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Lesson from A Supermodel

By Namaste Staff Writer

“She’s an icon for our era,” said one interviewee of Kate Moss on the day she launched her line of clothing.

The debut, replete with Kate herself in the window of the Oxford Street store in central London, allowed customers to purchase only a limited number of items lest they sell them at auction on eBay. Some are so desperate to purchase the new fashions that they’ll pay an inflated price to get their hands on them.

An “icon,” says Merriam-Webster, is “an object of uncritical devotion.” In other words, when you look at a supermodel, you see what you want to see—you don’t see the real person.

What’s actually happening is a two-fold process. We project onto the person an idealized image, and we borrow from the person a sense of identity.

Each of us is born with a fundamental identity that is who we essentially are. In growing up, this essence becomes largely, if not totally, buried. We learn not simply to be ourselves, but to act in a certain way.

This act is based on our self-image. Our self-image is the way we’ve learned to picture ourselves, think of ourselves, imagine ourselves because we have lost touch with who we really are—lost touch with our essence. Many of us have not a clue who we really are. What we have come to know as midlife crisis is often the first inkling many of us get that we haven’t been ourselves at all up until now.

A person with a solid self needs no self-image. They don’t have to imagine themselves at all, but can simply be.

In the absence of awareness of our authentic self, we borrow a “self.” That’s what happens when we create an icon out of a supermodel. We project onto her what we’d like to be, and we borrow from her a sense of identity, by wearing her designs, that makes us feel like we are finally “someone.”

But when your identity is a borrowed sense of self, you are actually acting as if you yourself are really no one.

There is only one way to be “someone,” and that’s to become aware of who, in your essence, you have always been—the person who is hidden beneath layers of social conditioning.

Our true being is in fact “an object of uncritical devotion,” if we but knew it. We are each resplendent expressions of the divine, with nothing whatever to criticize about us.

In fact, it’s our self-critical attitudes, fostered by the way we have grown up, that have caused us to abandon our natural self. Each of us is forever apologizing for ourselves in one form or another, instead of simply accepting and enjoying being who we genuinely are.

You don’t need to be like Kate Moss. You need to be you, which is every bit as precious and delightful as the real Kate Moss, whoever she may be. She is no better than you, and you are no better than her. We are each other’s equals.

If you like the clothes Kate designs, by all means enjoy them. But don’t look for an identity through them. Have your own identity, and dress in clothes that bring out the glorious being that you truly are.

“Uncritical devotion” is what each of us needs to experience for ourselves. When we feel this for ourselves, we will be able to feel it for each other—in a way that appreciates, values, adores, but never idolizes as an icon.

Tired of feeling inadequate? Tired of those self-criticizing voices in your head? Want to simply be your natural, divine self?

Namaste Publishing offers several books and CDs that will help you become aware of your own true being. Especially helpful are The Presence Process by Michael Brown and A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. You’ll also enjoy Living as God by P. Raymond Stewart.

You are simply divine. So is Kate. The day we all discover this, appreciation will replace all need for icons.

The Vitamin Craze

By Namaste Staff Writer

When I was growing up, nobody took vitamins. Now, millions pop them every day and assume they are receiving a boost to their health.

But are vitamins all that they are cracked up to be?

I was in my early 30s before I started taking a multi—an expensive brand out of California that professed to draw all of its ingredients from natural organic sources.

These days, I don’t take vitamins.

Says Ron Garner, a health researcher, educator, author, and speaker with a BEd, MSc, and Diploma in Natural Health, “The body cannot utilize large doses of separate vitamins and minerals.”

If you begin taking vitamins after years of eating a poor diet, you may notice an improvement in health, as your body at last gets some of the nutrition it’s been lacking. But this boost in your feeling of wellbeing is usually short-lived. Before long, the body begins to object. “Synthetic or refined vitamins are toxic to the body,” Ron explains, “and it reacts to eliminate them.”

When I began taking vitamins, I noticed an improvement in my energy—for a while. Then it was back to status quo. I was dragging, often by mid morning, and certainly in the afternoon. I tried different brands, different doses. Always, the gain was only temporary.

Why was the gain not long-lasting? Ron emphasizes, “Supplements are not created equal! Nature’s vitamins heal. Synthetic vitamins stimulate, but do not heal.”

Ron’s approach flies in the face of popular wisdom. He states that “vitamins and minerals are meant to work together as a synergistic team. If high doses of a supplement are taken, a nutritional imbalance can be created in the body.”

Synergistic is the all-important word. For thousands of years, our bodies have thrived on foods that supply us with enzymes, vitamins, and minerals in a carefully crafted ratio. Upsetting that ratio isn’t smart.

You might think that if you take the full spectrum of vitamins and minerals your body needs, in the correct ratio, you are on solid ground. Not so. An isolated vitamin, even when chemists attempt to augment it with complementary substances, is not the same as vitamins set in the context of foods.

It’s fascinating to see studies of vitamins, such as beta carotene, not living up to the expectations we had of them in terms of fighting certain disease and degenerative processes. In fact, in the case of beta carotene, a study actually found that it may worsen some cancers. The reason is simple. Isolated vitamins aren’t what the body responds to best, especially if they are synthetic. The body needs to receive beta carotene in a synergistic arrangement for it to have a beneficial effect.

Everyone is going to tell you, of course, that their brand is manufactured by a method that makes the ingredients available to the body in the correct forms. Buyer, beware.

What I do these days is eat differently, and supplement only with products that are from whole foods. As Ron explains, “All fruits and vegetables, if grown in mineral-rich soil and ripe when picked, contain a wide and balanced range of vitamins and minerals. This is the natural way we are intended to obtain them.”

If you want foods that are rich in nutrition, there is a growing array of organic produce available today, coupled with produce that’s especially fresh because it’s sold through local farmers’ markets. Even if you can’t obtain organic or local produce, by reducing or eliminating canned and packaged foods, replacing them with vegetables and fruit, you will do yourself a world of good.

There’s much valuable information about supplements in Ron’s book Conscious Health—an entire chapter, in fact. You’ll discover how to supply your body with the balanced intake of foods it requires by using foods and supplements synergistically.

"You Caused Me to Do This"

By Namaste Staff Writer

One of the professors gunned down at Virginia Tech was a Romanian Jew who survived the holocaust. Still teaching at 76 years of age, he barricaded the doors to protect his students. His life had been spared all those years ago, and now he gave it saving others.

A person who gives their life for others demonstrates in a dramatic way the irrevocable oneness of the human species. There is no greater evidence of how deeply interfused our lives truly are.

The young man who opened fire did not sense this oneness, or he would not have done what he did. Yet, he was a clean-living student, according to the man who sold him the handgun for $500. He was not downtrodden, victimized by poverty, or openly in a rage. On the contrary, he came from solid suburbia, living in a neighborhood and dwelling that would be an immigrant’s dream. He was an English student at a university that would be the envy of so many around the globe, who would love to study at such an institution.

It’s easy to see why the tragedy has been dubbed an “inexplicable rampage.” And yet, it is not inexplicable—not when you view it through the lens of Michael Brown’s book The Presence Process. The causes are not difficult to understand.

