Inception: Using Illusion to Dispel Illusion

"I am here to remind you this is a dream." When Leonardo DiCaprio spoke this line of dialogue near the end of the movie, Inception, I knew this was more than another shoot 'em up summer blockbuster. Beyond the chase scenes and explosions, beyond the clever story concept of making the mind the scene of the crime, Inception does something that few movies do. It uses illusion to dispel illusion.

As all magicians know, the illusion of pulling a rabbit out of a hat is easily accomplished by drawing the eyes of the audience to the sexy woman standing next to the hat. Inception performs its magic by keeping us focused on an intricate plot, flashy locations and great acting. But the movie takes an audacious step further. It lifts the veil of illusion to reveal a deeper magic. If we have the eyes to see it, the Inception's elaborate dream reveals the dreamer. It delights the mind by uncovering the awareness behind the mind. This is the greatest magic of all, performed by the wisest and most compassionate artists, spiritual teachers and healers among us.

The first clue in the film that this hat trick is afoot is the character of the architect. Her name is Ariadne, the name of the Greek princess who gave the hero, Theseus, a golden thread to guide him through the labyrinth. Architecture, the most solid of forms, is used to experience the mind's illusions. In the film, architecture folds back on itself, portraying consciousness weaving within itself to create form. Structures unexpectedly morph from one form to another in response to the characters' shifting dreams. Buildings crumble, reflecting their crumbling beliefs.

A subtle hint that the movie uses form to point beyond form is given in the Paris classroom where the Leonardo DiCaprio character seeks out the Michael Caine character. The chalkboard behind the desk is covered with drawings of the Pantheon in Rome. This 2,000 year old building is infamous for the shaft of sunlight streaming through the single circular opening at the apex of its dome. The occulus opens the confining mass of this ancient temple to the vast freedom of the sky and the animating power of the sun. It reminds us that the purpose of the structure is to reveal the vital reality behind the structure.

Like the Pantheon, the movie uses the illusions of story structure, acting and special effects to point beyond the illusions. It entertains in ways the take us beyond entertainment. Inception plants in our minds a rare wisdom: "I am here to remind you this is a dream."

Taking Your Power Back: A Unified Approach

I'm retrieving my power again. I've done this at significant moments throughout my life. This time it's different. In the past, I imagined myself reeling in my spirit from parents, teachers, bosses and beliefs. I pulled it back from "them" into "me." My diminished self felt stronger, more focused on what I wanted to do. Then I lost power and had to retrieve it again and again.

This time, I'm recovering power from a more unified perspective. Self and Other have become varied currents moving within one field of energy. Taking back my power isn't about getting it from "them." It's seeing through the belief in "self and other" to the power that is already animating and shaping both.

Far from everything melting into one, mindless energy soup. This unified experience of power emboldens me while freeing me from threats of power in others. They don't own it and neither do I. Power is life force flowing through each and every one of us.

My access to power isn't determined by what I hold. It's determined by releasing control and opening to the torrent already rushing from life into itself. Now, my work is lovingly and wisely cooperating with raw life energy as it animates and shapes the features of my individuality. Its appreciating raw power moving and defining the features of other individuals and seeing how our interactions magnify the forms and functions of power.

Encountering abuses of power, I see Mind and Ego desperately attempting to put themselves in the driver's seat of life energy. I see the wisdom in that energy working as it rips their fingers from the steering wheel and liquefies their illusions. Instead of fighting to take my power back, I notice how the life force is directing the scene and enact my role in the unfolding cosmic drama. It's better this way.

There's a Life Waiting for You

There's a life waiting for you
just across the threshold of your fear,
just beyond what your mind can see.

This life is not about others liking you.
It's not a clever scheme to make you rich.
This life is the one true life
that's killing you not to live.

Of course it's scary to go there.
Your One True Life contains all
the power, wisdom and love
that Life wants to express through you.

You've been running from it,
but it's always out ahead of you.
Your One True Life won't go away.
It's what you are.

Of course the way gets harder
as you get closer.
There's more energy and knowledge at stake.
But, the only way to ready yourself for the task
is by doing the task.

The task is to put it all on the line.
No holding back,
no playing it safe,
no matter what others say.

The task is to live
the One True Life
that's waiting for you.

Life is a Mystery Walk

When I travel to a foreign city, I take mystery walks. I leave the guidebook and map in the hotel room, walk out the door, notice something that draws my attention such as a dome climbing skyward, a curving street lined with shops or a bridge spanning a waterway. I move toward what calls me and let the shapes, colors, textures and sounds flow into my senses. I notice how the design supports the activities of people going about their day. I scan the walls and roof eaves for carvings of human faces, animals, plants and geometric patterns. In the forms, I sense the hopes and fears of those who made them and connect with the consciousness of the past flowing through the present into the future.

