Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – What is the Lesson?

Tags

Attachment, backup, creativity, Problems, redundancy, Resilience, Spiritual, spirituality

I missed yesterday’s posting because of a laptop that decided to die on me. I thought we lost power in the house, but actually it was my laptop battery. HP laptops need a working battery, despite being plugged in, before the operating system will kick in (My brother is a professional techie, and helped me figure it out).

Not a big deal since I have a desktop, but my desktop has been unused for about 6 months, and now I’m dealing with all of the updates that I didn’t do. Oh, well.

What does this have to do with spirituality? It is a lesson in undue attachment. I thought I was living a pretty detached life, but then this laptop thing happened and I went into a bit of a tizzy. The lesson was clear. I am not as detached as I thought I was.

Well, I’ve got a battery on order and things are back to normal, but wait….I don’t have a webcam anymore. Oh no!!!! Not a problem I’ll go to Amazon and place an order. Webcams are out of stock on Amazon, Best Buy, Staples, and Walmart. Logitech, a manufacturer of webcams is out too. I thought for a moment. It’s the remote work that has increased one thousand fold since the lockdown.

To overcome this, I’m using a Bluetooth keyboard and my iPhone app to make today’s posting. My PC is updating and is only at 24% so it was time to get creative. It was also a keen lesson on the importance of backup systems and redundancy. Lesson learned on a few different fronts.

I missed yesterday’s posting due to this debacle, but now I’m back on track.

The moral of the story. You always have room to improve and you are never safe from unexpected issues that pop up. It’s how you handle these problems and continue to strive forward that matters.

Well, folks. That’s all I got for today as I stare at a blue screen with 24% on it. I hope each of you has a terrific Saturday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Love is All You’ll Take With You

Tags

Attachment, family, Friends, God, ideology, Love, Material Things, Possessions, Unattachment

Quotes inspire most of my articles.

Every once in a while a picture will capture my interest. This one of a Lotus floating on water inspired me today. When I look at it, I see the flower floating on the calmness of an undisturbed pool of water. It is a vision of serenity.

I ask myself, how could life be like that? Calm, immune to the chaos surrounding us. Just floating along without a care in the world. I think this level of serenity comes from a place of detachment. Detachment is the opposite of attachment.

Attachment causes all kinds of problems. It causes us to argue with our loved ones when we are attached to a set of ideas and unwilling to listen to another side. “We’ll have none of that”, you say. You’re wrong and I’m right.

Attachment causes us to feel a sense of loss when we lose something we value (attached to). Think about the people that have taken their own life when they lose their finances.

Attachment causes us great pain when a loved one passes and even more pain when we realize that we will pass too.

Attachment is a hard one to get rid of. All of us are attached to something, whether we think we are or not. When you feel loss, you can bet that your attachment to that thing you lost is what is causing your suffering.

What if you could live a life of detachment? How would that look? It would be a life of service. You give all you have because you are unafraid of losing anything. It would be a life of charity. You would do all you could for someone without care for a reward or anything in return. When you are detached, you have all you need, because you don’t desire anything. You simply live in the moment, appreciative for the blessings you have received. If tomorrow brings loss, it rolls off of you, because there is no loss when you are unattached to things in your life.

Life is a series of changes. You gain friends and lose them. You get pets and you lose them. You have a job today and lose it tomorrow. You have your health today and it’s gone tomorrow. Everything in life changes. When you are attached to these things they are painful to lose. When you are unattached to these things, you wake up and say thanks for what you do have. Simple right? Not so much.

Whenever I am feeling down, sad, or upset, I look for the attachment in my life. It is normally the culprit behind my discomfort. Sometimes it is hard to let things go, but let them go you must, now or later.

Think about it. When you die, what are you taking with you? Exactly. Nothing but the love you carry in your heart. That’s all you take. All the toys, glittery bobbles, clothes, friends, family, pets, homes, jobs—everything.

