Heaven doesn’t readily welcome racists, bigots, and fundamentalists. They first get a muzzle. A Shutterstock Licensed Image.

As a little boy, I was fascinated with Jesus. I imagined walking with Him everywhere I went. I never related to how he was presented in churches, but I always felt Him to be my teacher and friend. I would talk to him throughout every day.

I didn’t see Jesus as the judgemental white supremacist that many Christians make him out to be today. I saw Jesus as a spirit who could embody any physical form. To me, Jesus was everywhere and everything. He was the flowers, sky, refrigerator, postman, and the quiet whisper of love and light in the back of my mind.

I saw Jesus as unconditional Love.

Given how Christianity is often marketed, I was surprised to learn that Jesus never called himself a Christian. It’s now my belief that “Christian” is the last thing He’ll be if he ever comes back, in whatever form. Jesus was a spiritual master. He was beyond any tidy box we might imagine him to occupy.

As a card-carrying member of the forward-thinking, spiritually-inclined, I tend to reduce religious labels and dogma down to suggestions, and spend my time focusing on divine attributes.

Judgmental born-againers (in any religion) seem to be unhappy people trying to enroll others in their miseries. They push a spiritual master’s biography rather than the tenets of their teachings.

I’m motivated by divine transmissions and holy attributes, not the crafted, edited biographies, written hundreds of years after a master’s death.

I remember when I was a born-again Catholic, then a born-again Christian, then a born-again New-Ager, then a born-again Native American shaman, then a born-again Buddhist. And when I was a Sikh, I was fervently born-again, and frankly, a dick. It was all love-focused, but with a stinky layer of ego.

In retrospect, I’m healthily ashamed of how I defended my invisible friends along the way, but this powerful shame is now my master. In pursuit of a purer clarity, I’ve become so lovingly hard on myself that I thoroughly enjoy it.

From what I can tell, rather than enrolling others, the key to spiritual life is accepting everything. If my goal is to help others along their spiritual paths, it must include accepting each person for who they are in this moment.

In Jungian psychology, there’s the concept of matching and leading. The idea is to meet someone where they are at so that you can gently guide them to a deeper understanding and clarity.

Alignment with others invites openness and doorways to transformation. If we can’t see ourselves in another person, we’re missing the point. Truth be told, there is no “other.”

The moment we call ourselves Christians, Sikhs, Jews, Pagans, Hindus, Buddhists, or any other “ist,” it’s violent.

All religions have been over-marketed and under-researched by mostly uneducated people. Without all the noise and logos, we stand a much better chance of embodying love and its kin. Removing labels, name tags, prejudices, and allegiances, we see ourselves and the divine more clearly.

Our needs to identify as Christian, Hindu, Pagan, Buddhist, Sikh, Jewish, heck even Republican or Democrat, and other group-identifiers born from cultures (not spirit), is about ego, nothing more.

Your self-identity has nothing to do with any of these labels. Ask yourself, “Do I really need to identify with a word, organization, or movement? Or is it more transformative, more inclusive, and less aggressive to identify with an attribute?”

Can we live without the words Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew, etc, and still be loving, spiritual, powerful, divine, and proactive human beings?

Yes, we can.

Without labels, can we still embody and share the teachings of Muhammad, Buddha, Moses, Amma, Krishna, Joshua (Jesus), and others? 

Yes!

If I fully understand that living and past spiritual masters and avatars had no egos, then why do I care about labels or attributing my experience to them or their movements?

Why can’t I just enjoy my culture’s rituals without advertising them and without trying to enroll others? Why can’t I just focus on becoming a better person and serving my fellow living beings?

If a religion needs followers or funding or anything, wouldn’t the original master of the religion call these things into being through divine manifestation? That would make sense, right?

The original, big-religion spiritual masters didn’t focus on the organizations they spearheaded. They focused on embodying the universes within them and sharing love with others. As disciples, we are called to do the same.

In order to feel whole, we can identify with whatever lexicon or religion we choose. It’s our right and it can be enjoyable.

But the moment we promote our lexicon and religions to others, and the moment we preach from a religion’s point of view, we disconnect from our spirits and the truth. We become judgmental and nothing short of violent.

Let’s stop calling ourselves Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan, and the others. It’s all the same story changed over time to support myths, political movements, and temporary organizational concepts. Also, the original religious manuscripts are largely inconsistent in their interpretations and translations. These narratives distract, control, and oppress, more than they liberate. Religious books and labels are secondary to compassion.

We are servants of the divine. Let’s embody love and help others to do the same.