He was a loner, they say, who blamed the world around him for his sadness. Even when people greeted him, he often didn’t respond. Clearly, he was in far too much inner pain by this stage in his life. He was suffering from what Eckhart Tolle calls “the pain body” in his book A New Earth.

“You caused me to do this,” Cho Seung-hui wrote in his suicide note.

Well, he did it—he was responsible. He pulled the trigger, not once or twice, but over and over and over.

And also, so did we. For in some measure he was right. We too are responsible. Let me explain.

President Bush’s comments stressed that “people from all over this country” are thinking about the bereaved. University president Charles Steger commented that the “entire nation and people from many other nations are coming together to grieve” over what happened. Not only was the basketball stadium packed, but the crowd spilled over into the football stadium. At such times, we naturally rally around each other.

What we see in this is a fundamental sense of our inherent oneness. We come together because we are together. It is our basic state, even though much of the time we ignore it. We are one—one life, the expression of one universal love.

But to the degree that we fail to make this a realized love, a felt love, individuals such as the 23-year-old South Korean feel isolated—and the pain can simply overwhelm them. There is some suggetion he was on medication for depression. He had also been recommended to counseling because of the disturbed nature of his writing in English class. What a tragedy that we don’t rally around each other each and every day, so that the difficulties we go through don’t spiral out of control.

Most of us carry a great deal of pain, though we keep it hidden most of the time—not only from others, but from ourselves. We stay busy. We keep the television on, the music going. We don’t allow the pain to surface.

But how much better to resolve our pain. How much better to become so centered in ourselves, so present in each moment, that we have no need of denial or avoidance. On the contrary, we are thrilled to feel each second of our lives.

Michael Brown’s The Presence Process enables just such a resolution of pain. His book, coupled with his CDs, are wonderful healing tools that free us from pain so that we can live joyously, connectedly, lovingly.

In light of what happened at Virginia Tech, consider not only embarking on The Presence Process for yourself, but also sharing it with those around you. Introduce them to Michael’s groundbreaking work. This is a process the whole planet needs desperately to experience.

Michael Brown – The Presence Process CDs

Tragedy at Virginia Tech

Namaste Staff Writer

There was a time in my life when I would have reacted to the tragedy at Virginia Tech as many are reacting—with anger. As one student expressed, “I’m beyond upset. I’m enraged.”

It’s easy in hindsight to blame authorities for not locking down the campus. They made a judgment call, and apparently got it wrong: the incident was well beyond a domestic dispute. Telling students to proceed to classes as usual, but cautiously, appears now like a poor decision—yet, it would have seemed like a sane decision had it turned out to be an isolated domestic incident.

A great deal of anger is bound to pour out in the days and weeks ahead. But it will solve nothing. New regulations will be written for how to respond in such situations. More security will be added to campuses perhaps. But the reality is that, no matter what precautions are taken, we live in a world in which we are vulnerable to each other—and if one of us loses it, mayhem can result.

What I feel instead of anger is an incredible sorrow. I didn’t know a single person who was involved. Yet, I knew every one of them. We all did.

We knew the individuals who were killed. We know the wounded. We know their parents, brothers and sisters, relatives, and friends. We know them far more deeply than most of us can begin to imagine.

And that is why the only fitting response is to feel the grief that comes with losing people who are, in a very real sense, a part of us.

We think of ourselves as isolated individuals, connected to family and friends in many cases, but really having little or nothing to do with the people who suffered this carnage. Similarly, we think of ourselves as quite separate from the people who die at the hands of suicide bombers in Iraq, Pakistan, Casablanca—the list these days seems almost endless.

We are not separate. Neither are we isolated. We are all part of one life, one universal heartbeat at the center of the cosmos, one love that binds each and every one of us together with ties far closer than kith and kin.

So today, there is only one fitting response: tears, grief, deep sadness.

Tears for the loss of each student or faculty member. Tears for those who have lost them. But also, tears for the administration, who made the best decision they were at that moment capable of, and tears for the police and ambulance workers who had to confront the aftermath. I have been present at a shooting; it is not an image that leaves your mind or heart in a hurry.

Among a group of friends last night, the comment was passed that the executions were probably carried out by a “crazy” man. I’ve seen the same comments in the press. There will always be crazy people, we tell ourselves. It’s somehow comforting to know that it’s not one of us—not someone even remotely like us—who could do such a thing, just one isolated “nut.”

But he, too, was one of us. He was as much a part of us as our own heartbeat. Somewhere in the world, it’s likely there are family and friends who are so bewildered by what he did, they don’t even know where to begin with their grief. In their eyes, he was their college student—just as I have a son who is a college student.

I cannot imagine the feelings of the mother of the man who committed these murders, or the father, if they are alive. I cannot begin to fathom how his siblings must feel, if he has siblings. The pain of knowing someone you brought into the world, or grew up with, did such a terrible thing must be excruciating beyond all description.

Tears are the only fitting response. Tears, and compassion. If anger, range, fury are what you are feeling, instead of venting the anger, allow yourself to be “with” it. No denial, no venting—just bringing stillness to it, and allowing it to be.

When we bring stillness to our strong emotions, quieting ourselves instead of becoming vocal, we move from emoting to deep feeling. The two are not the same. When we stop screaming with rage, we find that behind the anger is a well of sadness. Tears begin to flow. Compassion replaces rage.

If an administrative official made a wrong call yesterday, how must he or she feel today? Can we allow ourselves to go there—to feel what such people must be feeling? For to go there, be with them, be alongside them and in our heart hold their hand, is the only fitting response for a species who are all expressions of the single one heart of the universe that is the source of all life, all love, all caring.

On the morning of Nine Eleven, Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now and A New Earth, recorded an interview called Even the Sun Will Die. If you have not heard it, you can order it from this website. In this interview, Eckhart calls us to awareness of how craziness is not an isolated state of a minority, but a feature of the human race at its present level of development. In some measure, we are all part of the craziness of our planet. We are all responsible for the tragedy that sweeps the globe day after day.

Anger solves nothing. What is needed is awareness. Tragedies on this scale happen all over the world each day, but we ignore most of them because they don’t seem to touch our lives. Yet, they are happening not to them, but to us.

When we see our oneness—when we feel the oneness in our bones, instead of merely as a concept in our head—we become responsible for each other. We become responsible to love, to care, to share, to include, to reach out.

In a caring world, people don’t grow up isolated in their rage, frozen in their anger, stewing in their resentment. That only happens to people in a world where all of us are somewhat crazy, which is what enables us not to notice, not to care, not to reach out and include.

In a caring world, even when there is brain damage, there is deep love and inclusion. People who are damaged are surrounded by love, protected by compassion, nourished by the goodness of all among whom they live.

Individuals only lose it when they have disconnected at some level. They lose it when they don’t feel part of the fabric of humanity. Our world has many such people today. That’s one of the symptoms of the craziness that haunts us all. Such “crazy” individuals become the identified patient, the scapegoat even, for an insanity in which we all participate—the insanity of being disconnected from the oneness that is our very being.