Whenever I remember that all I’ll take is the love in my heart, I lose a little of my attachment. I keep this thought in my mind always. When you pass away, you will take none of the things you have right now but the love in your heart. Enjoy your toys, your friends, your loved ones while they’re here. Rejoice in the creature comforts you have right now. They are all blessings. Just remember, when they go away, thank God for the privilege of having them while you did and move on. You’ll enjoy life so much better when you preserve and build what you will take with you–the love in your heart.

Until next time…

Dave

 

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Fear

Tags

Attachment, Detachment, Fear, Frozen, Ignore the Naysayers, Love, Paralysis, passion

“If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” – Dale Carnegie

Fear hits me from time-to-time. sometimes I’m fearful that my writing won’t be good enough when I begin publishing my work. Sometimes I fear that I won’t learn to be a good programmer so I can create applications people will want to part with their money to own or use. Sometimes I fear that this blog will go nowhere. I’ll write here and no one will care one way or another.

Fear only takes hold when you are attached to something you want or desire. Eliminate that want or desire and fear dissipates. It’s hard, but it makes sense right? When I look at my writing or blogging fears, I only care about what others think of my writing when I desire or want others to like what I’ve done here. When I write for me, the fear disappears. The same thing happens when I remember that I am doing all the things I do for me and me alone. If someone likes my book, they’ll purchase it. If they don’t they won’t. I have no control over who will like or dislike my book. I have no control over who follows my blog or who elects not to. I have no control over anyone other than myself.

 

It’s comforting when I realize that all I do is for me and me alone. If, by chance, another person enjoys my writing, my blog, or my future applications, awesome! If not, who cares?

I realize I am in a unique position. I am retired and financially secure. It’s easy for me to take this attitude when my livelihood isn’t at risk. For others, this may not be as easy as it is for me. I get that. However, you can still achieve the same thing for yourself. When you develop an attitude of detachment, you do the best you can with what you have, and leave it there. You’ll discover how great it is to stop worrying about your critics. The key is to do things for yourself.

 

If you have a job, you need to please your boss and do the best you can to keep your job. But if you are pursuing things on the side like writing, online teaching, writing a mobile app, or whatever, this is the time you give yourself a break. Do it for the love of doing it. I enjoy writing. I enjoy learning. I enjoy reading and learning. I enjoy keeping myself healthy. I enjoy spiritual pursuits. I only do what I love to do. You can do the same, outside your day job.

You may not have as much time as I do, but you can still get a lot done with the limited time you have.

One of the biggest discoveries I have made since retirement is the benefit of completing small actions toward my goals every day. For example, I set a goal of reading 48 books this year (4 books a month on average). I read one chapter a day. Sometimes, if I have more time than usual, I read more than one chapter. Currently, I am at 61 books so far this year. Just by consistently reading one chapter each day without fail. This compounding is powerful. You can do the same thing.

When I write, I goal myself to write 500 words a day in my book. I started in January and I’ll finish the first draft by the end of this year. Again, 500 words a day, which amounts to about 15 minutes of work. I also write articles for my blog every day, journal every day in the AM and PM, and write discussion board responses for the online course I am taking. None of these feels like work because I absolutely love everything I am doing. It is a joy to get up in the morning and begin my work.

Fear is a powerful emotion. It can stop you in your tracks or talk you into believing that any effort you make is a waste of time. It will tell you that your work is not good enough. It will paralyze you. Let fear go by letting go of any expectation of outside applause or approval. Do the work or side hustle you’ve committed to for the love of it. If you don’t love it–STOP. This is your time, not your boss’ time. This is what you choose to do when you are not on the clock. Love what you do, lose your need for approval. The folks who love what they do will always do better than those who do not love what they do.