I explore the first place that called me until I sense a doorway, stairway or some other feature of the city drawing my attention. I engage that place until the next place calls. Wandering from place to place, the city comes alive. It speaks to me directly without the filters of historic names and dates. I enter a personal relationship with the city, one that can’t be encountered through the screen of a guidebook or tour.

After a while, I sit at a café, park bench or stone steps of an old building. I recall the places I’ve just passed through, noticing the images and forms that figure prominently in my awareness. It may be faces or the geometry of circles carved around doorways. I might be signs in shop windows or footsteps on cobblestones. I look for threads connecting these experiences. Weaving back and forth through my awareness, a theme appears. The connecting strand could be threshold crossing, the overlap of nature and architecture, labyrinth-like movement of the path… I see how this theme relates to the questions and concerns I’m currently facing and listen for the insights and guidance it is offering.

I scan at the city before me and perceive the living, speaking consciousness interacting with itself through the people, objects, streets and buildings. I see the walk I just took as a continuation of my journey through this world and appreciate it all as one long mystery walk.

Peace: Here & Now

Within the chaos and conflict of the world, we long for peace. Often, peace is defined as some sort of compromise, some sort of restraint of natural impulses. This brand of peace is actually repression and repression breads anger and conflict and you know the rest. I've found that peace is not about comprise or repression. It's not about following rules of conduct. Here are a few thoughts about a different sort of peace, a natural one that is already here within reach.

Peace is lively stillness.

Peace is delighting in the co-existence of opposites.

Peace is seeing thoughts, words and actions as currents within the stillness you are.

Peace is experiencing birth and death as waves within stillness.

Peace is entering the silent gap within conflict and finding aliveness.

Peace is laughing about others being in conflict with what you say.

Peace is engaging Mind's role as definer of characters in the play of Life performed on the stage of silence.

Peace is honoring your role in the world play, whatever it is.

Peace is not something you achieve. It's what you are.

What is your experience of genuine peace?

Truth, Beauty & Other Random Musings

Sometimes, random thoughts connect and inspire better than well-planned essays or strict themes. Last night I let my mind wander through various subjects and recorded what surfaced. If you see a common thread, let me know.

Peace is not something you achieve. It's what you are.

In this matter of reality vs. illusion, everything is spacious consciousness, without exception.

In the matter of Truth vs. Untruth, everything is that which cannot be described.

Beauty is beyond the eye of the beholder in the silent harmony integrating all things.

Encompassing beauty and ugliness is a sublime stillness nurturing all things.

Deciphering all codes, unlocking all doors, Mind arrives at one thing: Silence.

Stillness does not erase duality. It transforms duality from division & conflict into the dynamic harmony of opposites.

Each gesture you make to transform the world infuses it with consciousness and energy.

All great transformers looked through preconceived ideas, saw what was being born & became co-creators with life.

The greatest gift you can give yourself is to let your ego's dreams become transparent to Life's dreams.

Today, as everyday for thousands of years, carpenters, stone carvers, masons, painters and others are translating dreams into material form.

Monet's brilliance was not painting water lilies in a prettier way. It was rediscovering the soul of water lilies & painting what he saw.

Imagine the moment Cezanne saw the essence of a bowl of apples, gave into that vision and transformed the way we see the world.

Shadows are withheld light. Our work is to release the light that has condensed into darkness.

Life is beautiful as it is. This is beyond Mind's ability to comprehend & heart's ability to embrace. Yet this mystery is food of the soul.

Courage to Live Your One True Life

Most of us a sense a true life breathing within the masks we employ to get by in the world. We sense an elusive force urging and guiding us toward what makes us spark with creativity and compassion. Yet, we often run from this call of the soul. Instead, we contract into what is "safe" and "prudent." We trade the fire of the gods for the predictable paycheck of mechanical routine. Opening the door of our self-created cell and walking into the true life that has been calling us takes courage. But the fearful mind can forget what real courage is. Here are a few thoughts about what that courage might be.

Courage is seeing that the "safety" of Conventional Mind is suffocating you and walking out the door into Life.

Courage is realizing you have been running from your One True Life for decades and turning to face it.

Courage is hearing the call of your soul and following it, even though the way is obscured.

Courage is moving toward your elusive dream even though you are unsure the universe will support you.

Courage is knowing that your personal dream may mean nothing to others, but pursuing it means everything to you.

Courage is demolishing your carefully crafted life to make way for real change and laughing all the way.

Courage is knowing that life is a dream while compassionately engaging the dream.

Courage is knowing Conventional Mind has proof your Soul Path is wrong and continuing to follow it anyway.

Courage is encountering to the full intensity of life and releasing the distractions Mind uses to numb it.

Courage is knowing that the only master plan that works is opening to life and take the next step.

Courage is allowing the master plan of your life to unfold in Life's way.

