Several years ago I was living from paycheck to paycheck, wasn't really that excited about my job, and felt somewhat trapped in existential fear tied to money... At the time, I was working in two separate office buildings a block away from each other and going back and forth between the two a lot. One day, right about half-way between the two buildings, meandering about money and how I felt about it, I looked down to see a penny right in front of my feet. In the past, I would have not cared, left it for someone who needed it more than I did. But that day, I decided to pick it up, in honor of the money the universe was providing me with (literally laying in the streets). Grateful, my thoughts shifted to a more positive stance, a new but familiar sense of possibility arose as if from a deep slumber.
The next day, I found another penny in pretty much the same place. Maybe I had missed it the day before. I looked around closely to see if there were any others. None in sight. When I found another one the next day, I was feeling an eerie, but curious sense of delight. This continued for several weeks on a nearly daily basis. The universe was shouting at me...
Since, throughout many ups and downs and apparent chaos in my life, I have found a whole ton of change in many moments that were utterly delightful and let me know that everything was perfectly fine, that I would always be taken care of and that I did not need to worry about anything - ever. They have shown up in the wildest places at times, making me giggle on more than one occasion. I have also found other change, one day I found thirty something cents splattered in front of my bank and I have even found change in dreams. One of my favorites so far was a dollar coin in the crack of a street in Silver Lake that looked like it had been there for a while but was at the same time still curiously shiny.
Today, I decided to take the day off; it had been a tumultuous few weeks and I had not had much rest. When I awoke this morning, I knew I needed some sunshine. Following the guidance I went to Los Feliz to have lunch, bought a book (VALIS, which my lovely friend Stosh just raved about last night), and had a wonderful sidewalk experience eating delicious pizza while watching a little boy next to me giggling, bubbling and screaming out in total joy of sensory experience as he was observing the street life. As I am walking down the street afterwards thinking about how grateful I am for this life, breathing in the air, listening to the ocean of sounds, delighted by the plethora of colors underneath the blue sky and feeling the warmth of the sun on my back, there is a penny on the floor... love these kinds of confirmations...
Continuing my journey with a big smile on my face, and after a short stop over at my amazing friend Barry's, I started on my way home. Took the train downtown to Disney Hall, but then, instead of taking the bus decided to walk home from there instead. As I am walking down the street I slip into a walking meditation, consciously rolling my feet on every step, thinking "now" each time I touch the ground (a nice way of keeping the left hemisphere busy so that you can connect to the world around you through your right one). I could feel my amygdala popping as a delicious pressure arose in my forehead, my brain giggled and I began to lose my boundaries, connecting to the world around me. In that moment I looked down and... another penny...
Feeling the joy completely engulfing my body at this point, I continued on my way home, though not in a straight line, but instead purely following my intuition and the traffic lights. In the very moment that I was thinking about how I appreciated the path my intuition was laying out before me, I looked up and saw the sign in the photo (which apparently advocates a 9/11 movie, but that's a whole other story).
With all the complications life can offer, with all the frustrations, road blocks, disappointments, all the strife and struggle, it is nice to be reminded that everything is just the way it is supposed to be, that it does not matter what happens around us, that what matters is what we choose to perceive and how we choose to respond to it... the kingdom of heaven is right in front of us at all times... Religens, in Latin, antonym to negligence, means paying careful attention to the archetypal experience around us.
There are signs everywhere. Each of us can find ours, for each of us they might be different. For me it's loose change. For me, to watch loose change is part and parcel of the practice of my religion.
It is so exciting to me to see all this influx of information on consciousness and the advances that science is making in understanding reality - while validating what so many mystics have been teaching for thousands of years across the globe. This TED talk is one of the most outstanding I have seen in a while. Real, emotional, brilliant, and full of compassion.
