The Ten Suggestions, part 7

7) Be a participant, not a spectator.

This may affect the amount of TV you watch or the hours you spend at your gaming console. Some happy people watch TV, some don't. Pretty much every unhappy person I know watches a lot of TV. Life is made for relating with people, not machinery broadcasting images that someone else has chosen for you. I don't believe that what's on TV makes people unhappy, so much as they get too comfortable with the habit and don't live lives of passion and spirit. Can't think of anything? Join a dragon boat team.

The enemy is inertia. The televisory life is seductive in its ease and comfort. Most of us, myself included, have a hard time getting up from a comfy couch. So then, how do you break the inertia of your patterns of comfort?

Here's a simple reflection to keep in mind. Try it on next time you're stuck in spectator mode:

"Is the payoff I get from spectating greater than the payoff I get from participating? What is the payoff I get from spectating, anyway?"

What are some ways to begin participating in life beyond your four doors? What interests you? Many people I've met struggle even to answer that simple question. If you're willing to take some simple chances, here are some ideas:

• Buy the book, The Artist's Way, and follow the program it outlines.
• Go to a craft store like Michael's, and buy a bunch of random stuff there, and make something out of it.
• Have some friends over for dinner, and try cooking something. Stuck as to what to cook? Pancakes and bacon would be an interesting place to start, and they're easy to make. What is that I hear you say? Pancakes are a breakfast food? Oh come on. Wouldn't you rather have pancakes?
• Join Meetup.com and find some cool meetups that interest you. Start with "Anyone Can Join" if you're here in Portland, and then why not sign up for my "Spiritual Growth and Adventure" meetup?
• Got a camera? Walk around town when the light is good (dawn and just before dusk) and take pictures of stuff.

Or you could just watch TV.

The Ten Suggestions, part 6

6. Develop a daily practice.

For me, it's meditation and prayer. For others, it's art. For many, it's exercise, or taking a walk to enjoy nature. The key is same time, same place, every day. This is healing and nourishment time for your soul, and you get to determine what it looks like. Consistency within the practice (doing the same thing) should be balanced with making small changes and experimenting with new things. It should change over time or it will become stale—just as you change over time, or you will become stale.

What if you have no daily practice?

Start by setting aside a special place that you use for this activity. It could be a corner of your room, a part of your garden, your balcony. Creating an altar of some sort, and putting a few sacred objects on it, perhaps a plant or flowers, helps to set a ritual environment. If you're unsure where to begin, try a two-part yoga/meditation practice. It's what I do, so maybe I'm biased. Learn a simple yoga asana or two (I do a sun salutation) and then sit and focus on inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth. Draw long, slow breaths and exhale at the same deliberate speed. If your thoughts wander, explore the feeling behind the thought (fear? anxiety? concern?) and then locate where that feeling might live in your body. Unsure? Make it up. Then as you breathe, simply bring awareness to that part of you.

An extra hint that is very useful is to begin your meditation session with some sort of incense (such as Nag Champa, sage, palo santo, or copal—these are my favorites but any will do). It not only sets ritual space but also quickly imprints on a part of your brain that encourages meditation. Your memory of the smell will help your brain remember it's meditating, and will hasten your meditative state.

The Ten Suggestions, part 5

5. Learn that you are not your emotions.

You have emotions, but they do not define you, nor do they determine "how you are" at any given time. If they did, the human race would have perished long ago.

Although we seldom realize it in the moment, our emotions are a cocktail mixed from many spirits, including how we interpret what happened, our circumstances and how we react or respond, our biochemistry at the time—including how much sunshine and vitamin D we have going on, how much exercise and sleep we're getting, influence of caffeine and alcohol, and whether or not we're hungry or thirsty. Emotions are real, but they're not the full story. They can change on a dime in any direction.

The Ten Suggestions, part 4

3. Dispense with your God, if that God is causing you misery.

The God that most Americans are introduced to through church, media, and society, is antisocial, schizophrenic, and maybe bi-polar minus the meds. Most believers, including many who are actually happy themselves, will disagree with me vehemently.

Let me put it to you this way: Would you respect someone who claims to love everyone but would banish one of his own children to eternal misery for not returning the affection? I didn’t think so. Such a man would be petty at best and psychotic at worst. So why should I respect a God who does the same?