Please stop saying these phrases, too: “We are all Jews” and “We are all Christians.” These are passive-aggressive, judgmental ways of saying, “Our club is the best, our labels are the best, and today we consider you an honorary member of our exclusive tribe.”

Phrases like these are insidious ways of telling someone that they are missing something. They’re not.

The more we hide under the egoistic shields of religious labels, the less effective we’ll be. Live joyfully within the bounds of your religion. Love your religion. But don’t pretend that it’s special. It’s not. It’s a story, akin to hundreds of stories that have been birthed over thousands and thousands of years.

Leave the books at home. Stop talking about your invisible friend as if he or she is the only one. Encourage positive, loving attributes in yourself and others. There is how real change occurs.

Start with this:

“I may be a cultural Christian, Sikh, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist or New-Ager, but I am most importantly a loving, whole, listener. I am joyful, accepting, and appreciative. I love all life and I seek to bring light to the world. I embody positivity, and I pray that all living beings are protected from violence and pain. I humbly seek to embody the best attributes of all the masters throughout all time. May I be of service to all living beings in this life and all the lives that follow.”

How to Inspire Empathy in Even the Toughest of Hearts

As a hyper-sensitive person (in a good way), I sometimes struggle when I’m in intimate relationships with brainiacs, tough-guys, robots, and those who place feelings on the bottom shelf. If I’m not careful, I can become quite the whiny little needy weenie. Or an unreasonable, self-righteous dick. This article is for how to inspire empathy if you feel the same.

I’m hitting this one hard because I’m done with the pattern.

Now, instead of succumbing to a victim-mind, when I sense the other person is demonstrating an “under-empathy”, I educate them, doubling-down on compassion, with the hope that a tiny percentage will trickle into the heart of the other person. This method is working!

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you might be one of those folks I’ve struggled with in the past. Or you might be an empath who bumps into the same walls and repeats the same responses. Either way, people who do not understand the value of empathy are challenging, right?

In order to explain how to inspire empathy, here’s an example of a dialogue that, formerly, would have crushed my spirit and rendered me lethargic and wing-clipped for weeks:

During a lovely hike with a friend:

Paul: I feel deeply connected to these beautiful trees. And there’s such light and sweetness in the air! Can you feel it?!

Brainiac-Robot: Um, nope. You hungry?

While there’s no harm in her response, my desire to be understood, and to have a mutual experience with the other person is what has most often tripped me up.

I used to feel justified in my hurt feelings because “isn’t being more open and loving and magical what it’s all about?” Um, no. It’s about respecting that the universe is complex and it has a wide variety of intertwined agendas and aspects in play.

I used to respond to these types of disconnects by saying things like, “Well, can’t you just try to have some empathy here? I mean, aren’t I worth it?” But that’s a form of manipulation and oppression, which is what weak, uncreative, controlling people conjure when they feel out of control and without power.

Let’s face it. It’s downright silly for me to expect someone else to have the exact same perspectives and experiences as me. Even if I feel disappointed, it’s unreasonable for me to expect another person to be empathic. Who knows what they’re going through. Who knows what value the universe places on their gifts.

My job is to have empathy for myself and creation, but that’s not everybody’s job. I just feel better when I’m being empathic. I feel better when I let my heart pour out to others. I’m more whole when I live this way, but this way of living is not meant for everyone.

Empathy is different from compassion. Empathy is embodying the other person’s feelings. Tasting them and finding ways to improve them. Compassion is being aware (and respectful) when someone is in pain. Compassion has better boundaries.

Okay, so then learning how to inspire empathy could help?

My new approach has inspired me to change my egoistic responses. For example, instead of expecting someone to feel the tree’s heartbeat like I do, now I say, “Hold my hand and let’s touch this tree together. Imagine the tree breathing and singing. Maybe we can both open our hearts together and share a moment of love with the tree. Just a tiny moment!”

This approach is effective because I’m empathizing with the other person rather than judging them or demanding that they “get me” upon every new-age whimper that comes out of my mouth. If they reject the offer, at least I arrived at empathy, rather than reaction.

Clearly, just because I feel connected to every green, fluffy pile of moss, every gnome spirit and light-orb, and the multitudes of crackling twigs in all the universes, it doesn’t mean that it’s the only conscious way to live. Other people might be more focused on the things that I tend to miss, for example, forgetting to lock the car or “HOLY CRAP! THAT’S A BEAR! RUN!”

After learning how to inspire empathy, a recent exchange:

Paul: I was working with a client this morning and I could feel their pain from early childhood trauma. It was overwhelming, yet it was such an honor. We walked through it together. Do you know what I mean?