Oneness is the truth of our being. Connectedness is the essence of our humanity. When these are not experienced, tragedy is the result.

I long for the day when, from the earliest days in school, the bullying, taunting, and isolation that are rife today in our educational system are replaced by deep feelings of inclusion, oneness, connectedness.

I long for each and every child who enters our world to be introduced to the universal Presence that is the core of each of us. I long for a sense of our oneness as expressions of this Presence, and therefore our greatness as individuals and as a species, to become the heart and soul of our school curriculum.

In the meantime, we all have a part in bringing about what Eckhart Tolle calls the New Earth. We help foster awareness of our oneness, and the love that flows from knowing we are one, when we take responsibility for ourselves becoming conscious. To assist this process is the sole reason Namaste Publishing exists.

Terror of the Tender

Namaste Staff Writer

When Dan Brown was asked by ABC, “Why do you think your book has touched such nerve?” he responded, “These are topics that resonate at a deep, deep spiritual level, really the core of the human psyche.”

Brown has hit the nail on the head in this comment.

In his bestseller The DaVinci Code, Brown weaves into a murder mystery a legend dating back centuries that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and they had a daughter named Sarah whose descendants are still alive today.

In the last century, gospels the church thought it had expunged back in the time of the emperor Constantine have come to light. The DaVinci Code quotes the Gospel of Philip, in which Jesus is the “companion”––the word can mean spouse, or partner––of Mary Magdalene. “Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth,” says this gospel. Where in the biblical gospels do you hear about Jesus making out?

Were they married? The DaVinci Code imagines them so. But listen to what the gospel says next: “The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, ‘Why do you love her more than all of us?’” If they were married, what would be so shocking about this? It does however sound like Jesus, in this Gospel at least, was romantically involved with Mary.

The DaVinci Code has caused quite a stir. The reason for the stir is nothing new, however. The idea Jesus was intimate with a woman was threatening as far back as 1900 years ago. In the Gospel According to Mary Magdalene, suppressed until discovered in Cairo in 1896, Peter demands, “Did the Saviour really speak with a woman without our knowledge? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?” Levi, another disciples, retorts, “Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like an adversary. If the Saviour made her worthy who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Saviour knows her very well. That is why he loved her more than us.”

A woman from the south of France, where it’s claimed Mary Magdalene and her daughter Sarah fled for refuge after the crucifixion, when interviewed by ABC’s Primetime yelled, “Sacrilege! Sacrilege!” Millions just don’t want Jesus to be really human––certainly not sexual.

Why such resistance to the idea Jesus was involved with a woman? What’s the big deal?

Let me refer once gain to Dan Brown’s statement, “These are topics that resonate at a deep, deep spiritual level, really the core of the human psyche.”

Legends often speak not to historical fact, but to psychological realities. Whatever the historical reality, which remains shrouded in antiquity, it’s my belief that Mary represents the suppressed feminine aspect of our humanity. The legend of Jesus and Mary having a child together says to me that the truth about ourselves that each of them represents lives on, regardless of the repressed’s repeated attempts to squelch our sexuality.

In centuries past, there was such a systematic discrediting of the sensuality Mary Magdalene represents that she started out as preeminent witness to the resurrection and by the fifth century was declared a whore. But of course, what you suppress ultimately bites you in the butt. So the Magdalene springs to life in the twenty-first century on network television! Repressed people despise her, yet they can’t shake her.

It’s not the biological aspect of sex in itself that’s so scary in all this, though. Our real terror is of what sex symbolizes. Males have within them a female aspect––it’s the tender part of us. Our putting down of females is rooted in a terror of the tender.

Male dominance of women is male resistance to the reflection of our own tenderness in the female. When we control and denigrate women, we are saying don’t let a woman have sufficient intimate impact on me to really touch me and awaken the tender side of me.

We need to connect the words hateful and hurtful, and realize that we are terrified of being shown the pain of being disconnected from our tenderness––which is why something like five million women were burned at the stake in the middle ages as witches, and gay bashing is alive and well today. When we can’t accept the tender in ourselves, we lash out at symbols of our tenderness .

Yet The DaVinci Code suggests that it is in the full embracing of our humanity that the divine Presence that undergirds our humanity is revealed. Women claiming their strength, and men claiming their tenderness—this is what our world needs today more than ever.

We are talking about the sexes finally “showing up” as whole men and whole women, loving everything about themselves, embracing their humanity in all of its aspects.

If you would like to be free of your reticence about showing up as a strong woman, or showing up as a tender man, you’ll want a copy of Michel Brown’s book The Presence Process. It’s all about how you can reclaim the fullness of your being and live in the richness of your humanity.

FEMA - A Wakeup Call

By Namaste Staff Writer

Helping out in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, both of which struck the Gulf Coast in late 2005, I watched the waste of public money happen. People who didn’t need help and had plenty of financial resources of their own received in some cases thousands of dollars, while others who needed help were left destitute.

FEMA awarded something like a billion dollars in improper payments to individuals, while spending almost another billion on 25,000 trailers that were unusable because they were not appropriate for flood zones. They also doled out $1.8 billion for hotel rooms and cruise ship cabins, providing temporary housing that cost more than permanent housing in apartments would have cost.

The French Quarter may be back in business after the biggest disaster in United States history, but more than a year and a half later, tens of thousands are housed in trailers, as homes stand empty, uninhabitable as a result of the flood waters—a testimony to the inefficiency of our response to this catastrophe.

Now we’re told that tons of food under the care of FEMA have had to be thrown out. Something like six million meals stockpiled in case of another disaster in 2006 spoiled because of inadequately equipped storage facilities. That’s more than $40 million on the garbage heap.

It does no good to scapegoat FEMA or other government agencies, however. Inefficiency and wastage of this kind are rife in not just government agencies but all kinds of organizations. If it isn’t FEMA that’s under fire, it’s the cost of tools or equipment bought by the military—or the millions skimmed off a charity, aid to overseas nations, or a corporate pension scheme.

We live in a society that is so often trying to bolt the door after the horse has escaped. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could avoid many of our problems in the first place?

The fact is, we could, if our focus shifted from judgment and blame to awakening people’s awareness and raising their consciousness.

Our world could be a very different place, in which there is little wastage, minimal inefficiency, and therefore a whole lot more of the needed resources for everyone on our planet. It’s not rocket science. It’s simply a matter of consciousness. When you become aware, problems are mostly quite easy to solve. As Michael Brown, a Namaste author, likes to say, Presence knows no order of difficulty.

Three book from Namaste Publishing especially home in on the absolute practicality of living consciously, instead of being driven by unconscious or external forces.

Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth examines the need of each and every one of us to become part of a planet-wide evolution in consciousness, and shows how this will transform both our individual lives our lives collectively as a species.

Eckhart goes beyond the insights of his earlier book The Power of Now, in an easy-to-read, moving book that invites us to envision the world as it could be—as, indeed, it must be if we are to survive. It is an extremely hopeful book, pointing to a rising consciousness that can transform the planet. It is also available in CD format, read by Eckhart.

