I had a significant loss yesterday.  Chispa, my beloved friend and companion for several years, was staying at her country home.  Frightened by the noise, she ran off in the thunderstorm and got lost.  Nightfall came and I think she was taken by a pack of coyotes.  Here she is the day before playing with the cat.  It is a precious clip and I am thankful to my friend for taking it.

I am feeling a little lost myself today.  Many thoughts and feelings disturbing my peace of mind.  I remind myself that such mental afflictions can only arise if I am focused on a misbelief.  This is an opportunity to root out more of them, but somehow I do not have the strength.

Instead, I am practicing being in the moment.  My deep tears and anguish come when I am not in the moment.  My mind drifts to the past to figure out how to change this moment.  Complete lunacy, but that is what we do.  Sometimes it wants to deny my inner knowing that she is dead.  I continually push aside the thoughts and the story.  I allow my feelings, but am aware that I can only experience grief when I hold the illusion of loss.  This human condition is indeed strange.

What’s right about this that I am not getting?

I was reflecting this morning on how I ended up here in Phoenix.  The decision was made while lying under a pine tree at a park on Crab Cove in Alameda.  I was chanting the Padmasambhava Mantra (although I didn’t know it had a name back then) when there was a glorious shift in energy.  In that moment I understood I had to return to Arizona to pursue a closer relationship with The Asian Classics Institute.  The realization was a combination of what occurred in that moment along with supporting evidence from dreams I’d been having.  Back in those days I called this divine guidance.

These days, I don ‘t look at it the same way.  Last year I had an experience that made me realize what I was calling divine guidance was simply different aspects of my mind.  And those aspects of mind do not always have my highest good in mind.  This wasn’t an intellectual discovery, but a realization of truth.  Realizations are hard to convey to others, since people just start to think about them.

For instance, many of us have heard the fact that solid matter is really just 99% space.  This means that it isn’t really as “solid” as we think.  Now, if I have the realization that solid matter is mostly space, I would be able to walk through walls.  Do you see the difference?  A realization, in the way I am talking about it, changes things.  An idea or understanding doesn’t have that power.  If I tell someone I have realized that matter is mostly space they will want to talk about it (or they won’t be really interested).  Yet, what I’m trying to convey is that I can walk through walls.

What I realized last year was that a fundamental aspect of my spiritual path does not exist.  There is no spirit in my spirit-driven life.  My intuition is clouded by karmic firings of my brain.  When I am attracted to something it could very well be because I have unresolved issues.  This realization rocked my boat a little, but it is indeed one step closer to freedom.

I’ve been seeing this a lot in my consulting practice lately.  People come in with mental afflictions they want relief from.  The mental afflictions appear to be in reaction to their relationships with parents, friends, partners or children.  When I start digging around they claim past life connections with the people involved in these situations.  People often have vows, oaths, and/or debts that they don’t realize.  It is these that are actually driving their reactions and actions.  Once they are released from these obligations, they are free to be in the present with these people.  Fears, anger, and dysfunctional patters just fall away.

I am reminded of a story where the Buddha was doing this same kind of work with a young man.  My version of the story goes like this.  The young monk saw a young woman on the street and could not get her out of his mind.  He goes to the Buddha to be released from his monk vows so he can pursue her.  The urge is so strong, he is sure it is his destiny.

The Buddha show the young man two of his past lives.  In one he is a deer and because of his attraction to this female he is killed by a hunter.  In the other tale he is a fish and because he blindly follows her he ends up in a fisherman’s net while she escapes.  He tells him this is just two of many lives he has ended up dead because he has pursued this same woman.  His desire is not destiny, but just a continuation of the same habitual pattern.

If I was doing ThetaHealing with this monk, I might check to see if he has the vow or belief that he has to give his life for this woman.  He might have made this vow in a past life in a moment of extreme passion, and now it is showing up in a convoluted manner.  If we remove the vow, he might find that the strong urge to be with her just drops away.  The Buddha’s approach is cognitive behavioral approach.  My approach is to cut away the root of the desire.

This is how it goes: someone comes to me with unusual fear regarding a loved one and the fear is telling them something bad is going to happen to their loved one and that they will “die” if this occurs.  Instead we find that fear is based on an unattainable goal that says “I must protect them”.  Once the belief is removed they experience peace.  They can then choose how to be in relationship to that person.  The little mental potential that has been driving their actions and emotions has been destroyed.

Next time you think, “This is my karma, my destiny, my fate, or the divine’s will for me.”  consider the possibility that you are being driven by some old habitual pattern.  Consider the questions:

• What is for my highest good, given my current goals?
• Could this be a habitual pattern or reaction motivated by my long dead past?
• What could I be choosing if I didn’t choose this?
• How did I create this?

Some urges do serve our purpose.  Only you can determine what is best for you.  The answers are within you.  However, even when you get an answer, it only is applicable for that moment.  Keep asking the questions in each moment and avoid locking yourself into a conclusion.