Year: 2006

Tagged! 5 Weird Things/Habits

Jon4 Comments

OK, I?ve been tagged by friend and fellow blogger Darrell in a cybergame that goes like this:

The first player of this game starts with ?5 weird things/habits about yourself.? In the end you need to choose 5 people to be tagged and list their names. The people who get tagged need to write a blog about their 5 weird things/habits, as well as state this rule clearly, then tag 5 more victims. Don’t forget to leave your victim a comment that says ?you’re tagged!? in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

Hard to limit myself to just five, but here they are:

1. I burst into song at the drop of a hat. Any hat. Perhaps I was raised on too many musicals as a youngster. I thought it would be cool if people spontaneously burst into singing to express themselves in real life; I started doing it, and haven’t stopped.

2. It’s virtually gone now, but milk used to taste colors to me. Yes, you read that right. Especially during my undergrad years, I tasted milk on a spectrum of yellow-to-blue. Fresh milk was yellow (meaning delicious!) and less fresh milk moved into the blue zone. Stale was dark blue, and sour, black. Also, skim milk tended to taste just a tad bluer, or less yellow, than whole milk, no matter how fresh it was.

I learned that this cross-sensory perception is called synesthesia. Apparently many composers have it. Olivier Messiaen wrote about composing “stain-glass window chords,” Scriabin and Rimsky-Korsakov heard specific musical keys as colors. Music-color synesthesia might have helped during those years, as I was a composition major. But noooooo, I got milk-color!

3. I used to save my pennies, then Scotch-tape together in short stacks of five or ten. Then I’d carry them in my pocket to spend them as ordinary change. When a cashier was suprised to be handed one of those mini-rolls, I explained “it’s a fat nickle (or dime),” as if it were the most natural thing in the world. (Most of them didn’t like this.)
4. Anagrams. I love them, but there are no anagrams for Jon Zuck. However, “Jon Meyer Zuck” converts to:

MERE COZY JUNK and
ZEN MUCKER JOY.

5. I love alternate writing systems. I developed the first computer font for an alternative English alphabet known variously as the Second Shaw alphabet, or Quickscript, or the Read Alphabet. Here’s a copy of the Lord’s Prayer in that font:

Lord's Prayer in Read Alphabet

I also developed my own personal shorthand. It’s a mixture of Gregg, Quickscript, and my own stuff.

Be it known to all, that on this 30th day of July, in this the year of our Lord 2006, I do hereby tag:
Ryan, Zach, Julie, Bob, and Meredith

Breaking through…

Jon11 Comments

Have you ever felt that the Universe was a projection, playing upon a screen, and the only thing beyond is the light of God?

Have you ever felt you could tear the screen down?

Have you ever done it?

Have you ever experienced it happening

Meditation on “Imagine” pt. 1

Jon1 Comment

Something i’ve wanted to do for a long time is post on John Lennon’s song, Imagine. What kept me from it was not wanting to make a really, really, long post. You’ve might have noticed I do like to keep things short! The solution ? take it in parts.

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…

I used to have a love/hate relationship with this song. On one hand, I lauded Lennon’s idealism and desire for peace, but on the other, his antipathy to religion was quite off-putting to me until fairly recently.

Some years ago, I did come to imagine “no hell below us,” though. And that willingness to *imagine* and consider, eventually became a willingness to “re-examine the hell idea” in depth. I’m happy to report it didn’t survive the scrutiny!

Reexamining “good” and “evil” seems to be going around in my local blogosphere, particularly in Trev’s and Julie’s blogs.

A large number of people, however, are not yet able to earnestly question what they’ve been taught about “good” and “evil.” That in itself isn’t a problem. But those unquestioned presuppositions can become the source of great suffering. Large parts of the Christian, Muslim and Jewish world are engaged in open warfare at the time of this post. It’s fair to say that every entity involved in the fighting views itself as “good,” and their enemy as “evil.”

Lennon urges us to look at ordinary life, rather than philosophy or religion, for the direction on how to live. Ironically, this echoes the idea present throughout all the mystics that ethics is as simple as the Golden Rule: Do to others as you would have them do to you. Love your neighbor.

Is this raw atheism? Is there really “only sky” above us? Does “living for today” mean there is no afterlife? Not at all. I believe (yeah, I do have beliefs!) that there is far more to This than what is the visible world. (Really it’s far less, but I won’t get into that here!) But the thing is that we are only responsible for our interactions in this tangible world with each other, under the sky.

“Only sky” means that there is no heaven except at this moment, and no hell except at this moment, no life at all except the single moment we have to live now. The past and the future exist only in the mind. The only experience is the experience of the present moment.