Michael Brown’s The Presence Process is a practical, everyday guide to becoming a person who functions consciously. When we are conscious, we make responsible decisions, instead of making decisions reactively as we’ve seen with FEMA. How much grief we spare ourselves when we take the step of becoming conscious. Our choices then direct our lives down paths that are fulfilling, loving, and benign.

In Conscious Health, Ron Garner takes a sweeping look at how so much of our modern world is engineered to make us sick—from the food and water we put in our mouths, to the pricey protocols we use as we attempt to undo the damage we do to ourselves out of ignorance. This is one of the most helpful and practical books Namaste has published and has the potential to change your life.

Criticizing, blaming, castigating—we’re good at these. But humans have been indulging in judgment from time immemorial, only to repeat the saga of failure in one generation after another. Blaring headlines, unmasking the latest travesty, ultimately do nothing to bring about change. Awakening consciousness is the path to change.

There is something to be learned from FEMA’s inefficiency—the need for all of us, at every level of society, to begin functioning consciously instead of as cogs in a wheel.

It is impossible to become conscious as an individual and fail to have an impact on our fellow humans. As each of us faces up to how unaware we are much of the time, becoming increasingly awake in all that we do, we raise the consciousness of the whole planet.

It is time for us to take a global leap into conscious living.

Firing of A Shock Jock

By Namaste Staff Writer

The termination of Don Imus’ four-decade run on CBS Radio came in response to an outcry from a broad range of listeners. The outcry is evidence of the growing consciousness in our 21^st century civilization, and a hopeful sign.

At the same time, it’s also likely that Imus is serving as a scapegoat for a society that in countless ways puts people down, derogating them instead of honoring their divinity.

I live five minutes from one of America’s great universities. Because college kids are around me all the time, the kind of language Imus used on his radio show is something I hear constantly. Imus’ reference to the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos” is the language of too many of our young people today, even in high school.

We are a culture that tolerates shock, at the expense of human beings who ought to be honored. We justify it under the banner of “freedom.” But there is nothing freedom-like about language and behavior that demean any human. It is especially appalling when it is directed at the black, female sector of society, which for too long has had to suffer real oppression.

The fact is, as a people we are often guilty of dishonoring one another. What we deny and will not face in ourselves, we project onto others. This simply isn’t honest.

The derogation of women in countless sexist ways in our society stems from a widespread inability in males to embrace their own tenderness. We are afraid to feel. Consequently, our hatred of our tenderness gets projected onto the female of the species.

Imus just happened to go a bit too far in public, becoming a candidate for a scapegoat for what we will not face up to as a civilization—our flight from our own loving, kind, gentle, tender essence. For whether we know it or not, a universal Presence resides in all of us as the heart of our true being, and love is the primary attribute of this divine Presence.

In The Presence Process, Michael Brown encourages people to “show up” in their lives. It is to be hoped that the outcry at Imus’ racial and sexist slur comes not from self-righteous moral judgment, but from a growing awareness of the value and dignity of every single human being—indeed, from a treasuring of the female and black skin, both of which are aspects of the divine diversity that creates all of us in love.

CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves spoke of “the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society.” Instead of a piranha-like flesh feeding on Imus, scapegoating him for our society’s derogation of people, it behooves us each to examine our own language. Do the words we say to each other on a daily basis encourage the flowering of our human greatness? Do we listen to the kind of rap on the radio that puts women down, often with violent language?

If you’d like to engage in a little self-examination, which is the only helpful response to the CBS firing of the “shock jock,” you’ll find the tools to do it in The Presence Process. You may just be surprised how little self-respect and self-love most of us show ourselves, and therefore fail to show to our fellow humans.

Your Internal Guidance System

By Namaste Staff Writer

How do you make the ethical and moral decision you have to make in your life? What guides you? What do you rely on to ensure you are on the “straight and narrow”?

For many, the answer resides in their faith. Their synagogue, mosque, temple, or church serves as their moral guide. Usually, the guidance they receive from such sources is based in scripture—the Hebrew books of the Law of Moses, the Koran, the New Testament, the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching.

We are in the season of Passover and the seven days of Unleavened Bread that lie at the heart of Judaism. It’s in this season that Jews retell the story of Moses, the Exodus, and the Promised Land. At the heart of this tradition is the Law of Moses, consisting of over 600 laws that center on the Ten Commandments.

In a manuscript sent to Namaste Publishing for evaluation, the author wrote that Jesus “came to change the Law, not fulfill it.” I wrote her back and asked her permission to comment on her statement.

Jesus certainly made huge changes when it came to living according to the Law of Moses. “You have heard it said,” he commented again and again, “but I say to you….” Then he gave an understanding of ethics that transcended the Law.

In a letter to the people of Galatia in Asia Minor, Paul, a Jew from Tarsus who became a follower of Jesus some years after Jesus’ crucifixion, talked about the heir to a large estate. When the heir is young, he is treated no better than a servant. He is required to fulfill every demand made of him. His entire life is structured by the adults to whose care he has been entrusted.

Many years ago, I was privileged to interview and subsequently become a friend of Mrs. Dermot Morrah, whose husband was a member of the staff of the British Royal Household. Her husband, Dermot Morrah, authored the first official biography of Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, entitled “To Be a King.”

As I talked with Mrs. Morrah in her London home, she showed me exercise books from Prince Charles’ early school days—possessions she cherished. I looked through his English compositions, his mathematics. Mrs. Morrah talked with me about how, when he was little, the Prince of Wales learned how to follow the lifestyle that had been prescribed for him. Truly, he was no different from a servant in those days, with every aspect of his life dictated for him.

Think back to your own childhood. When you were young, you had little freedom to determine your own life each day. You were told when to get up, how to spend your day, when to eat and what to eat, when to take a bath or shower, to brush your teeth before bed, and when to go to sleep. It was in some ways a highly regimented life.

Then you grew up, and you began making your own decisions—some of them drastically different from those dictated by the rules of your childhood household. Instead of having a fixed bedtime, sometimes you went to bed with the sun—and other times you stayed up into the early hours of the next day, studied all night for an test, or worked a night shift.

As a child the rule was, “Eight o’clock bedtime.” As an adult, there was no rule any longer. Yet, you did not toss out the intent of the rule. Rather, you fulfilled it. You got enough sleep to stay healthy, without obeying the rule. What the rule point toward, you accomplished, though technically you broke the rule.

Prince Charles, though the heir to the throne, lived like a servant when he was young. He bathed and showered when told, brushed his teeth when told, combed his hair when told, dressed as he was told to dress. Now, as an adult, he is no longer bound by rules tailored to childhood. Yet, he doesn’t toss them out as worthless. Rather, he fulfills everything they were aiming to accomplish.

The rule told you how to do things. But as an adult, you no longer need a rule. You are guided from within. So you fulfill everything the law sought to inculcate, without actually keeping the law.

Each of us has an “inner knower,” a consciousness that can guide us in any decision we have to make. No law, Scripture, or rule can do this. Rather, the intent of the law is written on our hearts and minds from within. As we mature, finding our own center of gravity in infinite Presence, we fulfill the laws and rules of younger days, without actually keeping them.

