Posted inHumor Personal/Stories

Photos of my not-so-sacred meditation chamber

I figure it's time to prepare for my hoped-for veneration, exaltation, and worship as an enlightened godly being. True, I don't believe in enlightenment or in God. But why should this stop me from being worshipped? I founded this here Church of the Churchless. I preach about stuff all the time. I'm venerated in my own mind. Maybe the exaltation I feel toward myself will spread someday. So in case someone ever builds a shrine to me, here's photos of the meditation chamber where my perfection becomes more perfect every morning. I hereby give permission for it to be recreated…
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Posted inBuddhism Personal/Stories

Extreme is good. Be spacious in your extremeness.

Often we're advised to embrace moderation. Don't be extreme. Stick to the safe middle ground. Edges are dangerous; cliffs await.  Most religions, forms of spirituality, mystic practices -- they like boxiness. Commandments keep devotees' actions within certain bounds. Rituals are well-defined and repetititve. Prayers, meditative practices, worship... stay in control, sit in your seats, listen and don't talk back. For God's sake, don't yell, scream, object, or in any other way do your own unfettered thing. Here's some countervailing thoughts about going to extremes. Two personal stories, one link to a Tantra-related blog post. I'd almost forgotten about the Groupon…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Does God want me to be a senior citizen skateboarder?

There's got to be a deep meaning behind my strangely strong desire to become a skateboarder, longboarding style, at the age of 63.  After all, don't the world's Western religions tell us that God/Allah is in control of our lives? And don't the world's Eastern religions tell us that Karma/Tao guides our decisions?  Thus I have to assume that if I follow through on my lust for longboarding, I will have taken another step toward my salvation, enlightenment, god-realization, satori, and overall Major Dude'ness.  (For some background on my divine mission, see here and here.) Now, so far I haven't…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Life lessons learned on a Maui beach

I always feel pleasantly alive when my wife and I visit our favorite Maui beach, Napili. There's just something about a tropical beach that screams (or rather, murmurs) this is what life is all about.  It isn't just the warm air and water speaking. There's also something else. Elemental. Honest. Real. No need to try to name it. But I enjoy trying to talk about it. Last year I blogged about some life lessons I've learned boogie boarding.  -- You can't control the big things.-- You can control how you relate to big things.-- Change is the only constant.-- Don't be afraid of being the only one.-- Rushing…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

My new Major Life Project: don’t have one

For most of my 63 year-old life I've had what could be called a Major Life Project. Meaning, an overarching ambition aimed at transforming not just part of my life, but all of it.  "Mystical enlightenment." "God realization." "Knowledge of ultimate reality." "Soul travel." "Salvation." These are ways of saying what I aspired toward, though it's difficult to put into words. What propelled my Major Life Project since my college years was a feeling, an intuition, a drive.  I wanted to know... I wanted to experience... I wanted to be... What followed those ellipses...? I wasn't sure. I had some…
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Posted inBooks Personal/Stories

Boxing up books reminds me of a beautiful book, freely-given

I just finished mailing off 87 pounds of books I once was deeply attached to. As related in my previous blog post, "Break free of the religious merry-go-round," I got an email from a woman in India who was looking for early editions of books published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). I told her that I had plenty of them.  After a few additional rounds of messaging, it was decided that I should send the books to her two daughters, who live in the United States. They'll find ways to get the books over to her in New Delhi, such…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

Catholic woman is offended by McDonald’s

Recently our local newspaper here in Salem, Oregon had a column by Carol McAlice Currie that resonated with my long-time experience of being a vegetarian.  Download Fast food offends religious woman  Since I've shunned meat and fish since 1970, and raised a daughter born in 1972 as a vegetarian, I know what it's like to ask servers in a restaurant to substitute something animal'ish for something vegetable'ish.  Many times I walked into a McDonald's with my daughter and said to the person behind the counter, "Could you make us a Big Mac without the hamburger?" Or at Taco Bell, "We'd…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

How I deprogrammed fundamentalism out of my brain

I got some great questions in an email today, boldfaced below. Brian, out of curiosity.... I was wondering after you left RS [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]... How did you deprogram all the fundamentalism out of your brain? The whole "The world is a bad place, don't get "involved" in worldly things....  and pursuing things in the world to find happiness is bad... How did you start to finally pursue your own happiness, without the fundamental programming snake coming in and poisoning your progress? I told the person who wrote me I'd reply via a blog post tonight, adding that I'd been planning to write…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Science

Doubt is the stepping stone to truth

I was so sure that I was right. It turned out that I was wrong. But after finding this out, I was able to get on the road to rightness. What got me facing in the right direction was doubt. Thank you, doubt! If it weren't for you, I'd have headed in the wrong direction for quite a bit longer. I'm not talking about a religious belief, though I could be. The lesson I learned last week is universal: don't be completely, absolutely, 100% sure about anything. Even when we're super confident that we're correct, it's important to leave open the…
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Posted inHumor Personal/Stories

Universe is sending me a “Fuck. That. Shit.” message

I've got no idea who "the Universe" could be. Or if it is a "who." Or if it is, at all. Regardless... The Universe seems to be trying to communicate an important message to me.  Fuck. That. Shit.  It also comes in a different cadence and punctuation. Fuck that shit! Today I came across the Mother Ship source of the first link, a cool xkcd comic. Read it. Maybe the Universe is out to give you the same message.  Here's an excerpt from the comic that I liked a lot: I don't know how to jolt myself into seeing what…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Reality

Why isn’t a movie as appealing in HD?

