape the usual fate of upper respiratory disease that takes many cats in the shelter. He was strong from the get-go. We named him Lynx because he had little tufts of fur sticking out from the tops of his ears. We took him home with us to be a brother to the other kitten, Leo, we had just rescued from there a month earlier. They were best friends right away. When we got home we let him out of the cage and Leo ran to him immediately. They sniffed each other and, after mutual approval, started to play. It was meant to be. They grew together, both very loving and affectionate cats. It was the perfect situation I’ve always wanted as a cat owner; two cats who loved each other, played together, cleaned each other’s ears and took care of one another, and kept each other company when their people were away. Lynx loved to go outside! We would let him out for a few hours a day, except during winter when we’d open the door, he’d sniff the air and realize that it was way too cold to have fun and would turn around and trot back into the house away from the frozen tundra. He showed us his hopefulness and optimism when he would ask to go out 5 minutes later thinking that the weather would be completely different than the time before. But the rest of the year, he would enjoy the outdoors. He enjoyed life on earth for 3 turns of the seasons. During spring, summer and fall, he would spend as much time as he was allowed outdoors, making sure to come in well before nightfall. He enjoyed all the things cats do; chasing birds and mice, gentle breezes blowing across his fur, sitting contentedly on the porch, basking in the sun or hiding under his favorite pine tree across the street for shade when it got to be too warm. How could I have kept this sense of freedom from him when he loved it so? If he would have stayed indoors all the time, he wouldn’t have been as happy, but may have lived longer. Is it better to have lived a short happy and free life than to exist in monotonous mediocrity for longer? Would it have been selfish of me to keep him in just because I wanted him around forever? Would he have left us anyway because it was just his time to go? We will never know. But I do know this. Quality of life is so much more important than quantity.

He was one of the most loving and affectionate cats I’ve ever encountered in the world! And he was a very good listener. He would actually stop what he was doing when told “no”. I’ve never known a cat to do that (besides his brother Leo). He was a survivor; from the early months in the pound to getting bailed out from 2 “arrests” by animal control, to being shot with a bee bee gun... (obviously there was a neighbor that wasn’t quite as appreciative of him ;-( He definitely used up all of his nine-lives. But he was happy. Today, he was hit by a car and reached his inevitable expiration. He has transcended to the next level of existence. Heaven sure is lucky.

Goodbye my little Lynx. Mom, your brother Leo and I will carry on without you. You will be terribly, terribly missed…but always, always loved.

Beep...beep...beep!

Listen, we’re friends right? So I feel it’s my duty to tell you that you’re not exactly all that you think you are…you’re so much more. Oh, so much more. You are everything. You are an infinite being. All universal possibilities are contained within you. When you don’t claim your Divine Right, you do the whole universe an injustice. Just thought you’d like to know. Consider this your spiritual alarm clock…WAKE UP!

From Asus to Zune

A couple weeks ago, I took a vacation to California. I made a packing list of all that I would need for the trip. The list included all the standards of course as well as some modern technologies; everything from my Asus laptop computer to my Zune MP3 player. As I made the list, I contemplated whether or not I really needed to bring a laptop and an MP3 player on vacation with me. Do I really need to be so entertained? I started to wonder, is all this technology distracting me from the joy of the vacation or enhancing it? Do I really need to be so in-touch and communicative with everyone in my virtual world? Or worse yet, do I really need to do work on my vacation?

Because I always try to find a spiritual meaning in everything, I started to wonder what our “packing list” would look like when we enter a life here on earth. Judging from what I’ve experienced so far, I imagined the dialogue in my head to go something like this - “Let’s see, Inferiority complex, check; a little unworthiness, check; a hint of every day drama, check. Oh yeah, and don’t forget a wee bit of control issues, check; and the unlucky-at-love card, double check.” Is this what we do? Is this necessary in order to have an entertaining life? What is the purpose? I started to imagine what life would be like if we didn’t have all the drama to distract us? What if we all were living our divine truth and acting in accordance with divine purpose? What if… would the world be too boring?

Imagine if you will a day where you would wake up to the sound of birds chirping which fills your heart with love and your ears with a beautiful song. After rolling out of bed, you slowly get ready for the day at your own pace. You read the paper and it’s nothing but good news; beautiful pictures, good deeds, babies being born, people helping people. The rest of the day you do the thing that makes you happiest in the world and it sustains you. In the evening you sit peacefully with the one you love, a soft, warm breeze blowing through your hair sipping on a glass of red wine. Doesn’t sound boring to me. In fact, it sounds like heaven. Heaven on earth.

As for the “packing list”, all of my life experiences so far and my practice of daily meditation have helped me to slowly transmute the patterns of separation into divine love. And for the record, I did use the laptop to goof around quite a bit on vacation, mostly on Facebook (connecting) and even did a little work (productivity). But, when the undeniable voice of vacation came calling, I put it away and went with the flow. Even though it rained 80% of the time, I made the most of it.

It’s funny how the everyday dramas can be very distracting from divine truth, but it is also when we usually learn the most (productivity). And when we go through dramas with each other, we grow and learn from them together (connecting). So, until I am fully living in wholeness in alignment with my divine purpose, a balance of the two is important; Work and play; Action and meditation; Growth through patterns of separation and moments of living in wholeness; Balance…

What's the Deal With That Title?

Rama Lama Sing Song, what’s that?

Well, I will tell you. I think that this title embodies the three main aspects of who I am; spirituality, musicality and humor.

Spirituality:
It contains the words Rama (a Hindu Avatar) and Lama (a Buddhist teacher of dharma). I have an affinity to both of these religions (as well as parts of many others).

Musicality:
I am a musician and “Rama Lama Sing Song” is a play on words of the common 50s music phrase “rama lama ding dong”. Also, most of the music from the 50s/60s was very upbeat and bubbly…which are some words that many would use to describe me as well. So it seems a good fit

Humor:
Humor is very important to me. I think laughing is essential to a joy-filled life. And, I have always loved the wittiness of play-on-words humor. Thus…Rama Lama Sing Song is born.

What's Your 20/20?

Love is the only answer, if the question is “how do I find the truth?” We can look through windows and not see ourselves. We can then look into mirrors and still not see ourselves if we don’t look through the eyes of love. Why then, do we insist on keeping those “spectacles of separation” in our desk drawer, neatly tucked away until the ego beckons us to take them out every now and again to glare at the world; the flavor of drama its insatiated addiction. If this is the only way you see the world, try opening the drawer to the left. Perhaps there you’ll find your lenses of Love. Employ them with all the care in the world, then, let the truth shine! Voila! Vision clear.