Came across this TED talk this morning (was posted on my new friend Tony's tribe profile, where I ended up after he sent me a gorgeous video on dolphins blowing bubble rings). Have tremendously enjoyed most of the TED talks I watched so far, and particularly liked this one. One statement he makes toward the end is that he does not believe politicians can change the world, but that stories do... Well, this is a good one:
Could not have said it better... It is interesting how our most commonly used word is a derogatory term for the act that sparked religion and religious experience. Read in a study not too long ago that out of 237 reasons to have sex the very last one both men and women equally chose was "To get closer to god". Given this is a shitty phrasing and very biased, but it was the only out of 237 reasons that had anything to do with spirituality and sex. Regardless I think it is very sad that this holy act scored lower than reasons like "To give people a disease", "Out of revenge", "To get drugs", etc... Maybe it's time to put God and fuck back together...
Very curiously, the shift toward consumption and "progress" as primary driving values of our society, which results in us throwing away 90% of the products we purchase in a matter of 6 months (in the US at least), and which came about in the 1950s, conincides with a begin of a declining happinness in our society as well. Stuff does not make happy, as much as the 3000 or so advertisements each US citizen is in average targeted with per day try and persuade you. Stuff is just that. Stuff. When you don't have it and are told you should, you are unhappy. When you finally decide to get it (oftentimes not even with disposable income, but with fake money generated by credit card companies), then you immediately fall into post-purchase dissonance (ever wondered why many product manufacturers are so eager to congratulate you on your purchase?), and worse, your mind will immediately jump to the next thing you don't yet have and for which you have a perceived lack. So where is there any room for happinness? It seems that happinness is rather ephemeral. Heard a saying once that said "Happinness is not getting what you want, but wanting what you have". Think there is a difference between happinness and joy. Think happinness might be the result of getting what you want, but joy comes from a deeper place. It comes from a place of gratitude, where you realize how amazing it is to be here, to experience, to have sensory input to play with. It comes from being authentically creative, from loving, from doing what each of us is here to do (see the idea of dharma in one of my prior posts). Stuff won't help much in that regard. And stuff is what is killing us and is making our survival on this planet a rather dubious outlook... If you want to learn more about stuff, check out this most excellent 20 minute video. Think it is one of the best I have seen on the topic... The Story of Stuff One great point the movie makes is that the core issue is in our value system. Accepting consumption as a value is accepting death. Think about it: when you consume something, it is gone. Done. Finito. In the old days, they used to have a diagnostic called "consumption": it was the slow death by withering away... If we do not replace consumption with creativity, we shall soon have consumed ourselves on this planet. It's time to change our value systems back to consciousness and creativity: Toward becoming ever more aware, piercing through the layers of dullness our last fifty years of overstimulation have provided us with, really feel again, fully experience again, focus on the experiences of joy and love, replacing lack and fear, and toward becoming ever more creative, expressing our experience of being here using each of our unique set of talents and gifts. That will bring joy, not more stuff...
Before anything can be realized, it has to be imagined. The first step in any process is the visualization of what the end result might look like. Looking at movies today, representing the myths and stories of our times, I wonder, where all the utopias have gone... We have a whole genre of Sci-Fi. We have tons of movies about robots taking over, evil aliens, space wars and evil empires. But where are movies that paint the picture of a future that is sustainable, where we live in harmony on this planet, without nations or wars, without governments or armies, without wasting money on a huge military-industrial complex, where people are not poisoned with plastic food and laugh tracks every day of their lives while being worked to death in useless and unproductive cubicle jobs that have little to do with their natural gifts and talents, where we overcame the global challenges the UN just published in their State of the Future 2007 report ?
[two of the items above I think could be easily helped by legalizing all drugs and prostitution - it would take a chunk out of international crime and ultimately allow women to step up and demand a different place in society]
The solution lies in imagination. First, we have to imagine, then we can create. As children we are taught to worry and fear, but rarely are we encouraged to dream and imagine a positive future. We need to have film makers who dare to step outside the common themes of fear, lack, guilt and shame - making up the ego - and dare to create works of art that inspire each and every one of us to do something about bringing forth a different future (rapture is not an all too pleasant notion).
And each of us can help as well. By imaginig brighter futures for ourselves and for our environment, by creating personal utopias, we can begin to create more joy, love and creativity. By smiling at strangers we can improve the state of this world...
thought 
