Enjoy What Makes You Happy

My son enjoying the splash pad at the Oklahoma City Zoo

The U.S. just finished celebrating Thanksgiving Day, which is a wonderful holiday devoted to spending time with friends, family, and giving thanks for the many blessings in our lives. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays because I am able to take a break from work and everyday life to just slow down and enjoy some down time. I am thankful that my work gives everyone a four (4) day weekend off to enjoy the holiday, and during these days off I have really enjoyed unwinding and releasing some stress and tension that has been building up.

Too often we get caught up in the rat race of life, and we fail to really slow down and enjoy life, and the things that make us happy. We tend to push things the things that make us happy like spending time with friends, family, relaxing with a good book or a movie, to the side or marginalize them. Generally this leads to stress and general feelings of unhappiness and discontentment.

I think it is key to really identify the things in your life that make you happy, and make time for those activities, people, or groups. Even if what makes you happy seems to be mundane or a “waste of time” it is neither of those if it makes you happy, because sometimes the simplest things in our lives bring us the most pleasure. Of course it is important to make sure that the activities, people, or groups that make us happy aren’t based on attachments for material possessions, or support destructive behaviors, because that can cause the cycle of stress and general unhappiness to perpetuate itself.

While this may seem overly simplistic, we must make time to enjoy the things that make us happy. For me, family and friends are an important part of my life and bring me a great amount of joy and happiness, and so does reading, writing (which this blog is a wonderful outlet for), and driving my old Corvette (weather permitting of course). I know that no matter how stressed out I am, I can turn to these things to bring a sense of comfort and happiness, so they have become a bit of a refuge that I can turn to.

Finding Beauty in the Ordinary

Old Dodge Work Truck. It has had had a hard life, yet it is still beautiful.

I have recently found the website/community www.soulpancake.com, where spiritual seekers of all faiths, backgrounds, and viewpoints discuss various topics involving faith, religion, spirituality, and life in general.

Recently there was an activity which encouraged the users to take pictures of ordinary things that would normally go unnoticed, but that are inspiring in some way. This idea really resonated with me, because living in the now requires you to slow down and really experience life and the world around you. Therefore, for the past few weeks I have tried to really tune into the mundane things that surround each of us for inspiring material.

As I have mentioned previously I have a bad tendency to put my head down and push through every task in front of me, including in my spiritual path. While I have made tremendous progress in slowing down and enjoying life, I tend to focus on my emotions, thoughts, and general awareness, rather than my individual physical senses; therefore this visual activity was extremely useful for me.

The following are some pictures that I have taken over the past few weeks with a brief description of why I found the subject material interesting and/or inspiring:

Occupy Your Life

NYC at Night

This year has been a time of change and protest around the world. The protestors involved in the so called “Arab Spring” facilitated the toppling of the Tunisian, Egyptian, and Libyan regimes, and have made significant impacts on numerous other Arab countries. During the past few weeks the various news sources, social media sites, and blogs have been abuzz with the “Occupy Wall Street” movement that began in the Wall Street district of New York City, and has subsequently spread to various cities across the U.S. Like the protestors involved in the Arab Spring, the Occupy protestors are standing up against the status quo in order to protest for change. One thing that has struck from all the protests, both from the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement, is the passion and resolve displayed by the protestors in order to bring about change.

So passionate are the protestors that they have put their lives on hold, and even completely changed the direction of their life in order to protest for change. In the case of the Arab Spring, those protestors quite literally put their lives, and the lives of their families at risk. However, given Oakland California’s recent heavy-handed response to the protestors, it appears that the protestors from the Occupy movement are not immune from the risk of physical harm, and even death.

The way that all of the protestors have been willing to completely give up the life they knew in order to pursue a cause they believed in reminded me of several religious and political leaders including: The Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to just name a few.

Suffering is Caused by Ignorance

As many of my readers already know, I was blessed to be able to attend the Kalachakra Initiation, in Washington D.C., this past July. During one of the preliminary teachings that preceded the Kalachakra Initiation, H.H. The Dalai Lama, mentioned something that struck me at a very deep level, and has continued to resonate with me, “suffering is caused by ignorance”. While the concept of suffering is central to Buddhist thought (because the teachings are aimed at ending suffering), most of the teachings I had previously heard or read, stated that suffering was simply caused by various forms of attachment, so this teaching on suffering was new to me.

For my non-Buddhist readers, I should probably explain the concept of suffering in Buddhist philosophy. When most of us think of “suffering” we think of some sort of physical or emotional anguish. While this is truly a form of suffering, the Buddhist concept of suffering can be much more subtle. In Buddhist philosophy “suffering” includes regrets, desires, worries, depression, anger, and any other form of unhappiness (no matter how subtle), that is preventing you from living a happy and fulfilled life, and ultimately reaching a state of enlightenment. According to the Buddha, all forms of suffering are caused by attachment, because you can probably trace all of your suffering to some form of attachment to various emotions/mental patterns, desires/regrets, life experiences, the material world, or life in general. Therefore, the traditional teaching that attachment (in whatever form) is the root cause of suffering is true; however, the statement that suffering is caused by ignorance, took those teachings deeper for me and put them into a new context.

