A Gift of Freedom

In this Issue

• Leaving the Past in the Past
• A Thought for Your Practice
• Honoring the Past
• Quotations

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Leaving the Past in the Past

The Holiday Season is officially on us and there are SO many ways to consider writing about this month, but I received my best present late last month. I had a conversation with someone who is very important to me for the first time in nearly 30 years. We had spoken in the past, but it was always full of trepidation, reserved and distant.

For what truly may have been the first time, we spoke to each other as people, there were some tears (predominantly of joy) and real communication and it was possible because I became aware of how much past I was projecting into my future.

As human beings it is a natural tendency for us to project the pains and hurts into the future in an attempt to protect ourselves from having to relive those feelings and situations.

An example of this I heard recently is like our love lives. The first time we fall in love, we put it all out there, we hold nothing back and eventually it usually falls apart (those who found their life mate first off officially owe the universe a big, make that huge, THANK YOU!). The next time or two we still put it all out, but after a while we begin to hold a little something back to protect ourselves. Eventually we hold more and more back and anyone who has been in relationships like this knows, it becomes detrimental in the end.

This behavior is completely natural and can also be lessened by becoming aware of it and then nipping it in the butt as it happens.

So here is the best Chanu-Kwanz-Christa-Yule gift I can think of for you this season, the knowledge that the past can be laid to rest where it belongs, in the past. This not only releases you from dragging the past along like a bag of bricks, but opens all sorts of possibilities for creating a future based on intention and not mired in the muck of yesterday.

If you have content you would like to pass along or to submit your own content, a question or comment on this newsletter, please send it to: editorial@spiritgeek.com or go to the online version of the Zeitgeist Newsletter.

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A Thought for Your Practice

It is our nature, unless we have insightful parents that have taught us otherwise to not only drag the past into the present, but use it to filter our future. We do this because it seems logical that those occasions in the past that hurt, scared or humiliated us can be avoided in the future by avoiding the "what" that caused these "bad" feelings or experiences. This is a very natural expression.

But one drawback to doing this, is we tend to become suspicious, someone says "Hi, how are you?" and we hear "OK, what does he want?"

There are more expressions of this than I could ever list, not that I really want to, but I am sure once you start looking for these, you will become aware of many expressions of this in your thoughts and life.

So here are a couple of little homework assignments:

There a two easy ways to address this that I can think of off the top of my head, both will help you.

When you find yourself limiting yourself or reacting in some way that likely makes no logical sense to you (though it often becomes self-justified over time) take a step back and look at your reaction and ask yourself "Why?" Not too much later you will start to remember times in the past when you had some experience(s) that the current issue touched on.

Look at these memories, but analyze them from the perspective of what actually happened, the historic actions alone. After you have the facts of the actions, look at how you added to it, your interpretation. For example, the facts: He did not return my call after I left a message on the voice mail. The interpretation can be just about anything, but for this example we will go with "I am not important enough for him to return my call and he does not really care about me and is only using me for something." Wow, all that from a single missed return call, but we all tend to be true drama queens inside our minds.

Now that we know what the facts are versus what we added to it, we can remove the interpretation and realign the act with the reality in one way or another. This may take a conversation in the future where you talk about all those missed calls and learn the real reason. It is possible that your assessment was right, but where would you rather live; knowing the truth or presuming the worst?

The second place to look is in the major events and traumas in our life, what did we take out of them? Once again, the process is to separate the pieces and do the same with it as we did for the above.

Once we become of how we have done this in the past, we not only bury the past where it belongs, but we can become aware of our day-to-day continuations of the process. We can stop causing ourselves unnecessary pain every day based on self created delusions. We open the possibility to create new thoughts and accurate assessments of our present. Try it...

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Honoring the Past

There is a famous quote that says: "those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it." We have been talking about revising our remembrances of the past, this in no way is to imply that the lessons we have perceived from the past are invalid.

What we are striving for is to make sure that we are learning the actual lessons and not overlaying some misinterpretation on it. In my life, I can usually find this when I notice the pattern that one misunderstood lesson comes back since I failed the class on the first (second or third and sometimes many more) time through.

I have talked about the emotions as the gage of truth, place the thought in your mind and hold it, your system will tell you the validity of it. On the more dramatic or traumatic issues this may take more time and energy, you have to get past what you have added to get to the source and these tend to be well hidden in the stories and buffers we have put around it to protect ourselves and sometimes to hide the truth away.

