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  Unfortunately we tend to get lazy as we get older, and most of us end up accumulating more and more of programs in our brains. With time these programs begin to dominate our actions and thoughts, leaving less and less room for spontaneity and freedom in our lives. As a result, our minds become petrified as we age – that’s why many older people are close-minded and appear to be permanently set in their ways, not willing to question their assumptions about the world and other people. This is reflected physiologically by formation of well-established, “preferred” pathways and shortcuts in our brains. Ironically, this is how we create a prison from which it is extremely difficult to escape. True spiritual paths thus require that we “fill-up” these well-worn tracks in our brains, that we reprogram ourselves – and that process is very painful. We would rather change others than try changing ourselves!

  This de-programming of our brains is a part of the process of growing up. It requires us to strive for perfection and to shed everything in us that is not God-like. As we purify ourselves by replacing unloving habits and patterns, we die little by little every day, until the light of God starts shining through the grime of our habits, addictions and other unconscious behaviors. Only after we learn the lesson of unconditional love we are ready to be reborn (awakened/resurrected) and become real. Until then we are real – we are just a dream, a possibility in God’s mind –“the dust that returns to the dust”.

  Many Christian sects justify suffering in the world by pointing out that since Jesus, “the only beloved Son of God”, suffered a horrible death on the cross, we have to suffer as well and we certainly shouldn’t complain about it. They may have a point about not complaining, but what would happen to their doctrines if Jesus did in fact not suffer on the cross at all? What if he went through the tortures and crucifixion only to show that death is not real, as many Christian mystics taught? What if he instead suffered well BEFORE he awakened to his Divine nature – during his childhood and so called “lost years” between ages thirteen and thirty?

  It is very likely that his childhood was much more difficult that many suspect – considering that he was born a mamzer (bastard) - an illegitimate child of Mary who got pregnant with someone else, while betrothed to Joseph. Jewish sources claim that a Roman soldier fathered Jesus. It would have been impossible to hide this fact in a small community such as Nazareth and the stigma of being born out of wedlock would have been a very difficult one to deal with for the whole family in those days. It is a miracle that Mary was not stoned for her transgression by Joseph’s brothers, as honor code demanded. Women who flirted with Roman soldiers were treated as traitors by many Jews and as such were at risk of ostracism or even death.

  Life was not any easier for Jesus himself. Jewish law prohibited mamzers from entering the Temple – thus equaling them with pagans (Deuteronomy 23:2). If rumors about his mamzer status indeed circulated in his village, he likely got his share of abuse from both his peers and from adults living in the neighborhood. The gospels tell us that Joseph knew about Mary’s illegitimate pregnancy and it is likely that he negotiated a significant discount on the bride price he was required to pay to Mary’s father, while she was safely out of sight at her cousin Elizabeth’s house for the duration of negotiations. The Bible tells us that Joseph was poor (he is described as “ τεκτων”, an unskilled day laborer, not a carpenter). He was lucky to get a break on the “bride price” required by Jewish customs of the time. It wouldn’t be surprising if Joseph never warmed up to the boy who was not his son. We can only imagine how Jesus was treated or mistreated by his stepfather, since synoptic Gospels are mercifully silent on the details of their difficult relationship.

  Careful readers will see that the incident in the Temple after the Passover feast, when Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem while his parents left for home, was in fact his first recorded attempt to run away from home (Luke 2:31-51). Happy and adjusted children usually don’t do that. Where did he sleep and what did he eat? Perhaps his mother was very worried and perhaps his father was glad that his bastard son was gone. We don’t know what happened exactly, but we do know that at the time Jerusalem was a sizable metropolitan city, with an estimated twenty-five thousand inhabitants. Well over a hundred thousand people from every corner of the Roman Empire descended upon it during feasts and holidays. It certainly wasn’t the safest place for a twelve-year old boy to be in all by himself.

  While the Gospels are silent about the formative years of Jesus, other sources describe his second, this time successful attempt to run away from home around the age of 13. According to records rediscovered in Tibet in nineteenth century, Jesus traveled with a caravan of merchants all the way to India and Tibet. It is very likely that he became a Buddhist there and took a Bodhisattva vow.

  He returned to his homeland around age thirty, finding his stepfather long dead and his mother married to one of his stepfather’s brothers, in accordance with the Levirate law.

  If Jesus grew up in an abusive household, he did have a lot of issues to overcome. Children growing up in such circumstances usually become either abusers or victims of abuse themselves when they grow up. That fate clearly did not befall Jesus – thanks to his exposure to various spiritual technologies in India (such as meditation, yoga and perhaps even mysterious Soma), he successfully overcame indoctrination received from his family and society, stripping himself of all the layers that separated him from the Divine identity and power within. Thus he knew from first-hand experience how difficult it is to overcome ones’ “nature”.

  Shakyamuni Buddha and many other awakened teachers have taught the virtues of pursuing spiritual path in the middle of the society, instead of escaping into solitude in the remote corners of the world. We grow fastest when we interact with other people, who serve as “mirrors”, reflecting back to us our own weaknesses and shortcomings. What irritates us most in other people is merely a reflection of our own “defects” which we do not like to acknowledge in ourselves. If we are honest to ourselves and if we pay attention to these particular traits in ourselves, we quickly realize how helpful it is to have such “mirrors” around. Without them it would be difficult to discover who we really are and to grow spiritually by overcoming our shortcomings.