I’ll stop here. I hope all of you have a terrific Wednesday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – We are Spiritual Beings Having a Human Experience

Tags

Anger, Attachment, Contentment, Detachment, Discrimination, Forgiveness, Greed, Humility, Lust, Passions of the Mind, Soul, tolerance, Vanity, Virtues

“Remember, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” – Stephen Covey

Read more at: Brainy Quote

Have you ever wondered how you can think about thinking? What part of you is watching you? My religion is ECKANKAR and we call this you—soul. Soul is a spiritual being. It is the real you. It is that part of you that can watch what you are thinking, saying, and doing. Soul is what thinks about what the mind thinks and what the body does. Soul uses your body to experience this life.

I believe in reincarnation. To believe in reincarnation, there must be a something that outlives the body and takes a body when it is time to live another life. This is soul. Soul experiences. Soul learns. Soul needs a body to experience things here. It needs a body to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. It needs to experience the mind’s memory, it’s intuition, and its subconscious, automatic processes.

Soul is the real you. It is a spark of God. God creates soul and soul exists because God loves it. Soul is forever. It never dies, it merely moves to another realm of existence when the human body dies. In this realm it interacts with other souls to continue its learning on another plane of existence. It can return here, it can go to other dimensions or planes, it will go where it needs to go to continue its spiritual journey.

I know this may be a little mind-blowing to some of you. I like using Saturdays to move away from the self-improvement chats and all the rest to dedicate one day a week to discuss my religion and some principles and insights it offers. I am not here to evangelize or push my beliefs down your throat. I merely want to educate. In ECKANKAR, we believe that each soul chooses the religious path it needs during this lifetime. Some souls select Islam, some Christianity, some Buddhism, some Judaism, or Hinduism. Regardless of the religion soul chooses, it is the perfect religion for that soul at the time. As an ECKIST, I believe this to be true. Your religion is yours and yours alone. It is exactly what you need in this lifetime to move ahead spiritually.

The viewpoint of soul is the highest. When you come to realize that soul is the real you, life gets a lot easier. Life isn’t scary anymore, when you realize that you have an infinite amount of lives left. Soul never dies. Soul is infinite. This life will come and go, but soul is forever. Soul takes all its experiences with it when this body finally goes to sleep for the last time. Soul needs these experiences to learn the lessons it needs to gain wisdom and progress spiritually.

Think about all the things you learn during a lifetime. You learn about love. You learn about work. You learn about loss and suffering. You learn about joy and ecstasy. You learn about horror and evil. Soul learns why the passions of the mind like lust, anger, greed, attachment, and vanity are dead ends. Over time, it learns that the virtues are ever-lasting. These are discrimination, tolerance/forgiveness, contentment, detachment, and humility.

When you are lustful, angry, greedy, attached to material things or ideas, or vain, there is a coinciding feeling, a pit in your stomach, an ache in your heart, or some other discomfort. When you are discriminating, tolerant and forgiving, content, detached, and humble, the feelings are lighter. You have a feeling that is long lasting. Things are just right. Soul needs to learn these things through millions of lives and even more experiences. It is the only way.

You are soul, a spiritual being, learning and experiencing through a human body, not the other way around. I wish all of you a Happy Easter tomorrow (for those that celebrate).

Baraka Bashad (May the blessings be).

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Living the Detached Life.

Tags

Attachment, change, David Allen, Detachment, Flux, Impermanence, Mind like Water, Suffering, The Buddha

“The root of suffering is attachment.”  – Buddha

I wanted to discuss the character trait of detachment today. Detachment is not a passive state of mind. Detachment doesn’t mean that you don’t care about achieving things or finishing projects. Detachment is a state of mind that does not rely on an idea, material item, or outside circumstances or person. Detachment allows a person to be free from desire. Following the Buddhist mindset, detachment frees us from suffering.