Brain-Robot: Dude, I’m not set-up for this kinda conversation.

Paul: Cool. You hungry?

Maybe I’m evolving. Then again, let’s not jump to conclusions.

Mindfulness – The Trendy, Undisciplined Vacuum: A Shutterstock Licensed Image

Can Mindfulness Be a Bad Thing?

We are born as electric, wild creatures, infused with limitlessness, and empowered by the infinite array of energies found in every galaxy throughout the universe. There are subtle-bodied energies, planetary and other-realm influences, magnetic pulls, angelic blessings, and the biochemical reactions that result from living in a vast, 3-dimensional, physical reality.

We are powerful, to say the least…

Mindfulness is a concept that has been steadily injected into our social media feeds since the early 2010s. There are thousands of mindfulness teachers, corporate trainers, new-agey yoga folks, and beautiful monks seeking to enlighten the world with this simple modality. The concept goes something like this:

By being aware of our conscious Self, actions, and emotions, and focusing solely on the present moment, we can become calmly aware of our realities, bodily sensations, and natures, and objectively engage with our realities.

It all sounds wonderful, beautiful, and transformative. Who wouldn’t want to live in such a way? When embracing this ancient Buddhist tradition, what could possibly be harmful or restrictive to us? How, really, can mindfulness limit us?

The problem with mindfulness is that it’s been co-opted by the New Age movement. You remember this movement, right? It’s the often narcissistic, over-feminized, spiritual ideology that teaches people to objectify and worship themselves. Meanwhile, it rejects the idea that it takes work to improve ourselves.

The New Age is the same quasi-religion that promised a perfect balance out of one side of its mouth while exalting the spiritual ego out of the other. This mish-mash style of spiritual development sounds good, but sometimes it’s nothing but rainbow-colored quicksand.

The New Age as the Selfie of Spiritual Ideologies.

The way that mindfulness is often taught isn’t necessarily damaging, it’s just that it has limited value, and might not help us evolve. While it might keep us out of trouble for 10 minutes, mindfulness is missing a long list of steps and experiences. And it’s filled with presumption.

Today’s corporate mindfulness is nothing but a stolen final-phase, poorly extrapolated from meditating monks. It’s the most overused brick in the foundation of the faux-spiritual paradigms amidst today’s convenient spiritual truths. The way that mindfulness is currently portrayed, marketed, and taught is half-baked at best.

Every day we see trendy snippets from the world’s purest liberation practices flowing through our feeds. These snippets are comforting, but without context, they circumvent the pathways to liberation and enable our denial. To truly liberate, we must begin by acknowledging who we are. We must embrace our compositions and desires, not judge them. We have to start by practicing and perfecting the person we’ve become, so we can understand what and who we are seeking to abandon.

We need to love ourselves, despite our mistakes. This requires that we explore and express our passions with abandon. If we don’t know our curiosities and desires, how can we move through them? How can we expand?

Many students of mindfulness have created a new personality to justify their goals and the money they paid for the mindfulness classes. They’re not investigating their uniqueness and power, they’re avoiding it, having relegated their true Self to a locked, labeled closet. They’re afraid to be themselves, so they picked a prettier “me.”

Unless you’re an avatar, you probably can’t extinguish your nature by avoiding it. It’s better that you celebrate it and love it to death.

After all, the ego is the I am, and without the ego, we are not.

While pursuing mindfulness, if we aren’t also honoring our emotions and shortcomings, we’re adopting temporary self-identities and fooling ourselves. To rebirth ourselves and embark on a path toward authenticity and liberation, we might not always be peaceful and mindful. Those pleasant ideas might be the antithesis to our evolution!

To take full advantage of this physical reality that we were born into, there are times when it’s vital to be wild, aggressive, hateful, and full of rage. How else can we know the spectrum of our humanity? And how else can we embody empathy with the hope of helping humanity transform?

Do you see the truth here?

• If you cannot be authentic, you cannot know your limitations or expanded potential.
• If you do not embrace who you are in this moment, you have no platform from which to evolve.
• If you do not begin with accepting your desires and affections, you cannot know what is truly important to you.
• This means that without letting it all flow, you cannot know your path to liberation.

Our true Self is the unrestricted one. In our exploration of our true Selves, we can become aware of our vasanas (problematic attributes and latent tendencies), and then consider releasing them. Heck, we can even enjoy them for a time. We might have moments where we feel a deep peacefulness, and we might begin to taste our true natures and Selves. But if we have not accepted and loved ourselves along the way, we will arrive at the precipice of liberation without having paid the price of admission. We will be forced to turn-around and begin again.