And at every moment, we are constantly involved in creating heavens and hells for ourselves and each other. The eyes of the Father are not looking down upon us, so much as looking out through us… every one of us.

Posts in this series: pt. 1, pt. 2, pt. 3, interlude, conclusion.

Hiding from God

Jon8 Comments

I’ve occasionally mentioned that I’m not very consistent spiritually, as in my I’m not Johnny Contemplative post. But that’s an understatement. If any of you think that I bound out of bed, greeting This with my whole being, ready to sit a few minutes in sublime meditation before eating a healthy breakfast, nothing could really be further from the truth. My usual morning starts with:

1. Throwing pillows at Talbot when he starts pestering me to feed him (Usually about a hour before I intend to get up). His tricks are anything from opening my CD player and knocking the disc out of it, to chewing on my piles of unsorted, undealt-with junk mail, or lately, gnawing on books. This week, he got into Sudoku and The Upanishads. Smart cat. Unfortunately, he’s also smart enough to know pillows don’t hurt.

2. After second or third pillow throw, get up (cursing), feed cat, try not to trip on mail.

3. Go back to bed, making sure alarm is set.

4. Turn alarm off (Zen alarm clock?yeah that part of my life really is Zen?whoo-hoo!), reset it and go back to bed.

5. Turn alarm off again, reset it, and go back to bed.

6. Hit snooze button, and go back to bed.

7. Hit snooze button, and go back to bed.

8. Realize it’s now a half-hour after I intended to wake up, say, “oh shit!” turn off Zen alarm, turn on NPR, and decide if I have time enough to shower and shave before I have to leave. Do so if I do. Brush teeth.

9. Make a note that I really need to empty Talbot’s littlerbox soon. Hurriedly get dressed.

10. Drive (or carpool) to work, with a quick stop to 7-11 to buy a triple-cholesterol puckwich and the first of what will be two or three Big Gulps or equivalent non-coffeenated Diet Pepsified caffeine hits.

11. Arrive at work, simultaneously tired and hyper.

(Three hours later… actually begin to wake up.)

My evenings have usually been better… I blog, read blogs, surf all manner of junk on the Net, solve some sudoku, watch a little TV or a video, sometimes get together with a friend. Rarer is actually getting around to some spiritual practice.

Lately though, as some of you may have gathered from the tremendous surge of sharing on my blog, my evenings have been crappy too. I’ve lost myself in the ultimate intellectual puzzle, harness race handicapping, and I’ve done it before. I’m not a problem gambler, but I am a problem handicapper… it’s as though when my mind becomes totally absorbed by something that is endlessly challenging, the rest of the world and its challenges hardly exist.

In Fundamentalist language, the devil “gained a foothold” on a weakness of mine, and I’ve been hiding from God. In more objective language, my ego found a way to strengthen itself, causing me to avoid my true self. Different ways of describing the same situation.

For me, a big part of “Jedi life in the real world” is realizing when I’m not living Jedi life in the real world. There’s nothing more spiritual about thinking great thoughts than there is in emptying a litterbox or nourishing your body well in the morning. (For that matter, there’s nothing more spiritual about reading the Upanishads than the Meadowland’s past performances… if you can do it as a Christ, ready to respond to anyone and anything with selfless love.)

The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.

But some “fingers” at least do point to the moon, while others point to the mazes of habit and distraction. Some fingers are just The Finger! I’ve been drowning. I’m coming up for air. That’s Jedi life in the real world, for me here, at least.

Two Kinds of Passers-by

Jon5 Comments

According to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus said, “Be passers-by.” I take this as meaning that we are to realize that fundamentally, the world is not our true home, that we come from beyond, and will return from whence we came. Being a passer-by means that I may be enjoying my experiences and surroundings, but that I know that it’s just a show?there’s something more substantial to my nature. What I pick up here?riches (yeah, right!), experiences, eventually my body, and even memories?will eventually be discarded. We are passers-by.
My friend, Fr. Bob Griffith, has an excellent post on his blog about two different kinds of bypassers?pilgrims and tourists. Read this quote by Andrew Schelling he shared with us:

Only the walker who sets out toward ultimate things is a pilgrim. In this lies the terrible difference between tourist and pilgrim. The tourist travels just as far, sometimes with great zeal and courage, gathering up acquisitions (a string of adventures, a wondrous tale or two) and returns the same person as the one who departed. There is something inexpressibly sad in the clutter of belongings the tourist unpacks back at home. The pilgrim is different. The pilgrim resolves that the one who returns will not be the same person as the one who set out.
?Andrew Schelling

The only thing we can really take with us is the changes in our own being.