Last night I took advantage of my wife being out of town to stream, through Amazon, an action movie that I've wanted to see for a long time: The Bourne Identity (2002). My wife isn't big on action flicks and wouldn't have appreciated the way-cool Mini chase through the streets, alleys, and walkways of Paris nearly as much as I did. But what irritated me through the entire two-hour movie experience was watching it on our television in HD (high definition). I paid an extra dollar to get the HD version. Then, almost as soon as I started watching amnesiac Matt…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Janis Joplin, vapor trails, and falling leaves

Oh, man, this has got to be a terrific post now that I've come up with that title. It's almost Christmas, so naturally my thoughts are turning toward utterly unreligious stuff. But I'm still getting signs from the universe. At least, I like to think that I am. And who else is better qualified to tell whether a seemingly random event actually is a message from... [fill in the blank; me, I have no idea who might be the messenger].   Like, yesterday I was driving around, listening to Classic Vinyl on Sirius XM, grooving to sounds of the '60s…
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Posted inHumor Personal/Stories

Hafiz warns, watch out for spiritual la-la land

Hafiz is pretty cool, for a religious'y guy. He's a Persian mystic poet who did his thing in the 14th century.  Daniel Ladinsky has written a book, "A Year With Hafiz," that contains 365 poems that are versions of Hafiz, in much the same sense that Coleman Barks has popularized Rumi. Meaning, liberties are taken. These aren't word for word translations. Fine with me. I'd rather get the spirit of a poet, than the letter of what he or she said.  Here's the January 17 poem, "Watch Out for Spiritual La-La Land." Watch out for spiritual la-la land, where you might…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Dancing teaches me a life lesson

Quality, not quantity. Relate, don't compare.  That's the essence of what Debra, my dance instructor, told me yesterday. On my other blog I described these life lessons. Have a read. And a look, as I included a dance video that Debra liked a lot. Religions urge that we form an intimate relationship with God or some other supernatural entity. Ballroom dancing points us toward the here-and-now: relating to the partner who is in our arms.  Which is more real? For me, dancing. For sure.
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

More proof of my enlightenment

One of the big benefits of not being part of an organized religious faith is that you can affirm your own enlightenment -- or salvation, sainthood, mastership, gurudom, whatever.  Life is short. Why wait for someone else to tell you about your elevated state of consciousness? Do it yourself! Well, in my case, with the help of Google, as I needed assistance in remembering where prior bloggish proofs of my enlightened being lay. Thank you, Oh Great Google, for pointing me to here, here, here, and here. (Though truly, my entire Church of the Churchless blog post production testifies to…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Taoism/Tai Chi

I dreamed within a dream. Felt a lot like reality.

Usually I don't pay much attention to my dreams. They seem to be the brain's way of processing waking life events, albeit in a often disconnected and bizarre fashion. But last night I experienced a dream that was coherent enough to be philosophically quite interesting. I suspect some of the content had to do with my going through some old files yesterday, keeping some folders and discarding others. I also drove my Mini Cooper to town and back, taking turns on our rural road the way I usually do: vigorously. My dream started out with me driving on what seemed…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Life lessons I’ve learned boogie boarding

Here's another in my series of What I've learned about life by boogie boarding. (For previous posts, see here, here, and here. This guy could be me. Except I was holding the camera on the beach and my hair is gray. But a little while earlier I was catching some similarly middling-sized waves at this exact spot on Maui, enjoying myself hugely. I've done a lot of boogie boarding, a.k.a. bodyboarding. A few years ago I wrote some do's and don'ts, quasi-humbly noting that my style was "not bad." Since, I've improved my boogie boarding. Both on the physical and…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Life is plenty good without God

"This is good enough, plenty good enough." That's what went through my mind as I was digesting one of those magical experiences which many people attribute to God. Good enough meant no need to add anything divine to what nature has wrought. I was walking along Maui's Kapalua Coastal Trail late in the day. No one else was around as I moved off a paved path onto a dirt stretch of the trail that wound across a rocky volcanic headland. The sun was setting in front of me. The sea was calm. Until I saw a tell-tale spray of water.…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Science

Simple truth: our brains are us

Last night I had an all-too-familiar experience: Sitting back and listening to a discussion, pondering the deeper meaning of what was being said, jumping in with some comments that were So Absolutely Correct they deserve to be capitalized -- and then seeing looks of what the #$%! is Brian talking about?, after which the conversation went on its merry way, barely missing a step notwithstanding that my brilliant remarks should have made people pause to digest their awesomeness. Oh, well, often a prophet is recognized only inside his own head. But if he has a blog, this allows him to…
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