An otherworldly hell simply isn't compatible with the concept of love, although many believers do their level best to have this make sense somehow. A brilliant pontifical bible scholar I once knew commented that in the Bible, God never really succeeded in changing anyone when he threatened them with misfortune, but when he promised them life, they came in droves. Face it: Unless we learn otherwise, we project the wounded, unconscious masculine identity onto God. It’s all around us—it’s insidious, it’s pervasive, and it plays to the darkest impulses of our human nature. It’s that notion that we somehow more “right” than another group of people because we understand God and they don’t. How many lives lost and souls destroyed over this premise?

A wise rabbi, when confronted by atheists who told him, “Rabbi, I don't believe in God,” would always reply, “Which one?” If you wish to get to know the Divine on the Divine's terms, it would be a good idea to start with this: God is love. Explore love in all its forms, meanings, and nuances. Learn by doing. Make love your life’s study, and you will learn more about God than most people in the history of humanity.

A grown-up God for grown-up people
Do you ever find yourself praying for stuff for yourself or for changes in your circumstances? Perhaps most of us do sometimes. But God is not Santa Claus, rewarding you with favor for bribing him with good behavior, faith, or even “The Secret.” I heard another rabbi say that God put us in a physical universe and we are subject to its laws. So when hard times come, it is not for us to say, “Why?” but rather, “What now shall we do?” If you want God to answer your prayers powerfully, ask God to break your heart with compassion, or ask God to show you ways to serve those who need you. Both of those, incidentally, will lead to happiness, if not deep contentment. Yes, I think God has a sense of the ironic.

This “radical love God” takes more courage to follow and believe in than the other ones. Cynics, take note.

Certainly many people are happy if not content despite their religious beliefs, which are otherwise inconsistent with the way they instinctively know to love. (And I'm not speaking of those soul-dead parents who would disown their children because they're gay or for having an inter-racial relationship.) This is demonstrative of the fact that there are many ways to be happy, inconsistencies are allowed, and that this list does not equal the 10 Commandments, but rather 10 Suggestions.)

As always, pick the ones that work for you. Your mileage may vary. Six more to come.

Welcome and congratulations, Anne Rice!

Dear Anne,

I know it was a tough decision on your part to leave the Catholic Church—one filled with grief and controversy.

I made the same choice in 2000, and let me tell you, it has worked out well for me. It will work out well for you, too.

One thing I have found since leaving is that I've been free to explore truth on its own terms—truth as it lives in my heart, mind, and body, and not truth as it lives in the retelling of successions of celibate men cloistered in a city-state in the middle of Italy, who as a whole, know little of such greatness and power as can be found in women, in sexuality, in creativity, in self-expression, in risk-taking, and rule-breaking. Take these things away from a man's experience, and you don't have much of a man.

Like you, I was disconcerted about the role of the bishops in fighting Proposition 8, as well as the rising tide of neo-conservatism in the Roman Catholic Church. I don't know about you, but I knew the church was pretty much doomed for awhile when Josef Ratzinger ascended the throne of Rome and became Pope Benedict XVI. The furtive and lackluster response to the sexual abuse scandals seemed both the last nail and a seal of Crazy Glue around the lid of the coffin, in which lies the church's moral authority in the modern age.

I know you will miss liturgical and sacramental life, as you indicated on NPR the other day. But now that you are on the other side, you may find that Christ has walked down many roads blocked off by today's Christian Church, and made his home there. Christ was a rule-breaker, an iconoclast, a trouble-maker, and an unreasonably compassionate and passionate lover. His public love and respect for women was a scandal, and is such a scandal today that the church has presented an "impostor Christ" to worship, a watered-down version of the original, who somehow cares more what people do behind closed doors than what happens when they have closed hearts.

Now that you no longer have Benedict to answer to (as if you ever really did), I encourage you to explore some progressive theologians. My favorite is Albert Nolan, who wrote Jesus Before Christianity, a brilliant book that I hope you will read.

I have grown and seen so much, Anne, since I left. I love God and appreciate Christ more than I ever did as a Christian, and as a Catholic. You will too. You probably know this though.

Thank you for being luminous and courageous.