Think about how our reality is in constant flux. This flux means that your body, your possessions, your relationships, and even what you think you know today, will change. Anything that changes is, by definition, an illusion. Subsequently, if you attach yourself to things that will change, you are just asking for pain and suffering. David Allen, author of Getting Things Done provided one of the best explanations for this state of detachment. His statement about having a “… mind like water…” is the best explanation of a detached state. Think about that for a moment. Water does not overreact to anything. It reacts exactly enough to accommodate changes to its environment. When you throw a pebble into a pond, the pond accepts the pebble without over compensating to the entry of the pebble through the water’s surface tension. Once the pebble has passed through the water, it generates a wave that expands outward from the point of entry. This expansion is equal and consistent. Once the ripples dissipate, the water returns to its normal state. It accepts change, reacts just enough to accommodate the change, and then returns to its original state.

A mind like water can be the same as the pond. Something happens with your job, your health, a relationship, or something you depend on. It upsets you for a moment. Like the pond, you let your mind return to your state of calm. It takes time to develop this mentality, but if you realize that nothing is permanent in life and accept this premise, life smooths out. The changes come but they do not adversely affect you as much. You react like anyone does when a loss comes. You are angry, upset, sad, for a time, but that time period is much shorter than someone who has not achieved this state of mind—the detached mind. You enjoy what you have when you have it, but when it goes away, you remain grateful.

When you pursue something, enjoy achieving a goal, we can use the same mindset. You enjoy the victory for a moment but realize that it is time to pursue another goal. The pursuit provides meaning in our lives. It gives us something to work toward. It is the time during the pursuit where the growth happens. We learn a new skill; we learn a new discipline; we learn a new way of solving problems. This we can carry with us for the rest of our lives.

Attachment causes suffering. It sets us up for failure because whatever you own, including your own body will atrophy and fade away. To avoid this, remember who and what you are. You are not the body. You are not the mind. You are a soul. Notice the wording. I did not say it is your soul. That would signify that your body owns a soul. That is not true. The soul uses a body. No one owns or possesses a soul. You are soul and it has a body for its use during this lifetime. This may take a while to wrap your mind around, because using the phrase: “my soul or your soul” is so common in today’s society.

If you can accept this idea—that you are soul—your life will smooth out. You will lose your attachment to your body, your mind, your possessions, your job, your friends and relatives. You will lose your attachment to an ideology. None of these things will last. You are only “using” them while you are here. When you pass away, die, or what I call translating, you merely move to a different state of consciousness. Your body doesn’t come with you. Your possessions don’t come with you. Your relatives don’t come with you. You leave your money, your toys, and your loved ones at some point. So, enjoy these things while you have them. There’s nothing wrong with being grateful for what you have now. Detachment will relieve a great deal of pain, when these things inevitably go away. A detached state of mind knows of our fleeting existence here. It knows that nothing is permanent. It expects nothing. It accepts the blessings that are present and strives for the sake of striving, because the striving is where the experience, learning, and growth are. Whatever happens, because of this striving, is not of concern.

Well, I’ve given you a lot to think about. Try getting your mind wrapped around some points I’ve made here. You’ll find that your life will take on a new meaning and you will be ok when things you depended on go away. (They all will at some point).

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wednesday Wisdom – Attached to Suffering

Tags

Advertising, Attachment, Buddha, Marketing, News, social media, Suffering, wisdom

“Attachment is the source of all suffering” – The Buddha

Is there something in your life that you do not like? Does your job suck? Are you not making enough money? Are your relationships toxic? Are you unsatisfied with your image in the mirror? Final question: Why?

In most cases we have what we need. We may not have what we want, but we have what we need. We have a place to lay our heads at night; we have enough food to eat, and we have some means of making a living. Why are so many people suffering?

We suffer because we are resisting change. We resist changes to our body as we age. We resist changes to our employment when it’s time to move on. We resist changes in our relationships (i.e. it’s time to move on or accept that we weren’t right for the person who left us).

I used to suffer. I used to suffer from want and need. Then, I ran across this quote above and decided that I should change my mindset. I took a few times to understand this. Greed caused my two bankruptcies. I wanted things I could not afford and borrowed more than I should have to get the things I wanted, which today, I don’t even own.

