Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Wings of love fly in two directions

This afternoon I rolled out of my nap bed, glanced at the pile of overly devotional books that I’ve culled from my bookcase, and decided to pick up the topmost title: “On Wings of Love,” by Madeleine. It was published in 1972 by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) in South Africa. I’ve got the first (and likely only) edition, which constituted 1,000 numbered copies. Mine is #919. For that reason alone, this previously unread book is now a keeper. For another reason also: Madeleine, whose last name isn’t revealed, is a poetess of blunt words and intense passion. A foreword…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Soul is still lost, but I’ve found my keys

I can’t say that I’ve experienced Zen’s Great Doubt. Or the Dark Night of St. John of the Cross. But I do know what it’s like to lose my keys. I’m hoping that this was a message from God. Or at least the Key Fairy. Last Thursday afternoon I started to rush out the door, semi-late as usual, to drive to my martial arts class. I reached into my hip bag for my keys and found…nothing. Now, this lack of finding pretty much describes my daily search for my soul in meditation. But the difference is that earlier in the…
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Posted inBooks Personal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Who’s afraid of this big bad blog?

This Church of the Churchless weblog doesn’t strike me as scary. Not like a big bad wolf. Pretty much all I do is say it as I see it. My most frequent utterance is “I don’t know.” For variety I try to express this un-profundity in alternative ways, but they all end up pointing at my metaphysical cluelessness. My musings wouldn’t be threatening if it weren’t for a secondary theme: “I don’t know, and there’s no proof that you do either.” It’s the sentiment after the comma that strikes at the heart of organized religious pretension. I have to assume…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Taoism/Tai Chi

Musings on the Metolius

It’s easy to get into an meditative mood while walking along the banks of the Metolius River. It becomes an instant river about a mile upstream of our central Oregon cabin, gushing out of springs that carry water from distant sources. Since the upper reaches are mostly spring fed, the Metolius’ water level doesn’t change much throughout the year. Vegetation is able to grow on logs and rocks that, with the passage of time, become islands of life. This evening, on my ritual dog walk, thunder clouds were starting to form. Per usual, Serena, the dog, and Brian, the human,…
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Posted inBuddhism Personal/Stories

I get a glimpse of Tango Zen

Monday night at my Tango class the instructor taught us a pretty complicated move. Muy Tangoish, so it was cool. But difficult for our four-month-old Tango brains to grasp. My wife and I gave it a try, though. From the man’s perspective: Step, step, trap her foot, turn her to left, stop her, cross step, side step, move her around with waist turn, trap her foot, step forward into centering position, step, step, step. Well, it looks better on the dance floor than on a computer screen. However, at first I struggled to get the moves down. Then we started…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

I’m alive. Wow!

I’ve been having a strange sensation recently: I’m alive. It’s accompanied by: One moment I won’t be. Amazing. What’s even more amazing is how many days there have been out of the total I’ve lived (21,065) when I didn’t have this sensation. I took life for granted. I didn’t envision my own non-existence. Maybe it’s taking getting older and passing the 21,000 day mark to begin to appreciate the marvel of being able to appreciate anything. I’ll be walking the dog, or standing in Tai Chi class, or getting out of bed in the morning, and suddenly I’ll be struck…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

A nasty truth, naked and rough

I want to share some thoughts from a woman who emailed me from Europe. Like me, she’s a Sant Mat initiate (satsangi) in the Radha Soami Satsang Beas line. Also like me, she’s gone through some intense soul-searching. I’ve mildly edited her words for clarity, but left her English style intact. (Believe me, she writes infinitely better in my language than I can write in hers). Here’s her first message: Hello, I just found your site and have lovely laugh when I was reading some of your stories. I am your spiritual sister, a so called satsangi. A year ago…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Breaking free of family influences

Bear with me, Church of the Churchless visitors. This personal story concludes with a churchless moral. Idly watching a high school teen flick on Comedy Central, “She’s All That,” while stairmastering this afternoon, I was taken aback when a character spoke some lines that could have been said by me at his age—with some slight modifications. I heard Zack, a senior, tell Laney (in so many words): “My dad wants me to go to Dartmouth. He always has. It’s just been expected of me. He’s always saying, ‘Zack, you’ve got to make up your mind about college.’ But I know…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

I meet a true guru

Today I met an honest-to-god guru. I trusted him immediately. He was warm, humble, forthright, genuine, and an evident master. I laid my problems before him. He listened patiently and then gave me some sage advice. I took it. And I’m considerably happier now. My mountain bike is in much better shape after the ministrations of my guru. His name is Brad. He works at Eurosports in Sisters, Oregon. He taught me a lot this afternoon. I only wish that spiritual teachers were equally capable of resolving my questions and problems. But they’re not. I could watch Brad affix an…
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Posted inHumor Personal/Stories

I establish a new religion, Galobet. Believe!