If you want to get in touch with your own “inner knower,” delve into Michael Brown’s book The Presence Process.

Welcome to Your Homeland

By Namaste Staff Writer

Is it really possible to be joyful in this life? To be truly at home in the world, relishing the lives we live?

“Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,” was the advice of Saint Paul to the Colossians. Above––isn’t that where heaven is? Maybe I could experience just a slice of it if I could somehow tune out this world and keep my thoughts focused “above.”

So I took up spiritual practices that were means of escaping the reality of the world around me. When I found that I couldn’t escape, these practices enabled me to endure in the hope of something better beyond the grave.

Over the years, as I pondered Saint Paul’s statement about setting our minds on things above, I slowly began to realize that I had missed completely what he meant. He wasn’t talking about something in the sky, or something after death even. I had just never noticed how the letter to the Ephesians explains that, if we have eyes to see it, we are already “seated in the heavens.” Indeed, we are “blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”

Not will be blessed in the future, but are, now.

And not just some spiritual blessings, but every spiritual blessing that exists.

How can this be? Certainly I didn’t feel like I was in heaven, or that I had every spiritual blessing I needed. Far from being a heaven, my life sometimes felt more like a dungeon of despair—a hell.

In the words of James Oppenheim, the foolish seek happiness in the distance, while the wise grow it under their feet. Or as Angelus Silesius insists, “Unless you find paradise at your own center, there is not the smallest chance that you may enter.”

Heaven and hell are states of mind. Says Ralph Waldo Emerson, heaven walks among us, but it is so hidden by the ordinary––so muffled by triple or tenfold disguises––that the wisest of folk don’t even notice it. He laments, “No one suspects the days to be gods.” But, he insists, “We see God face to face every hour.”

In each moment, each of us has a choice––to experience Earth as heaven, or to trudge through existence as if it were a hell.

Says Emerson, “Life is ecstasy.” Not euphoria––not that occasional excitable feeling that overtakes us when some wonderful thing happens. No, ecstasy, which is an abiding joy.

I was well into my adult years before I discovered for myself Henry David Thoreau’s insight that joy is our fundamental state. Since discovering this joy within me, I’ve gone from sad to glad––from a spirit that slumped to a spirit that soars. I can hardly believe the difference. As Emerson found, a cosmic optimism uplifts my days, and an exquisite joyfulness accompanies me along life’s path.

I’ve learned that, in any given moment, I can choose to be either saddled by burdens, or seduced by beauty. I can decide to be trapped in despair, or transfixed by delight. I can opt to be mired in troubles, or melt with thanksgiving.

I found that the greatest obstacle to happiness wasn’t my circumstances, it was me. As Emerson explains, “Our first mistake is the belief that the circumstance gives the joy which we give to the circumstance.”

You see what a reversal this is of the usual way of thinking? I was looking to people, things, events to make me happy. What Emerson saw is that it isn’t circumstances that bring us joy. It’s we who bring joy to our circumstances. The joy is already in us, if we will just get in touch with it and let it out.

It’s a question of becoming aware of the presence of joy deep within. This awareness is the focus of all of our publications at Namaste Publishing. In his book The Presence Process, and in his CDs, Namaste author Michael Brown shows us how to access this joy each and every day of our lives.

To let myself feel the joy that was buried under years of sadness was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life. I had the hardest time letting the joy out. Something in me just wouldn’t allow me to feel really good. I actually resisted feeling terrific, preferring to feel miserable because it had become such a habit.

To be fully aware is to be fully alive. Setting our minds on the things above is a matter of becoming spiritually conscious, here and now, not other-worldly. We detach not from life—not from our world—but from all the anxieties, the turbulence, the anguish, the sense of panic that keeps us from being truly present. Our eyes open to the splendors of Earth, our homeland, and we are charmed by the magic of each moment.

When we aren’t really present––when we are distracted, in turmoil, pulled in contradictory directions––we don’t notice the fabulous world in which we live. Tired, tense, troubled, and torn, we fail to make meaningful contact with the people in our lives, the bird that sings a carol just for us as we walk down the street, the rose that’s blooming right under our windowsill. It’s when we are disconnected in this way that we abuse the world as if it were a toy that can be discarded when we’ve broken it and treat it’s people and creatures like they don’t matter.

Living in the present, with all our channels wide open, takes willed surrender. It takes giving ourselves over to the joy within, forming a habit of feeling rapturous, embracing feeling wonderful instead of contenting ourselves with mediocrity. Now, in this moment, I either choose to surrender to the exuberance at my core, or I choose a half-life.

I have found that as I repeatedly embrace each moment, my narrow stream of consciousness gradually widens to cosmic dimensions. I increasingly feel connected to everyone and everything. The aching in my heart resolves itself in the wonder of being swept up in a mysterious whole.

To help you become conscious—the meaning of setting our minds on things “above”—you might like to begin Michael Brown’s wonderful Presence Process. It is life-changing. His book and CDs will introduce you to this marvelous experience that has the power to alter the choices you make each and every moment.

As we learn to be in heaven, the paradise we have discovered within will translate into a paradise for all peoples, all species, and Earth itself––our homeland. Or as the title of one of our other books, by Eckhart Tolle, expresses it, we will enter A New Earth.

A Reflection on Lent

by Namaste Staff Writer

This is a special reflection for Lent, based on the movie Chocolat.

The movie opens with the words of the village priest, "This is the season of Lent. It is a time of abstinence, a time of reflection, and hopefully a time of sincere penitence."

Lent––a time to restrict yourself. Don't give in to something you usually like. After the binging of Mardi Gras, in preparation for Easter, deny yourself. Rein in your desire.

The Count Delenoe sets the tone of the village. He is a strict observant of Lent. But he is faced with a crisis when the North wind blows in a female and her daughter, both in red capes––symbols of desire.

The count is denying himself even normal food, missing meals, eating the plainest of fare––and right before his eyes materializes a symbol of indulgence.

Vianne Rosher, unmarried, and her daughter Anouk, open a store that flies in the face of the very essence of Lent.

Espying the sinfully delicious array, the shocked Count enters the premises, introduces himself to Vianne, and invites her to church. When she announces that she doesn't practice, the Count crosses to the hairdresser where he declares to the prudish women of the village, "Have you seen the new shop?"

"The chocolaterie?" they ask.

"Shameless," he gasps. "Opening it just in time for Lent. Brazen. My heart goes out to the illegitimate child."

The Count is terrified of all that Vianne’s chocolate shop represents. It isn't just the chocolate, it's the desire to live life fully, enjoy oneself, symbolized by chocolate.

For the Count, to indulge his desire would be to admit his marriage is over, his wife long gone, and allow himself to develop a relationship with the church organist, who is in love with him, and with whom he is in love but cannot face the fact.

In the thinking of some, Christianity involves the suppression of desire, and such people see Lent as the epitome of this suppression. Not only do these Christians have a tough time with desire, but some Buddhists also propose that desire is undesirable and indeed the very cause of suffering. And there are those in Islam who also have little tolerance for desire, as reflected in the burqua shrouding the female form. For many religions, the path to nirvana, or heaven, is self-denial. They imagine that to eliminate desire is the path to peace of mind.