  A great opportunity to apply this teaching arises in intimate relationships we have with others, such as in families or marriages. The person who becomes your spouse or life companion is exactly who you need to help you to awaken. A Course in Miracles states explicitly that nobody can awaken alone. Living in the world, amidst other people and inside our family gives us more opportunities to see ourselves clearly and to reach higher levels of consciousness. Escaping from the world into solitude may decrease our suffering, but it slows us down on the path towards salvation. When we pick our mates, we subconsciously choose just the right person to help us to grow, “to deny ourselves” by overcoming our programming, and by transcending our limitations. Since our purpose in this world is to become more and more loving, we need to become more focused on others’ needs instead of our own desires and to be more giving instead of always asking for more.

  For example a man who was abused by his father or mother as a child often finds a wife who also grew up in an abusive family and was victimized by her parents. When the “honeymoon period” is over, his ready-made response to marital conflict is what observation of his parents taught him: physical or verbal abuse of his wife. He does it automatically and without thinking – even though he certainly hated being abused as a child. His part in this process is first to admit that he became an abuser just like his father and to remember how he felt when he was the victim of abuse himself. The next step is to empathize with his wife and to undo the programming that makes him behave like his father. He has to break the chain of abusive behavior that goes back many generations. His wife on the other hand needs to realize that she doesn’t have to be a victim anymore. She has to take her power back and stand up to her abusive husband, protecting herself and her children. If her husba
nd is unable to change, she should leave him.

  Some may point here that Jesus taught us that a man should never divorce his wife: “Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” “What did Moses command you?” he replied. They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” (Mark 10: 2-9)

  This lesson should be placed in its historical context. In ancient Israel women were treated as the property of their husbands. Only men were able to initiate a divorce and just like in the modern Muslim world, even a minor excuse was sufficient to send a woman away. The blame for divorce and disgrace was always placed squarely on the woman, since it was her duty to keep her husband happy in all respects. Therefore, a divorced woman in that society was seen as defective and undesirable, given that she was unwilling or unable to please her husband. Such women were often stigmatized and economically disadvantaged, requiring protection of the society at large. Even though these protections have been codified in the Jewish religious law, in practice a divorced woman became a pariah, while the husband suffered no consequences whatsoever. Paradoxically, getting rid of his annoying wife deprived the husband of an opportunity to listen to her and to become more loving towards her. Divorce decreased his chances for spiritual growth and awakening. That’s why Jesus insisted that married couples should stay together.

  However, divorce per se is not sinful – it is entirely appropriate when one partner is unable or unwilling to change and as in the example above continues to abuse his or her significant other or their children. It is the right thing to move out of an unhealthy relationship when we cannot tolerate suffering any longer. That applies to all relationships in our life. It is our duty to work on our side of the relationship, but the other party has to be willing to change and grow as well, if mutual bond is to grow and prosper. It is good to be giving, but if you find out after years of one-sided giving that your partner is only willing to take, it may be time to reconsider your options – in the spirit of love and caring towards yourself, your partner, and your children.

  Each of us was born into this reality with a multitude of handicaps: genetic, physical, social or mental. It is not an accident though: God loves challenge and since He is an absolute Love, each of us has the power within to overcome these limitations and reclaim our true identity. It is a test that God set up for Himself to learn who He really is. It is a process of self-discovery, or a “hide and seek” game we play with ourselves. That’s why in spite of our inherited and acquired programming it is possible to gain freedom from unconscious patterns that rule our lives – not by rejecting them, but rather by learning about them and gaining control over them. When we accept and tame archetypal forces that have enslaved us for so long, we gain freedom from suffering.

  Thus we also learn the answer to the nagging question that has been asked many times and tested the faith of those who pondered it over the ages: Why is there evil and suffering in the world, if God is indeed all-powerful and all-loving? Since God is all-powerful and perfectly loving, therefore, paradoxically, our suffering must be also an expression of God’s Love. On the surface that assertion sounds insane, yet it is profoundly true. Suffering is necessary: we would not be able to empathize with suffering of others if we did not experience it ourselves. Therefore suffering has potential to make us more loving and kind and thus it brings us closer to our true nature and to Awakening. Since each of us is a “vehicle” through which God perceives reality, it is actually God Himself who suffers every pain and each indignity; it is He who cries alone in the darkness, and it is He who dies in the trenches of the battlefields. And through such painful lessons we discover who we really are…

  Another answer is that we are the cause of our own suffering. What goes around comes around: whenever we hurt “others”, we in fact hurt ourselves (since in truth there is no “other”, we are all One) and thus we suffer. This is the law of karma or action and reaction. In a certain sense, each of us is all alone and whatever we put out into the world, comes back to us – whether good, bad or neutral. We are eternal beings and since we experienced many previous lifetimes on Earth and elsewhere in the Universe, each of us carries along a residue of our previous actions, which determines the types of experiences we will have in this particular lifetime.