The Ten Suggestions, part 3

3. Explore your spirituality

For now, forget every definition of spirituality you've ever heard before, and try this one: Spirituality is the way that the Divine, or whatever eternal, formless or formful essence you may or may not believe in, woos your soul. What woos your soul? Truth? Beauty? Virtue? Love? Family? Adventure? NASCAR? If it penetrates your being and gets to the middle of you, consider that it's the Divine getting your attention in the way that only it can. Not sure what gets to your soul? Start with your imagination. What fascinates or interests you? Start there. If nothing interests you, I don't believe you. But if so, it might be a good idea to see a therapist, but run the other way if the first thing he or she does is suggest drugs.

This insight about the nature of spirituality came to me at Burning Man some years ago when I struck up a conversation with a woman. We were both gazing at works by artist Alex Grey, and I was sharing with her some of my spiritual adventures originating from my travels on the shamanic path. She sadly said to me, "I wish I had a spirituality like you, but I don't." I asked her what made her happy, and she told me with profound appreciation about the joy she gets from her family and friends. They meant everything to her. It came to me to say to her that her family and friends are her spirituality. Through them, she experiences God. She started crying with joy, and suddenly I knew that what I had said was even more true than I knew it to be.

So that's why I ask you: What woos your soul? Give your life to it. Marry it. If that seems like a bit much, at least take it out for coffee once or twice a week, for the love of all that is good and decent.

Don't just have a spirituality. Explore it. Revel in it, linger with it as you would your lover's body. Smell it, taste it, savor it. Wrestle with it. Go deep with it, go shallow with it. Laugh with it and laugh at it. The allow it to laugh at you. If you cannot find humor in it, then either it's not your spirituality or you're not looking at it openly and honestly.

I know that many people today don't even know what interests them beyond whatever pop culture feeds them and bores them with nightly. If this sounds like you, check in with yourself. Are you happy with that? Does it literally bring you joy and give you energy to reach for that remote? If so, awesome. If not, then you have some exploring to do. As I said before, start with your imagination. Travel magazines and National Geographic are good places to start.

The Ten Suggestions, part 2

Get related to your body.

Start with moving it. Although exercise doesn't cause happiness, it's a major contributing factor. I heard of a study in which the anti-depressant Zoloft was tested against an exercise regime in a group of clinically depressed subjects. After a certain time, the results were the same, but going forward, exercise surpassed Zoloft's effectiveness. Your mood improves when the energy within your body is moving. Dance, jogging, yoga, tai chi, martial arts, gym workouts, walking, hiking, biking, swimming, etc. are all good. I'm partial to ecstatic dance. Opportunities to learn ballroom dancing, salsa and tango abound here in Portland and probably in your city too. Learning to use your body, take the next steps, which are enjoying and loving your body.

Next, enjoy your body. Experience pleasure. Don't be a slave to it, but definitely serve it. Don't skimp out. The whole point of having a body is to enjoy it, and use it for good. What is good is something that you get to determine. Want to stay unhappy? Then believe what other people say about what pleasures you should and shouldn't experience. (Note: your pleasure should never come at the expense of someone's well-being, including your own.) If you find yourself stumped, experiment with dark chocolate, massage, and burying your face in a large rose for starters.

Then love your body. Appreciate it for what it provides for you: eyesight, transportation, pleasure, opposeable thumb use/grasping, hearing music, and myriad other things we take for granted. Don't compare your body to anyone else's. You will, but just forgive yourself and return to appreciating what you have and taking good care of it.

The relationship one has to one's body could be likened to that of a trainer to a racehorse. In the horse race, rider and horse become one. And the horse will win, or at least compete well, if it's fed well, rested, pampered, and allowed to run. Horses love to run.

What does your body love?

And don't forget: LISTEN to your body. And by this I don't mean simply the growling and gurgling sounds that come from your belly when you're hungry. Your gut has wisdom. Do you feel tension down there? Do you feel gusto down there? People who do not listen to what their guts are telling them about their lives wind up with gut problems—physical ones. Your gut has information about what to do for yourself and others, whom to love, whom to leave, what is your truth, and what is your lie. It may take some time to sit with and sort out when the mind and heart are also involved in the conversation. When in doubt, trust your gut.