In direct conflict with this suppression of desire, Vianne serves hot chocolate with chili pepper––an elixir that sets all the senses aflame. The mother of the church organist is a rebel, unlike her repressed daughter, and comments, "It tastes like . . . I don't know. Are you sure you didn't put booze in there? Perhaps you should give it to my daughter who won't let me see my grandson. If only she would let him run, let him breathe, let him live."

For much of religion, desire is the original sin. Don't dare live! Eve, in the story of the garden of Eden, sees the fruit of the forbidden tree, desires it, and takes it. She wants to breathe a little, explore a fuller life. She shares the forbidden fruit with Adam, and the two of them suddenly have their eyes opened and become aware that they are naked. Now they are fully exposed to desire, and the automatic response is shame. They sew fig leaves to hide from their desire for each other.

Through their contact with the chocolaterie, some of the women of the village stop closing their eyes to their desire and come alive to their passion. In defiance of the imposed sanitizing of Easter, they plan a fertility celebration for Easter Sunday. Joyful celebration of the body, symbolized by chocolate, is restored to its rightful place as representative of the wonder and wholeness and magic of desire. With our desire resurrected, we are raised up into the fullness of life. A grand celebration with dancing and merriment follows.

Monsieur Le Compte, terrified of awakening to his desire and being liberated from all that Lent depicts, tells Vianne, "The first count expelled all the rebel Huguenots from this village." Huguenots were a group of protestants who became the center of political and religious quarrels in France during the fifteen and sixteen hundreds. "You and your truffles will be far less of a challenge. You will be out of business by Easter, I promise you that."

Suppress desire, drive it far from you, starve it out––this has always been the message of some, who have never really grasped what spirituality really is. The Count had "boycott immorality" posters emblazoned in all the shop windows throughout the village. Forbidden fruit––don't touch, lest you breathe a little and live!

The Count, deadened to his desire through repression, finds himself acting out the consequences of what he has repressed. As his desire is tantalized by the chocolaterie and the organist, he becomes so angry that his wife has gone, leaving him exposed to the full blast of his desire for the organist, that he finds himself in his wife’s closet with a pair of scissors cutting up all of her dresses and undergarments. It would be so much easier to continue burying his desire in convention would she only return!

The root of all dysfunctionality is the deadening of our passion. When you deny your deepest self, your desire is going to turn rogue––you will find yourself cutting up dresses, so to speak. Denial of our desiring self is the root of all kinds of dysfunctionality in our world. This is a lesson the Buddha learned the hard way (see the earlier blog on this site).

It is not desire that is original sin. Our original sin is the denial of desire––the restriction of our fundamental yearning for the full expression of ourselves in every dimension of our lives. When we conduct our everyday lives as if it were Lent, we are the walking dead, in need of an Easter resurrection.

The denial of desire is the touchstone for alienation from ourselves, our fellow humans, and the very planet itself. Desire is basic to being. To be alive is to desire. If you didn't desire, you'd die. The life-force functions through desire.

In Chocolat, you see the Count sitting at his work desk, and his secretary has put some food there. Nothing too tempting, just basic sustenance. Finally, starving, he is forced to eat. Again and again, you see the tension between the count's religious belief that he should deny himself, and his longing for food, conviviality, the fullness of life.

Desire isn't craving that which you don't have. Desire is radically different from craving. Craving is neediness, born of the fact you don't feel complete in yourself. It’s this that both Jesus and the Buddha realized causes us grief.

A kid on the streets sees the latest pair of Nikes, pulls a gun, and seizes them. That's not desire, that's a sense of emptiness craving an identity.

Desire is you feeling fantastic about yourself and wanting to express how fantastic you feel. Desire isn't hankering after something you don't have, it's wanting to be who you are and to invest yourself in life.

The difference between need and desire is the fullness of being that makes possible the investment of yourself. If you don't feel wonderful, you use others to prop you up. When they fail to meet your need, you move on, from person to person, or place to place—like Vianne, and like the river rat who comes into her life but leaves again because he tells himself that to stay is too costly.

When the Count denies himself normal enjoyment, tells himself chocolate is forbidden fruit––and the organist he’s attracted to is forbidden fruit, even though his wife is truly long gone and he knows it––he sets himself up to crave these things. It's not the wanting that's the problem, it's the craving, which is a quite unnatural feeling. You're afraid to go for something, yet you can't stand the thought of being without it, and so you are caught up in what we know as lust.

Lust is not the same as desire. Desire wants the object of one's desire. Lust is what happens when we are in flight from our desires. We borrow the person, or take the new Nikes, to scratch an itch for a moment, but we don't invest ourselves.

There is a theme that runs through Chocolat. It is that awakening desire, symbolized by chocolate, is an aphrodisiac. Now I understand why my Sunday school teachers in my teens taught me to be afraid of desire. They were like Monsieur Le Compte. I needed to be strong, they admonished. This is what the Count stresses to his constituents. His definition of strength is the ability to put attraction to chocolate––or a pretty organist––out of one's mind. Strength, the Count and my Sunday School teachers emphasized, means not wanting.

And that's just the problem––we have so many couples who are together without truly wanting each other. Even when bodies entwine, there's often little real connection, little true looking into each other's souls, little real desiring of the person, little investment of yourself in the person. You want the sensation, but you don't want the person.

The problem in our sex-saturated society isn't too much desire but too little desire. There's a lack of desire in much sex. People don't really want each other. It's not desire that's the cause of our heartache, our anguish, our suffering, as so many think, it's neediness that borrows the other for an ego boost but doesn't want the other.

The river rat finds himself so deeply touched by Mademoiselle Vianne that his desiring center, until now denied as he flits from landing dock to landing dock, at the end of the movie brings him home to himself and a new life. He's dressed differently, looking like he's cleaned up his act, and he's ready to invest deeply. Lust has been transmuted into desire.

Desire is investing myself in that in which I am involved, instead of holding it at arms' length and craving something different.

If I am with someone with whom I cannot invest myself, or in a job in which I cannot invest myself, then I need to have the strength to follow my longing to become a fully invested person and change my situation to one in which I can invest myself.

Anything less than to desire with all my being is a lack of integrity. Salvation, which is a word simply meaning health or wholeness, is the ability to bring my whole self to whatever I am doing. I am fully present in the now, instead of my thoughts and eyes roaming everywhere but where I am, craving something different.

When the church organist emerges from the Chocolaterie with a smile on her face and an arm lovingly resting on her son's shoulder, accepting at last the boy's desire to breathe and to run, which she has been controlling, the Count sighs, "All of my efforts have been for nothing." He goes to the church, kneels before the crucifix, and picks up a silver dagger. In righteous rage, he breaks into the chocolaterie and, seeing a chocolate statue of a naked woman, slashes it to pieces. But when chocolate accidentally touches his lips, he is done for. He eats the chocolate woman, gorges himself on nipples of Venus, and satiates his soul with every variety of chocolate.