Why do we buy things? Because we are unsatisfied. We are missing something. Both feelings come from being bombarded by marketers who are fighting for our attention and money. They show us pictures and videos of things we should have, places we should go, the diet we should be on, the food we should eat, the supplements we should take, the deals we’re missing out on. All this advertising has a huge effect on our psyches. It is constant, persistent, and all-encompassing. If you think this does not impact you, think again.

How do we avoid it? We can avoid social media, we can avoid the news, and we can avoid mindless surfing of the web. We can choose the sources of information we use and get rid of the rest. I enjoy social media but only spurts. I’m literally on social media for a few minutes in the morning and the evening. The same goes for the news. I scan the news for about 10 minutes in the morning while I enjoy my first cup of coffee. The rest of the day I am spending my time on the tasks that are important to me: Reading, Writing, Programming, Meditation, and Exercise. These are my Big 5. Everything else is secondary.

We can also develop a sense of gratitude and thankfulness. It takes time to develop this habit because we are told constantly that we don’t have enough and told we aren’t enough. We are missing something that the couple in an advertisement has. That couple by the way aren’t a couple, their bodies aren’t that perfect but photo-shopped, and that sailboat they are on is not theirs. It’s all made up. It’s all designed to make you feel you are missing something. If they convince you that you are, you just bought what they are selling or something like it to fill in this “make believe” gap in your life. A gap that isn’t even real. Do you understand how insidious this is?

Look, don’t get me wrong. I understand that marketing and advertising is needed. They tell us what is out there in case we are looking. What I’m describing is the effect these advertisements have on us and why they are so harmful. They create the suffering the Buddha talks about. We become attached to the idea that we don’t have enough; we aren’t enough, and the only way to fix us is to pursue more money, more things, which require us to work harder and harder to pay off the bills we keep adding to. It is a vicious cycle that most people never, ever get out of.

If you are tired of feeling crappy all the time, tired of running subconsciously on a rodent’s exercise wheel, take charge of yourself and your life. Take time to take inventory of what you have and express thanks for your life, your health, your family, your place of residence, and the job you have. None of them are perfect, but they are yours. You really don’t need another pair of shoes, a brand-new car, a new sound system for your home, or yet another bottle of protein or some powdered meal that will sit in your cupboard for the next year and gather dust.

Life is good. Be grateful for all you have. End your suffering by detaching from ideas and things, realizing that it will all change. It will change because everything in this life does. We change, our things change, our attitudes change, our ideas change, our relationships change. If you become detached, change is variety. Change is refreshing. Change is exciting.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Series Sunday – The Character Trait of Detachment

Tags

Attachment, Contentment, Detachment, Emotions, Letting go, pain, Suffering

“Everything is temporary; emotions, thoughts, people and scenery. Do not become attached, just flow with it.”—Anonymous

Detachment is the focus for this month. So, this month I’ll continue to work on discrimination, tolerance, forgiveness, and contentment. Each month I add one more character trait I want to work on, just like Benjamin Franklin did in his time.

Detachment relates to a practice of letting go. We live in a reality of constant change. Our health changes, our appearance changes, our situations change, and our relationships change. Tomorrow, you could lose everything. Detachment allows us to live a better life because it frees us from the emotional upheaval we experience when we lose something. Attachment in a constantly changing world is painful. Everyone around us will pass away at some point. Our pets will pass away. Our relatives and friends will pass away. We will pass away.

Detachment doesn’t mean we live an unfeeling life. Detachment means we live life to the fullest, appreciating what we have when we have it. It means to cherish what you have at the moment. Living a detached life allows us to be content with what we have and helps us avoid the lingering pain that occurs when we attach ourselves to something. Detached people, express pain for their loss and get on with their lives. It is not emotionless; it is realistic.

I hope all of you are having a great Sunday! Today is my do-nothing day. I’ll be relaxing, playing games, and doing what I want today. How about you?

Until next time…

Dave