The secret here is to learn when we pad the facts to validate, justify or protect oneself and then not to use these as lenses by which all things come under scrutiny. The abused child can easily grow to believe that all are out to abuse them, but they can also learn that the abuser was a single individual that needed something and the abused child was the recipient. Of the above choices, which filter would you prefer perceiving your life through?

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Quotations

Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking.

Steve Jobs

The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head.

Jean Cocteau

Part of getting a second chance is taking responsibility for the mess you made in the first place.

Kiefer Sutherland
as Jack Bauer on "24"

Memory feeds imagination.

Amy Tan

Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.

Henry Ford

The memory should be specially taxed in youth, since it is then that it is strongest and most tenacious. But in choosing the things that should be committed to memory the utmost care and forethought must be exercised; as lessons well learnt in youth are never forgotten.

Arthur Schopenhauer

We tend to live in fear of the past recurring and thereby end up recreating the past that we are attempting to avoid. Remember that fear is not real, it is only in the mind. Someone once said that fear was an acronym for False Education Appearing Real.

Spiritgeek

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The Yoga of Thanks

In this Issue

• Giving Thanks
• A Thought for Your Practice
• Spiritgeek's Spiritual Calendar
• Quotations

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Giving Thanks

November is here and I am told that outside of Southern California they are having this thing called "weather." Interesting, I may have to check it out sometime...

One of the great things about starting a newsletter is that for the first year, one can pretty much say anything since one doesn't have to worry about what was written last year, gratitude given... Of course I still have to write something and I really do want it to be current, so I guess this is a great time to discuss thanks and gratitude.

I find in my own life that I can so easily forget to give thanks for what I have, they are with me every day and after a surprisingly short time they go from blessings to "just ares." It is a good idea to bring them out of the background and celebrate them for what they truly are, blessings.

Here's a short list of some of my blessings:

• My friends, the ones who help keep me sane.
• My health and its continuation.
• My awakenings, though not always loved at the moment, always turn out to be best in the end.
• My cats, they actually put up with me EVERY day, all they ask is that I feed and clean the box regularly, petting is sometimes optional and sometimes not.

If you have content you would like to pass along or to submit your own content, a question or comment on this newsletter, please send it to: editorial@spiritgeek.com or go to the online version of the Zeitgeist Newsletter.

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A Thought for Your Practice

When life gets to me, I am always SO glad when I get to that moment when enough sanity returns so that I can change the focus of my day and giving thanks for the blessings (and sometimes not so blessings) can be an amazing weapon on my way to recovery.

Changing the focus of a moment is one of the easiest tools to have in your arsenal to make a happier and more enjoyable existence. I feel really stupid when I first start, but sometimes when I am in a bad mood, I force myself to laugh at nothing, unless something presents itself, it is contagious to the emotional state, laugh and you become happy (kind of explains "Laughing Yoga").

Your emotions are the gauge by which your Spirit will often tell you if what you are creating is actually in harmony with your intent and or wishes. If your state falters from happy and fluffy, you might want to rethink what you are creating.

So here's a couple of little homework assignments:

Don't worry about what your emotional state is at every moment, but when it dawns on you that you are less than happy, take a look at it and see what is bothering you and then look even deeper to see what the real cause is. In my experience, the obvious cause is often just a symptom of the deeper issue...

If you are suffering from extremely negative emotional states or if you have the time to really analyze yourself, create a "Mood Diary." Take a notepad around with you (OK, it's a bit old school, Tweet it if you wish) and note what your state is and what you are doing and/or thinking. At the end of the day, look over what you have noted and start to see the patterns of your days. It is worth taking the moment to moment snapshots through the day, we forget SO MUCH by the end of the day, we decide it is unimportant, but at the time it was extremely important. Try it...

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Spiritgeek's Spiritual Calendar

I know that the calendar that we have on the wall starts in January, most likely based upon the Solar Year of the Sun's apparent beginnings of return as it starts it's rising in the sky towards Spring and Summer.

I sometimes think the calendar year should start on November 1^st, since Halloween is actually about Death, why not start the year on the first day of the rebirth and the American holiday of Thanksgiving would be such an awesome start of the year. Imagine if we all spent the first month of the year preparing for the "Feast of Giving Thanks" and then the following month, December, would be about the birth of the deity within each and every one of us, what a nice idea.

What would be accomplished in our lives if we were to seriously spend a month preparing to give thanks (I have noticed several stores skipping it completely and replacing the Halloween decorations with Christmas ones).