That's what lust is. It's desire denied, then gone wild. When you can't yield to the normal flow of desire and invest yourself, you create a monster within yourself. You set yourself up for an orgy. Suppression of desire turns rogue, causing your desire to be experienced not as a free-flowing enjoyment of your goodness and worthiness, but as a driving compulsion.

So where does our denial come from? Why do we suppress desire? Why can't we simply accept the fact that we love life, and embrace our desire to enjoy to the fullest? Why can't we celebrate the rapture that desire embraced makes possible?

You watch people coming into the chocolaterie fearful just to buy a chocolate. What they are really experiencing is embarrassment. They are ashamed to admit they love to give themselves up to pleasure. I mean, you're supposed to hold back, not surrender to feeling wonderful––which is why we actually use the term "sinfully delicious" for things like chocolate!

It's like, if you really love something, totally indulge your senses, then you have to feel guilty. You search for fig leaves because you're ashamed of wanting something that's so good.

Religion is too often in the fig leaf business. It has a knack for identifying the things we can't hardly stand wanting, then branding them forbidden fruit to let us off the hook so we don't really have to come to terms with our desire. This kind of religion is the opposite of an authentic spirituality.

Underlying this guilt is the sense that you don't have a right to enjoy yourself this much. This is the essence of original sin. Isn't this what the garden of Eden story is about?

The way many people read the foundational story of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is that they use it to confirm their inner sense that they don't have a “right” to enjoy themselves. It's a story used to let you off the hook, so you feel justified in repressing your desire and holding back from investing yourself fully.

This interpretation plays to people's self-deprecation, which is the bait for all systems of control. Says the story, read as most read it, the things you want most of all are forbidden to you––and if you dare go for them, you're going to get it in the neck. Besides which, you're going to feel terrible shame. You low life, you! Suppress your desire. You're not worthy of this much enjoyment.

In Chocolat, Vianne has been in flight from the full expression of her desire. Every time she runs into society's disapproval, she moves on, dragging her daughter with her. Her daughter's imaginary kangaroo, Pantouf, is an image of how she hops from one place to another, never settling and facing her fears. As the story unfolds, and she yields to her desire, she draws around her a network of meaningful relationships in which people can connect deeply. They are invested in each other, and in their venture together. Love flourishes.

The movie illustrates how, far from being a sign of weakness, it takes strength to embrace your desire, instead of running from it. It takes courage to really want. The fearful person is trapped in a cycle of guilt over their most basic desires, compounded with a craving for all that they reject, which tortures them in a living hell.

It is the priest who, on Easter morning, discovers the count sleeping off his chocolate orgy in the window of the chocolaterie, covered in chocolate. In his sermon that morning, the priest talks about "not measuring our goodness by the things we don't do, the things we resist, the things we deny ourselves, the people we exclude. We need to measure our goodness by what we embrace, by what we create, and who we include." These are hallmarks of a genuine spirituality.

A spiritual master was asked by a disappointed visitor, "Why has my stay here yielded no fruit?"

The master responded, "Could it be because you lacked the courage to shake the tree?"

Vianne had the courage to shake the tree. In your work, your play, your romantic life, do you have the courage, the strength, to truly shake the tree? Are you ready to awaken to desire, to go for what you want? Or do you prefer to stay locked in a half-life in which guilt and fear keep you from ever tasting the wonder of what society likes to label "forbidden fruit?"

The North Wind, a clever wind, figures prominently in the movie. It is a metaphor for the way the deep Presence that draws us toward salvation––which is the full enjoyment of every aspect of ourselves––is at work in our lives, inviting us to celebrate who we are.

Always when the North Wind blows, it makes trouble for us. It wreaks havoc with our usual, normal, mediocre ways of doing things. It breaks open the doors of our lives, bringing an icy blast that gets our attention, stops us in our tracks. It shows us that our present deal with life isn't working.

What is truth? This is an age-old question, and it is the question Chocolat addresses. It asks us to allow the North Wind to blow away the fake ways we live, the facades, the pretense. Only then do we find what truth is––and it is to be true to our deepest selves.

The Count is anything but true to himself. He has bought into an idea of tranquility that isn't peaceful at all. The little town has an air of peace, but it is the result of suppression. Yet the very thing that the Count, through his moralizing, suppresses, becomes his liberation. His desire is at last unleashed, and by the end of the movie he's even thinking of dating the organist!

When it has blown the false out of our lives, the North Wind is needed no more. A statue of the Count's ancestor in the village square, at first frozen and dour, begins to thaw. By the end, it is smiling. A south wind now blows, bringing connection rooted in desire that is invested in relationships.

And it all began with one woman. The entire system, built on the Count's repression and maintained by suppression, crumbles because one person refuses to play the games, refuses to be phony, and finally stands tall, true to herself. As Michael Brown likes to say in his book The Presence Process, Vianne finally begins to “show up” in her life.

Vianne doesn't get there in one step, though. And neither do the others who enter into the new consciousness.

After all she does to help others discover themselves, Vianne suddenly finds herself wanting to run. In the wake of a fire on the river rat's boat, she is ready to call it quits. She packs her bags to leave, with the urn of her mother's ashes, continuing the patterns of behavior she learned from her family of origin.

There is a neat interplay between the conscious characters, revealing how none of us is a world unto ourselves, and how we move into being true to ourselves with the help of each other––and yet it is a reality that must dawn in each of us individually.

Vianne brings Josephine, a truly suppressed woman in the town, into a knowledge of her true self. At first it is a borrowed sense of self. Josephine can only make the stand for herself that she makes because of Vianne. But when Vianne wants to run, Josephine questions whether there was any substance to what Vianne taught her.

This is the moment when Josephine comes into her own. She “shows up.” She realizes that Vianne may want to run, telling herself nothing has been changed by all her efforts, and she may be totally on her own in her newfound consciousness, but there is no denying she has been changed forever.

Josephine's ability to stand tall now impacts Vianne, who at last sheds her self-doubt completely and realizes that her running days are over. As the women own their new identity, the entire village system crumbles and even the Count begins to find his true self.

With many of us, it's only when it seems impossible to go on that we at last realize there is no going back. Only now, through crisis, do we fully embrace our new identity. This is the case for Vianne, Josephine, and the Count. It is sheer desperation that drives them to finally stand up and be counted for who they truly are––to finally “show up” in their lives. When they are at last no longer anxious about themselves, the whole system undergoes a shift. Everyone is transformed as the phony tranquility of the village comes to an end.

The tranquil, orderly, everything-in-its-place village of the Count Delanoe yields to a delight with life that births a new kind of tranquility in the village. It is a tranquility of the heart reconciled to its yearnings and longings, instead of the facade of tranquility achieved by suppression.

Remember the words at the beginning of the movie? Lent is a time of abstinence, a time of reflection, and hopefully a time of sincere penitence. This Lent, may we learn to abstain from all repressions and suppression of our divine desires. Using Michael Brown’s The Presence Process, let us reflect on all the ways we have failed to show up in our lives. Then, let us enter into sincere penitence, renouncing all self-suppression, all compromising of ourselves, all that is less than a life that is truly divine.