Soweto, and hope

Jon4 Comments

I’m in Maryland visiting a friend. In Silver Spring, there’s a film festival in progress called “Silverdocs,” devoted to documentaries. At a large outdoor screen in a park last night, a retrospective on the Soweto uprising in South Africa 30 years ago was shown.

Much more interesting, though, was watching the kids playing together in the park. While their parents watched the movie about horrific struggles between blacks and whites and the terrible toll of racism, black and white kids took turns playing ball and tag, without a care in the world for this thing called race.

May the same come to be for Israeli and Palestinian kids. And Shi’ite and Sunni kids. And Armenian and Turkish kids. All kids. And may they not lose it as they grow up.

The Holy Grail: still missing the point

Jon4 Comments

I’m writing my reflection on The Da Vinci Code. As I write, what strikes me most is that Brown’s interpretation of the Grail comes so close in some ways, yet still misses the point completely!

The Grail legend is a wonderful confluence of symbols which have been (mis)understood in an amazing variety of ways… rich treasure, holy relic, magic power, historical artifact (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), sacred bloodline (The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail), sacred person (The Da Vinci Code). And yet they all miss the point!

Any mystical symbol must be understood mystically; and then it becomes obvious:

What is the object of the Holy Quest?
What vessel conveys the “blood of Christ”?
What is hidden where only “the worthy” can find it?
What is the most sublime goal to attain?
What is the ultimate power you can access?

The answer, in a word, is you.

Not the “you” you think you are?not the “you” that has an age, gender, race, and loves and hates. It’s the “you” you really are. Your true nature, your source, your ultimate potential. All mystical traditions have their own names for this: Atman (the one Self within all beings), Buddha-nature, Christ-nature, Nirvana, Emptiness, the Tao, the Kingdom of Heaven, the imago Dei (the image of God), the Holy Grail.

I once heard a priest relate a Hindu parable: Because the gods feared man’s power, they decided to hide his divinity from him. One suggested hiding it in the heavens, but the others responded that man would build spaceships and find it there. Another suggested hiding it in the ocean’s depth’s but the others said that men would build submarines and discover it there. Another suggested hiding it deep in the earth, and that too, was voted down, due to the power of the human mind. Finally, a god said, let’s hide it where they’ll never find it: deep within their hearts.

A more familiar version of this story is the Tower of Babel: God feared that man’s genius would enable him to storm heaven, since he was “of one mind.” To prevent this, the Lord said “let us (plurality again!) go down and confuse their speech.” And so, our divided mind, full of unending, confused chatter, enshrouds itself around the pure simplicity of our actual being, keeping us from seeing it or even suspecting it.

Another close parallel is attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas.

Jesus said:
If those who guide you say, Look,
the Kingdom is in the sky,
then the birds are closer than you.
If they say: Look,
it is in the sea,
then the fish already know it.
The Kingdom is inside you, and it is outside you.
When you know yourself, then you will be known,
and you will know that you are the child of the Living Father;
but if you do not know yourself,
you will live in vain
and you will be vanity.?Gospel of Thomas 3

Our consciousness is the consciousness of God in flesh.
Our bodies are the body of Christ
Our blood is the blood of Christ.
Our love is the Eucharist.
Our realization is the Holy Grail.

This is the quest. This is the desire of ages. This is the Holy Grail.

The highest of all things desired is to become God. –St Basil the Great

The center of the soul is God. –St. John of the Cross

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We just want to eat your brains!

Jon3 Comments

zombies.jpgI was writing a letter to a friend this morning, and zombies came to mind as a metaphor about trying to be an awake person in the world. You want to be alive, conscious, and know God/Ultimate Reality/Truth, and—they don’t. Some of them actually want very much for you to not want that. (Hell, almost every dollar spent on advertising is for that very purpose!) The zombies see your difference as something they need to fix. And they’re willing to help. They just want to eat your brains!

There’s something definitely less-than human about the ego-self. Rather than embodying the consciousness of God in the world, we shuffle along, half-alive, half-dead, destructively seeking to satisfy our insatiable appetites. And whether that manifests as a literal lust for blood, or mere selfishness, the result is the same—we want to stay entranced, “dead while we live,” destructive, and unconscious. Oh, and yes, more blood is shed.

If God created mankind to be his manifestation in the world, the result was a tad lacking. The script was rewritten. Son of Man. Man II. Human—The Sequel. Not only is this one going to be more uplifting to watch than Dawn of the Dead, but you can star in it!

Check out Jonathan Coulton’s hilarious song, Re: Your Brains.