There is an old expression that "the road to Hell is paved in good intentions" but I sometimes wonder if the road to Heaven is just paved in intention itself. We have to be willing to stand up and actually take action, otherwise inertia, or the lack thereof leads us to our grave as tired "old" people.

It is through intention that we determine what we see and how we relate to it. When things go bad, search for the "gold lining," that will start you on your way to an improved vision. So my intention is to wish you a Happy New Year on this month of the Feast of Giving Thanks.

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Quotations

The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.

H.U. Westermayer

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice.

Meister Eckhart

Gratitude is the memory of the heart.

Jean Baptiste Massieu

The only difference between a rut and a grave is a matter of depth.

Spiritgeek

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Masks and Transitions

In this Issue

• Fall and Halloween
• A Thought for Your Practice
• Death: a New Perspective
• Quotations

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Fall and Halloween

October is now upon us and the seasons are beginning to show there change, yes, even here in Southern California where they say we have no seasons the trees are beginning to change, well not the evergreens and palms, but the rest.

Halloween was always my favorite holiday, even more than Christmas, though at the time I don't even think I had a clue as to why. As I have gotten older and seen the happenings of life and the lessons that I have carried along, I think a lot of my love for Halloween had to do with the costumes and the ability to do the one thing I couldn't the rest of the year, be someone or something else.

As adults, we try to have the courage to be honestly ourselves, but it is often easier to be what those around us expect. It is only natural that we want to fit-in, we want acceptance and friendship.

If you have content you would like to pass along or to submit your own content, a question or comment on this newsletter, please send it to: editorial@spiritgeek.com or go to the online version of the Zeitgeist Newsletter.

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A Thought for Your Practice

As a child, my favorite thing about October was the brisk winds and All Hallow's Eve, aka Halloween. Brought up the way I was there was always the slight idea that it was the Devil's night and Witches and Goblins were just naughty enough to get away with this one time of the year.

On this night of magic and mayhem, one could be anything they wanted. I remember the year I was dressed as my hero at the time Lt. Cmdr. Spock. My mother and I spent time finding the right shirt and pants and finally gave up on the ears but used a Sharpie to make the eye-brows (to bad they turned green almost immediately). I think this was about 3^rd or 4^th grade so we are talking about 8 or 9 years of age.

I always admired the fact that Spock attempted to fit in, controlling his emotions and living by logic at home and trying to fit in with the "illogical" humans in Star Fleet, at the end of the day, he was always true to who and what he was.

Happiness in many situations seems fleeting because we have spent so much time becoming what others expect or what we think they want that we have nearly forgotten who we really are. When we live in this prison of expectations, there is no way to avoid becoming upset when that clashes with the truth of ourselves.

So here's a couple of little homework assignments:

Whenever you find yourself wearing a mask to fit in, ask yourself if this is what you really are and if the answer is no, become aware that the stress of the situation is a choice you have made.

Except for Halloween and the occasional costume party, masks are not part of out selves and should be discarded. In many cases, this can require tremendous courage to stand up for truth. Some call it radical truth, I call it peace (at least in the long run) as that is what you will eventually gain.

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Death: a New Perspective

When people think of Halloween, the theme of death tends to come up, between skeletons and ghosts, vampires and zombies, the night has many shades (bad pun intended). Many occultists believe that the veil between this world and the next is particularly thin on this night.

When we think of death, we often view it as an ending when those of us who believe in souls could easily view it as a beginning just as easily. In Eastern Philosophy, death is viewed as a simple transition for the soul, a change of physical clothing for the most part.

We mourn the passing of our friends but I tend to rejoice in their graduation from their current class of lessons to their next curriculum. As a friend of mine used to say, funerals of for the living, the dead have enough sense not to be there.

When I do Tarot readings for the friends and clients that ask, the 13^th card of the Major Arcana usually brings fear to the person I read for as it is labeled Death and usually has a picture of the Grim Reaper on it. This card has never meant a physical death to the person I am reading for, but a situational death or transition in their lives and/or situations.

For anything new to occur, something old must pass to the wayside. Without Death the universe would end up being the junk closet of Life and its by-products.

As the Buddha said, "Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely." So live wisely and feel free to drop your fear of death. To those who know Truth, Death is nothing to worry about.

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Quotations

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

James Arthur Baldwin

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

Mark Twain

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.