A few days ago I had a revelation. Galobet spoke to me. That’s the true name of God. I’m sure of that, because the God who wants us to know him as Galobet told me. So my advice is: believe! Unless you don’t want to. In that case, I’m not responsible for how Galobet responds. You’ve been warned. Here’s the story of my revelation. It will undoubtedly be told throughout the ages. Or at least as long as my TypePad blog account is paid up. I begin with the first of a series of miraculous occurrences. LifeSource Natural Foods had…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Religions

Dance to your own music

I’m taking tango lessons. Hard to believe. But I’ve got proof. Check out my “We tango and also get tangled” post. A month has passed and we don’t get quite as tangled now. I’m enjoying tango much more than I thought I would. It’s tempting to dive into an analysis of what I like about tango. However, the memory of some pithy advice I was given at the last class is still vivid: “Shut up and dance!” That declarative statement was a gift, not an insult. Borrowing a favorite word from Steven Colbert, I enjoyed the marvelous truthiness of it.…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Wu Project

An old koan rises from my past

So, yesterday there I am re-reading my long ignored copy of “Zen in the Art of Archery.” I turn a page and find a rent receipt from August 1968 stuck in the book. College days. Beginning of my junior year at San Jose State. Had recently gotten back from Europe, where I’d spent the second semester taking classes in Zadar, Yugoslavia. I’d rented an apartment with a couple of other hippie potheads. That explains the reference to three cleaning deposits. I idly turn the receipt over. Find some handwriting. Mine. I read: “There will be light when there is no…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

In praise of divorce

Yesterday a friend told me that she found an old book of mine lurking in the shelves of Powell’s Books in Portland. Her email message said: Hey, Brian! Guess what I found at Powell’s today . . . an old copy of The Path of the Masters lurking in the Indian philosophy section -- instead of Sikhism. Since it was an older version smelling of mildew I just had to take a look -- and guess what I found inside, an inscription “To Brian . . . from Sue . . . 1970.” Sue was my first wife. We got…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Hitting all my conversational buttons

Life, death, consciousness, psychic phenomena, science, acceptance. Last night the conversation at our monthly Salon discussion group covered a lot of ground. There were just five of us, fewer than usual. Two believers in “something more,” two scientifically-minded skeptics, and me—the balanced Libra who bridged the two camps. Generally our group focuses more on politics and Bush-bashing than anything else. Yesterday the conversation was predominantly personal and philosophical. For me it was a delightful grab bag of what I like to talk about most: the Big Questions of Life. Consciousness. Lynda, our hostess, had recently attended several workshops about brain…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Wu Project

Best answer often is “None of the above”

My manly self-image isn’t based on mechanical aptitude, so my ego is letting me share these stories. Then I’ll turn to my area of real competence: analyzing the anecdotes. Saturday morning I sold our old generator to a guy who saw my ad in the classifieds. He said he’d come by around eight. I figured that the sale would go more smoothly if the generator would start. Sometimes it’s a terror to get going when it hasn’t been started for a while. I don’t run the generator very often, so I got out the manual and reviewed the start-up procedures.…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas Wu Project

Tracking the trajectory of my Wu Project

Here’s documentation of my first original quasi-spiritual insight. Today I dragged this piece of paper out of my “treasures box,” where I keep various memorabilia from my youth. I wrote the poem when I was 13 after gazing up at the stars one night from the backyard of our rural home in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It goes like this: Look up to the heavens What is there? Tiny pinpoints of light But is that all? Look past the stars Into the blackness of the void. What lies there, waiting for man’s first faltering steps Into the…
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Posted inBooks Personal/Stories

German translation reflects my transformation

My first book, “God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder,” is back in print, albeit in another language. As I noted on my other blog yesterday, New Zealander Matthias Schneider-Marfels, a.k.a. Matt, translated my revision of the book into German. We’ve managed to publish it through my own imprint, Adrasteia Publishing, and it’s now available on Amazon USA and Amazon Germany. Matt and I put a lot of work into the book. It’s satisfying to see it in print for several reasons, not least of which is that “Wenn Gott flüstert, donnert es in der Schöpfung” is a reflection of transformations I’ve been…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

The boots at the top of the stairs

Last night my wife and I spent several hours engaged in stimulating conversation with six friends. The eight of us covered many topics. When we turned to miracles and psychic phenomena, our discussion got passionate. Usually it’s considered that religious/spiritual people have the most passion about their beliefs. For example, “The Passion of the Christ.” But scientific sorts can be equally passionate. Our group included a Ph.D. chemist, a Ph.D. computer scientist, and a scientifically-minded attorney—each of whom forcefully argued for the primacy of reason, well-designed experiments, and laws of nature that aren’t arbitrary or capricious. They didn’t put much…
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Posted inMorality Personal/Stories

A Playboy moral lesson

The January issue of Playboy arrived a few days ago. It’s been sitting on the kitchen counter where we dump our mail, as I haven’t had time yet to give the magazine the concentrated attention that it deserves. However, Playboy’s mere presence has stimulated me to blogishly contemplate a somewhat surprising subject: morality. Of course, when I turn the issue’s pages my mind surely will turn in other directions. But for now I’m interested in the feelings that I have whenever I walk by the counter and glance at the cover. Rightness. Honesty. Sincerity. Truth. I'll explain, since I realize…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

How writing a book rewrote me

A few days ago I got around to looking through a bunch of unanswered emails. I came across a message in which someone asked me to elaborate on a quote from my July 14 post on “Filtering Reality.” An aside: it’s sort of ironic (or, some might say, karmic) how I began working on a book that ended up changing how I viewed Radha Soami Satsang Beas and, more generally, my whole approach to spirituality. Radha Soami Satsang Beas, or RSSB, is the India-headquartered spiritual group that I’ve been associated with for some thirty-five years. The “ironic” aspect of the…
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