Sacred Space: The Womb of Creation

As much as we desire food and clothing, we seek sacred space. We may look for it in the cavern of a vast cathedral or the human scale of a bench under a tree. Yet, physical settings are merely portals to intimate encounters with something vividly real and mysteriously elusive. Here are a few sutras on sacred space that attempt to frame this wordless realm with words.

Sacred space is the stillness embracing you now.

Sacred space is the gap between two breaths.

Sacred space is the opening of each doorway you pass through.

Sacred space is the opening between hope and fear.

Sacred space is a spiral simultaneously expanding inward and outward.

Sacred space offers sanctuary to all forces and beings in creation.

Sacred space is a stillness containing all wisdom.

Sacred space is compassion.

Sacred space hovers between shadow and light, sound and silence.

Sacred space is points beyond itself to the indescribable.

Sacred space is the womb of creation.

Sacred space, moving within itself, sparks the passion of creation.

Within sacred space, life discovers its possibilities.

Sacred space is revealed where nature touches imagination.

Sacred space is found where human desire engages the desires of stones.

Sacred space ignites spirit in matter.

Sacred space is the arc of the heart intersecting the line of the mind.

Sacred space is grace.

Sacred space is the simplest of structures and an endless realm of exploration.

The Real Secret: Silence

Last night, tired and alone, Life pressed me into silence. It looked like it was going to be a dismal evening when I slipped into a calm acceptance of the situation. Then I reconnected with the unseen power of silence. With a little some reflections from my Twitter friends Linda Hollier and SnowandStars the following silent sutras floated through my awareness.

• Sometimes, a lifetime of wisdom, experience and inspiraion becomes meaningless and silence says everything.

• There is no physical silence. In an isolation chamber you will hear the blood circulating in your ears. The only true silence is in that which is aware of your thoughts, words and actions.

• Silence is always present in the spaciousness surrounding your thoughts.

• Your can always find silence in the space within your chest.

• Since silence is always present, it is not the goal of spiritual practices. Silence is the groundless ground from which all practices and creations arise.

• Silence is the womb through which everything comes into being.

• Galaxies, planets, mountains, forests, oceans, cities, bodies, thoughts and everything else all reside in silence.

• We use words to communicate, but it is silence that we truly share.

• Silence, our essential nature, is so alive and vibrant Mind cannot comprehend it.

• Across shooting stars and light years of space/time, silence already and always connects.

• Mind, encountering silence, sees its insignificance and conjures universes to obscure the intensity of silence's shimmering song.

• In the community of silence, saying nothing communicates volumes.

• In the radiant freshness of the thousand petalled lotus, all creation gathers to offer a seat for silence

• Bells ring, flutes sing, guitars wail, drums beat by vibrating silence into sound.

Mind sees silence as its greatest threat when it is everything Mind seeks.

True love is silence embracing and caressing all that is as it is.

From the "empty" space within a seed grows the whole tree.

Notice the simplest particle you can imagine—an atom, a leaf, a drop of water, a dust mote in the morning sun—and see a silent miracle.

Yes,and love is made of silence. Touching silence we touch love

Silence is the primal substance from which all forms are crafted.

Space and time have no dimensions without gaps of silence.

The architecture of the universe would be a black whole without dwelling spaces of silence.

Sound is silence shimmering through Mind.

Color is silence shimmering through eyes.

Texture is silence shimmering though fingertips.

Noise is Mind's resistance to silence.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, taking these broken wings & learn to fly. You were only waiting for this moment to arrive. Paul McCartney

The great surprise: our wounds are openings through which genuine love, wisdom and creativity enter our lives.

When life humbles us into silence, it's not so we become small. It's so the small ego transparent and silent, so the vast power and wisdom of life can pour thru.

Co-Creating with Earth

The other day, a friend pleaded with us to develop sustainable energy systems. Since Earth has been researching and developing such things for billions of years, I realized the best way to create sustainable energy systems is to learn from Her explorations and become co-creators with Her. The following thoughts came to mind.

The first step in building renewable energy systems is to get beyond human-centered mind & participate as co-creators with Earth.

The second step in building renewable energy systems is to live as nature lives, in a fluid system that makes dissolution integral to renewal.

To become a co-creator with Earth, spend time with Her, dialoguing with trees and streams, wind and rain. Listen beyond human ears with soul ears.

To co-create with Earth, let go of guilt about dwelling here. Open to silence and listen for your personal connection to dwelling wisely with land, air, plants and animals.

To co-create with Earth experience each building and object as the alchemy of nature and imagination. Then re-imagine your relationship with nature.

To co-create sustainable energy systems, notice that nature does not conserve energy. She guides its flow into continuously renewing loops.

To co-create with nature, let go of distractions. In this moment, open to Earth as the shimmering, dancing, alive being She is. Enter the dance

To co-create with Earth, become aware that we, animals plants & "inanimate" objects are expressions of soul interacting with itself. Let that awareness permeate your being. From that awareness of being act.