Cesare Pavese

...if Death is the end, then life is pointless. But if Death is truly just a transition from one state to another and life continues in new bodies, places and/or forms, then there is a chance for justice in the universe after all. Not only would that allow for a truly gracious God, but the likelihood of validation for freedom of choice after all.

Spiritgeek

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Premier Issue

In this Issue

• Welcome to Spiritgeek's Zeitgeist
• A Thought for Your Practice
• Joy: a key to Divinity
• Quotations

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Welcome to Spiritgeek's Zeitgeist

First off, welcome to the premier of Spiritgeek's Zeitgeist Newsletter.

The Zeitgeist Newsletter is going to bring you ideas and information that you can use in your daily life to become "...where Life and Spirit become One!™" as our tagline says.

Zeitgeist is German and basically means "the spirit of the age." I think of our times as a period of transition, from often short-sighted and egocentric use of "organized" religion to the rebirth of what religion was intended to be, the rejoining of creation with the creator.

Depending on the way you measure the change of the ages, the Age of Aquarius is due to begin in just over 140 years. This new age is supposed to bring the spiritual awakening and growth of mankind.

Sadly, I suspect that it will not be an easy transition. The current age, Piscean, has manifested as one of ego, power consolidation, greed and control. I don't suspect the systems that exist are going to just give up and go quietly into the darkness of antiquity.

Fortunately, spirituality is not dependent on organized religion, but it is not anathema to it either. So many differing sources express Spirit that I do not think one will ever be able to discuss, little less study, them all.

The highest form is to find and express Spirituality from within; that is where it counts. Public shows are fine for impressing others, but for personal growth, you must find it within.

So, once again, welcome to Spiritgeekís Zeitgeist Newsletter! If you have content you would like to pass along or to submit your own content, a question or comment on this newsletter, please send it to: editorial@spiritgeek.com or go to the online version of the Zeitgeist Newsletter.

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A Thought for Your Practice

One of my teachers, Paramahansa Yogananda, wrote that we think that we get angry at others, but the truth is that what we think of as anger is actually just the reaction of fear, the fear that some wish or want of ours is about to be thwarted.

We think we are angry about the kid screaming in the market, are we not really upset that our peace has been disturbed? When we get angry at the guy who just cut you off on the freeway, are actually annoyed that he just took the place you wanted and/or deserved?

As with most things in life, the best way to learn about them is to be aware of them. So here is a little homework assignment:

Whenever you find yourself angry about something, take a moment and actually look into it and see what it is you really are annoyed with. I have been doing this for ages and have never been able to honestly find something "out there" that I was really angry at, it was always something in me.

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Joy: a key to Divinity

I recently wrote on Facebook the following questions:

What if God & Spirit are just names for that which can appreciate the joy in ALL things? What would separate us from God, our lack of willingness to see the joy?

In the Christian home I was raised in, I was taught that God was omnipotent and omnipresent, VERY big words for a young kid at the time. I didn't really understand what they meant and later I was also told that God could not be in the presence of sin.

That last one made me think since we have several examples in the Bible of that being less than accurate, talking to Adam after the "fruit" incident, the Devil making an appearance in heaven and the two having a conversation that led to poor Job's difficulties.

Later, when I learned what those big words meant, I couldn't help but wonder how I could possibly talk to God if I was the terrible sinner that I was brought up believing I was. Quite the little conundrum I had going...

When I became aware that God was the embodiment of love and joy and that all the others were man made miseries, I started to look for the joy in life and found that when I was willing, everything was joy.

When you take joy and acceptance out of the equation, you end up with judgment which means that you are devaluing that as less than this. You have laid the foundation for something to be percieved as less than joyful.

When you discern the purpose of anything, it can do nothing but bring you joy. I'll give you a quick example...

My dad and I have always had a somewhat tumultuous relationship and those who have heard me discuss it tend to immediately go into the "I'm so sorry's." Not that I could possibly have appreciated it at the time, but it was ALL of those less than joyous moments and behaviors that led me to begin the path that made me the person I have become.

Now I look back upon those moments, and though I sometimes have my resentments, they are usually replaced with a silent prayer of thanks for playing that character so well in the drama of my life.

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Quotations

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

Dr. Seuss

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.

Mother Theresa

Wander around in public and look into the faces of those you pass. What do you see? Wouldn't it be nice if the majority of people looked happy? What does that tell you about the majority? It tells me most are quite obviously looking in the wrong places for their happiness.

Spiritgeek

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