  An answer provided by mystics is even more startling, if not outright offensive to many humans – especially those within the sphere of influence of western civilization: We have been asleep. What we consider a reality has been a dream, a movie, a virtual reality game. Think of movies like Matrix or Existenz.

  If you carefully read the biblical story of creation, you may notice that there are actually two of them, back to back. In the first one everything is perfect – God creates a Paradise for us to live in and we live there happily ever after, in peace and joy. There is no death and suffering there – and humans are vegetarian (Genesis 1, 1-31 and 2, 1-3).

  Yet, one day Adam (a symbol for whole Humanity) falls asleep and strange things start to happen in his dream: that is the second story of creation (from Genesis 2,4 to present times). In that story a woman is created out of his rib, they both eat a strange fruit from the tree of knowledge which turns them into sentient beings and then they get expelled from the Garden by a jealous and insecure deity, to suffer for millennia for their natural curiosity. If you keep reading the story, you may also notice that Adam never wakes up – humanity has been asleep to this day. We just started opening our eyes – finally waking up to the Reality that is more beautiful and amazing than any dreams we have been weaving so far. We are waking up to discover that we never left the Paradise: we live on the most beautiful planet in the Universe… God created us in His own image; We are God’s children – and His eyes and hands. We are one with Him – each of us is both One God and the only child of God – we are the greatest miracle of all! And the reason we are here is to love one another – to give and experience Love, because Love is the most wonderful thing of all.

  At our level of being, Love is best expressed by doing everything we can to help others to awaken. Paradoxically, each of us has been doing that all along – though most of us did not do it consciously.

  EVERYTHING WE DO TO OTHER BEINGS IS ALWAYS PERFECTLY LOVING, WHETHER WE KNOW IT OR NOT.

  It may be a difficult concept to understand for those who believe that certain things that happen to us are “bad” or “evil.”How can one possibly claim that rape, torture or murder are expressions of love? That sounds completely insane! Yet, if we are immortal beings and if those are the things we need to experience to awaken, we should be grateful for everything that happens to us. These things happen to us only if we did not have enough empathy and if we committed these same acts ourselves in the past. The best way to learn that certain actions do not feel good on the receiving end is to experience them ourselves. And that is exactly what has been happening: each of us has been receiving what we gave to others.

  The lesson is that each of us is totally responsible for our own experience – we need to own up everything that happens to us, instead of blaming others. Yet this is not a call for passivity, we have a right and a duty to defend ourselves when appropriate. When bad things happen to others, we should not remain indifferent, assuming that these people deserve what they got. We all have been everything one can imagine – criminals and victims, kings and beggars, Jews and Nazis and it is time to stop the spiral of insanity. The only way out of hell is to grow up and fully own our reality .

  three

  Love your God with all your heart,

  with all your soul and with all your mind.

  Love yo
ur neighbor as yourself.

  Matthew 22, 37-39

  This, so called “Golden Rule” is as much about love as it is about finding balance in our life. It is a practical prescription for lasting happiness. Ideas contained within this rule predate both Judaism and Christianity and form the core of perennial wisdom taught by almost every religion. The Dalai Lama said once that “compassion and love are not mere luxuries. As the source both of inner and external peace, they are fundamental to the continued survival of our species”.

  What does it actually mean to “love your God”? It means to love the God within you, to love yourself. We cannot love others unless we learn to love ourselves. Love in this particular instance means taking care of your own needs, taking care of you mental and physical health, growing spiritually, nurturing your creativity, being compassionate and forgiving towards yourself. Thus the first sentence of the “Golden Rule” can be read as “Love yourself with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind”. Only when we understand who is the God mentioned in the first part of the Rule, we can fully appreciate the second part, which now makes more sense: “Love your neighbor as yourself”. The same God is present within and without. The “Golden Rule” stresses the need to seek balance between loving ourselves and others. It is impossible to experience lasting happiness when our life is skewed towards either of these ends.

  At one end of the spectrum live people who completely sacrifice their lives to serve others, thus neglecting the God within. The consequence of this particular type of imbalance is profound spiritual suffering, like Mother Teresa’s. While she selflessly and lovingly took care of the sick and the destitute, she neglected to care for her own needs. Thus it is not surprising that she ended up living in a nightmarish spiritual reality: for the last half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever. That absence seems to have started at almost precisely at the time she began tending the poor and dying in Calcutta, and almost never abated. Although she was perpetually cheerful in public, her private letters reveal deep and abiding spiritual pain. She bemoans the “dryness,” “darkness,” “loneliness” and “torture” she is undergoing and compares the experience to hell and at one point even says it has driven her to doubt the existence of Heaven and God. Clearly, her life is not something that any sane person would want to emulate. The opposite end of the spectrum is inhabited by those who always choose to put their needs and desires ahead of others. Think the “powerful” of this world, the rich and the famous – the movers and the shakers who climbed to the top of corporate or political ladder, literally or figuratively leaving behind scores of “dead bodies”: exploited employees and business associates, betrayed family members and friends. Some label these ruthless people as sociopaths – since they will do anything to increase their own wealth and power in the world at the expense of others, breaking all rules and laws if necessary.