Let The Presence Process, both the books and CDs, become our Lenten fast—and through it, may we enter the joyous celebration of Easter.

Enjoy Your Life

by Namaste Publishing Staff

In an ancient Jewish work of wisdom literature, the author sums up his philosophy of life: "Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already approved what you do.”

This author hits on a crucial insight. The key to being able to really enjoy your life is to feel approved of, as if you really belong in the universe.

There is in many of us a constant background of self-doubt that gnaws away at our enjoyment of life. It’s a feeling that somehow we aren’t quite acceptable as we are. And when things go wrong––particularly at those times when we find ourselves on a helter-skelter of what seems like “bad luck”––it’s especially easy to feel disapproved of.

It’s for you and me, when we don’t feel totally acceptable, that Michael Brown wrote his wonderful book The Presence Process. It leads us step by step into an state of being in which we can simply enjoy the person we are. We accept ourselves, without reservation and with no holding back.

This is the opposite of what so much of religion has emphasized—that we aren’t acceptable. “Just as I am” isn’t good enough, we’ve been told. What’s been missed is that it’s our inability to accept ourselves that God “disapproves” of, not our acceptance of ourselves.

The realization that no matter what comes our way, we are loved and accepted in the created order is one of the most life-changing breakthroughs we ever make. It brings a settled sense of worth, which wells up spontaneously within us. This acceptance of ourselves proves to be the antidote to all the self-talk many of us indulge in about how inadequate we feel.

It’s this settled sense of our acceptability that enables us to follow the advice of that Jewish author of Ecclesiastes. “Let your garments be always white,” he urges. “Let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the fleeting days of life that have been granted you under the sun. Whatever it is in your power to do, do with all your might."

There are some time-bound cultural images and values in the language, the result of the passing of two and a half millennia since he penned this advice, but we can still hear his message—to make the ordinary, everyday things of life the vehicles of a grand celebration of our existence.

Do whatever you do with all your might. Really be present in your living. Give your whole being to it.

In other words, don’t measure your life primarily by money or power or education. This author had all of these things—mansions to live in, parks with lakes, a staff of entertainers ranging from dancers to musicians, a wealth of learning, a private wildlife park, and every luxury he desired. But they weren’t where he found fulfillment. He found fulfillment in the joy of experiencing each simple moment of his life in its fullness.

It’s a matter of how aware you are in all of the little things that make up the backdrop of your life—how much you relish a good meal, being among friends, watching a sunset, observing the trees bursting into foliage in spring or changing color in fall, hugging your loved ones, and making your primary relationship, if you have one, a grand romance.

Fulfillment comes from the process of living, when you engage wholeheartedly in this process, simply for itself and not for some specific outcome. As you live out the process, accepting life each step of the way as it unfolds instead of fighting and resisting and feeling badly about how things are going, you find meaning one moment at a time.

Non-acceptance, because you have a concept of how you are supposed or not supposed to be, ruins the spontaneity, blocks the flow, dams up the joy. And then you find yourself in pain, as either “everything seems to be going wrong” in your life, or you feel “empty” or “bored” with everything.

The twentieth century philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich says of such moments of painful realization, “Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted.’”

The message of The Presence Process is that you are accepted. And it will show you how to live every moment of every day in the fullness of the acceptance stumbled upon by the author of Ecclesiastes all those centuries ago.

Middle East Muddle

By Namaste Staff Writer

Norman Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute—according to BBC World News, perhaps the leading authority on the United States Congress—stated on BBC World that although only 15 members of the Republican Party crossed sides to vote against their President on a non-binding Iraq resolution, “While the overwhelming majority of House Republicans voted with their party, with their President, against this resolution, had there been a secret ballot vote the majority would have voted for it.”

The Middle East is in a sad state today because, everywhere we look in the world of politics, pretence trumps Presence.

This is not a partisan matter. It happens on all fronts, continually. There were both Democrats and Republicans who voted for the war, who in their hearts suspected there might be a better way—but no one wanted to “appear” unpatriotic.

On the same day as the House vote, in New Zealand protesters against the Iraqi war were arrested on the occasion of a visit by the Australian Prime Minister John Howard. A banner captured by the camera read, “Howard Racist Scum.”

How authentic are we when, claiming to value people by being non-racist, we devalue others? Polarized views of our fellow humans, no matter how deeply we may disagree with them, reflect as much a lack of Presence as those who are racist lack Presence.

What’s missing from both the House members and the protesters is the authenticity that alone can change the course of the world and steer it toward peace. Being against each other achieves no enduring results—whether as elected officials or as protesters.

As long as the approach we take to issues on our planet is heated, instead of coming from the calmness of Presence, there will be no lasting peace. This is why, for thousands of years, no sooner has one conflict been solved than another arises. We lurch from conflict to conflict, blaming and opposing, because we are locked in inauthenticity. The result is drama on the world scene.

The fact is, neither the politicians nor the protesters are able to act wisely, calmly, authentically. At this stage in our development as a species, we are driven far too much by our emotional neediness and reactivity to be able to make wise choices.

Says Michael Brown, author of The Presence Process, “Our dramas are the ‘acts’ we use to gain attention and acceptance from others.” Whether in the voting chambers of government, or protesting on the streets of our cities, we are incapable of making sound decisions when we are addicted to drama. We are too concerned with ego—with how it would “appear.”

The Presence Process is a cure for drama. It’s needed now on our planet more than ever, because the stakes have become potentially lethal for our species.

The agreement brokered this past with North Korea on the nuclear issue is one that observers say could have come quite a long time ago, had been serious dialogue instead of posturing. Posturing is drama—staged behavior that masks our inability to be authentic.

And now, with Iran, we are playing out a similar drama, and they with us.

Michael Brown explains, “Our calculated drama is successful in that it makes us acceptable to the adult world, but in the same breath, it renders our authentic self unacceptable to us.”

It’s the inability to truly love and accept ourselves that causes us to see a visiting prime minister, a president, a politician of a particular party, a race of people, or those of a different religion as “the enemy,” instead of as real individuals with whom we need to interact as authentic adults and not through posturing.

It’s easy to blame the politicians for the current mess in the Middle East. But the politicians are no more to blame than we are, for they are merely a reflection of our own unconsciousness.

The Middle East muddle is a “messenger” to each of us, seeking to awaken us to authenticity in the way we deal with each other. It is a reflection of our own internal worlds.

How can we effect change?

It requires no more—and no less—than becoming present ourselves. As each of us becomes authentic, responsible, free to make truly beneficial choices, this “ups the ante” for everyone around us.

Solely by becoming present, we invoke presence in others.

As Jesus said, the kingdom of God spreads like leaven in bread dough set to rise. Authentic change is a process of osmosis. It “rubs off” onto others when it’s genuine.

If we want to change our world, the answer lies in each of us investing ourselves in a serious way in becoming present. It has to become the single most important task in our lives.

That’s why, throughout much of 2007, Michael Brown will be touring North America, speaking to groups and sharing with them the path to Presence. Sign up for our RSS information service, and you’ll know instantly when new venues are added.