Wait, aren’t we all permitted to expand and enter the kingdoms of Heaven and expanded consciousness?

Yes. We all have tickets to the eternal realms and our most evolved Self, but most of us are obsessed with how we appear to others. Most of us are stuck in hierarchical paradigms that offer no promise of self-acceptance or liberation. The majority of souls living on this planet right now are obsessed with OPP – Other People’s Opinions.

In general, we don’t form our paths and personhood from self-exploration. We create ourselves by believing in religions, trends, misinformation, and self-limiting ideologies. Why? Because we all feel less-than, and we all feel guilty.

Rather than celebrate this complex universe and the gifts we’ve been given, we squash them with political correctness, over-analysis, and self-judgment. Rather than seek forgiveness and the healing of our guilt from within, or in partnership with the divine, electric universe, we ask forgiveness from our religious leaders, families, lovers, and friends. We might also demand it from strangers.

This type of projection-styled life results in two things: a long, repetitive journey – and a failure to achieve our objectives related to self-realization.

Can I choose to be who I truly am, right now?

Sadly, we cannot expand unless we relax into who we are at this moment. We have to forget about the “shoulds” that are over-sold to us by religions and new-ager ideologists, and instead, invest in fully accepting who we are right now. This includes allowing our anger, prejudices, desires, addictions, and bad habits.

To be mindful is lovely. But if we’re ignorant and resentful of who we are, our mindfulness will be based on a projection, illusion, and the false Self. This means it will be based on fantasies and result in experiences that only our false, temporary, contrived Selves will experience. This leaves us completely out of the picture.

In this case, our pursuit of mindfulness will result only in temporary, elusive, possibly damaging, alter-ego gratification – and nothing else.

Where do we go from here?

There’s a reason mindfulness has become so popular in corporate culture: everybody wants to be told that 10 minutes of meditation per day will enable them to change the world – and make money at the same time. It’s a scam.

There’s no simple formula for self-exploration. There are thousands of paths that could lead to expansion and liberation. While everybody is unique, and no path is absolute for all Beings, below are a few steps that might lead you to know and accept who you are right now.

These ideas might also help you break free from your limiting, temporary, and fantasy-based self-identities:

– Accept and love everything about yourself without limits. Remember that every aspect of you is a gift, and it provides a pathway toward a related but more evolved aspect.

– Encourage yourself to explore the people, activities, and beliefs that make you feel good, delicious, excited, and free.

– Enjoy actively participating and validating these aspects. If you love food, find ways to celebrate it. If you love punching people’s faces, take a boxing class. If you love sex, find sexual partners who might fulfill this desire-base.

– While having these experiences, allow yourself to deepen your appreciation for them. As you experience highs, relish them with every part of your Being.

– When you see holes in your beliefs, lows in your experiences, and unforeseen repercussions that make you nervous, consider how you might up-grade or release each of them.

– As you experience projection-failures and relational breakdowns with the people and events that you once thought were valuable, make a note of what you learned from each one.

– Practice gratitude often.

– Consider what you’ve learned. Look within yourself to see how you have participated in these things. Seek to understand why you may have chosen them, why they were successful, and how they may have been less than adequate.

– Explore the possible reasons why you objectified and over- or under-validated yourself, others, and the events that unfolded.

– Allow yourself to feel and express the emotions that are related to your explorations, celebrations, and disappointments. Let it all out.

– Ask yourself why you chose these people, events, and passions in the first place. Answer honestly.

– Forgive everyone involved in each of your disappointments.

– Own the choices that led you to be involved with these people, events, and passions.

– Forgive yourself.

– Upgrade your beliefs and continue exploring what feels enjoyable, connective, and real.

Explore, experience, accept, forgive, emote, let go.

Throughout this process, you’ll evolve.

To improve your realities, both internal and external:

• Embrace relationships, thoughts, intentions, rituals, and ideologies that are infused with liberating principals. Don’t skim off the top, devour the entire stew.
• Seek love only from those who fully accept you for who you are, and what it means to love you.
• Most importantly, be yourself. Be fully embodied and authentic in this lifetime.
• Allow your desires to move through you, not solely for your pleasure, but also so you can learn to dissolve the false-Self and embrace your true, eternal Self. You can’t simply step into a new identity without first absolving the prior.

You are the embodiment of a trajectory that holds every answer you seek. There are no limits, other than those imposed by your oppressors and your loving heart.

Let it all out. Be authentic. Forgive everything. Allow the universe to accept, love, and perfect you.