Be a Better Person Today

“The end of learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.”

– John Milton

One of the topics that seems to be a recurring theme in many of my conversations during the past few weeks, is what is the purpose of spiritual and/or personal development? While I cannot speak for everyone, I feel that most will agree that the true purpose of any practice aimed towards spiritual and/or personal development is the continual refinement of ourselves on the various levels of our psyche, and ultimately our soul.

Five Ideas for Staying Refreshed

Staying refreshed is one of the most important things that you can do to stay physically, emotionally, and spiritually happy. However, in our busy and hectic modern world staying refreshed can be difficult. I know there are times where it seems that all I do is commute, work, spend a few hours with the family, and then go to sleep, just so I can repeat the process all over again the next day. (sometimes that schedule isn’t too far off from reality). I know during these periods my relationships with my friends and family suffer, and so does my personal physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.

Sometimes during these hectic periods I have found it helpful to take a step back and analyze various aspects of my life and schedule, which allows to regain control of both. Here are five ideas that I employ on a regular basis in order to stay as refreshed as possible.

Who am I? Take off the Masks and Find Out

Family Photo from 1986~1987 Left to Right: Me (I think), my cousin Laura, twin brother Justin (I think), and my older brother Bryon

One of the major themes in my spiritual path, and my life in general, has been the search for the real “me”, the search for who I really am. While this may seem simplistic and silly to some people, those people have probably never really asked themselves the question of “who am I”. This seemingly simplistic question is actually a fundamental question that must be asked, and the answer sought, if one is to truly discover peace, harmony, and happiness, which are things that all humans seek on one level or another.

When most people ask themselves the question of “who am I”, usually they will describe various attributes for themselves. For example, I could answer: I am a lawyer, I am married, I am a father, I am a Freemason, I am from a small town in Oklahoma, I like ____, I dislike_____, etc. but is that really who “I” am? Am I simply an amalgam of my career, family life, likes & dislikes, and life experiences? Well… the answer that I have discovered is “Yes and No”. While I am a product of these various attributes, they are not the true me, rather they make up the outer-shell of my true-self in the form of my personality, and the various masks that I use in order to fit in with my various relationships and with society in general. In order to find the true “me”, I must dig deeper…

The Importance of Love, Compassion, and Kindness

During the first day of teachings that preceded the Kalachakra, H.H. The Dalai Lama, gave what amounted to a comparative religion lecture. One of the keys to his lecture was the fact that the attributes of love, compassion, and kindness are central tenants of every world religion. Every world religion teaches these attributes because they will not only have a positive influence on yourself and those around you in this life, but they will also benefit you in whatever awaits each of the death of our physical body.

Unfortunately, too often in our technological world, these attributes are lost, because most interaction occurs without any real face-to-face interaction with one another. This makes it is easy to become disconnected with the fact that the person on the other end of the phone line, or on the other side of the internet connection is a person, just like you. These disconnected interactions allows us to feel okay about treating someone poorly, or even in an outright hateful manner.

Basic Spirituality

When most people think of a “spiritual person” they usually think of some sort of New Age guru, a hippie, a or a die-hard fundamentalist of one creed or another. Unfortunately this imagery has turned many people off of spirituality, because they don’t want to be thought of as “that person”, or have to answer to a particular religious group or creed. In reality, “spirituality” is not the exclusive realm of any one religion, or any of the aforementioned stereotypical practitioners. There are truly spiritual people who go to church, mosque, synagogue, satsang, etc. at every opportunity, and there are those who never attend any formal religious function.

Oftentimes, so-called spiritual people, also make spirituality seem overly difficult and dogmatic. This is ironic because many self-styled spiritualists began their own personal spiritual path by leaving very rigid and dogmatic religious systems.

Without using any New Age or religious buzzwords, spirituality at its most basic level is about discovering who “you” truly are, which means discovering the divine (created by God) soul that resides in each of us, and bringing your thoughts and actions in-line with your true nature, which is love and joy.

Practicing Charity

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.  If you want to be happy, practice compassion.  ~H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama

As evidenced by the above quote from H.H. the Dalai Lama one of the most important things that you can do to both improve your life and the life of others is to practice charity. Charity is important because it forces you to give something up (time, money, etc.) for the benefit of someone else, which helps you to not only become a better person, but also helps the life of someone else. The importance of practicing charity is an important aspect of many of the world’s religions, for example:

The ministry of Jesus Christ was focused on helping others not only improve themselves spiritually, but also their lives in general. The message of Jesus Christ is full of lessons involving loving one another and helping your fellow man. It is important to note that Jesus was concerned with action, not merely talking about doing good deeds, but actually DOING good deeds.