Author: joseph mauricio

Posted on by joseph mauricio

BELONGING

Turning Loneliness Toward Aloneness

 

Everybody wants to belong. That drive, a primal self-defense embedded deep in our psychology, is so strong that when we don’t belong to something it feels empty and frightening. We often interpret that as a failing on our part. Hence, for some of us, being alone is torturous. I would fill up the space with an overactive brain. I have a joke I tell that every sexual encounter I’ve ever had was a threesome: me, my partner, and my brain.

I was the eldest child, and the oldest of my closest cousins. My affinity was for adults, and I had a mild disdain for other kids. Like a lady cat who feels affection for her owners, but has no time for other animals. Hence, I spent a lot of time with the ladies in the kitchen or alone in my room. My mom said I would “explode,” making screaming crowd noises when I imagined myself leading a rock band, or make bomb noises exploding when I was leading troops into battle. I would be the hero, have no fear, and experience no pain. I learned to find some simple genius in my room and occupied the space that otherwise so frightened me. I carried that soothing albeit violent noise around my head growing up, never understanding the life I was missing.

In time, that nagging sense of missing out on something led me to search for meaning, belonging, or anything that might calm the scratchy uneasiness I felt. I would sit in bookstores and thumb through books from Crowley to Ram Dass. I tried meditation in many traditions. At the Zen Center, I was asked to sit in the hall because I couldn’t sit still.

Eventually I came across the work of Chogyam Trungpa. The fact that he was rather infamous appealed to a rebellious part of me that feared indoctrination. Discovering meditation gave me a way of filling that inner space with experiential learning.

My inner conversations began to turn from entertaining myself toward personal development. I was still filling up space, but now I had something useful to tell myself. Trungpa made a distinction between loneliness and aloneness. Loneliness was a suffering ego state, that was so narrow we were not accepted and had no place to belong. Ego had grown too inflamed to fit anywhere, and hence I was never feel comfortable in the ordinary space of life. “I don’t belong here” might have been less about others looking down on me, bullying me, or not accepting me, and more about me trying to bully myself into being more than I needed to be. Maybe I didn’t belong because I was trying so hard to be accepted.  Maybe I had forgotten how to be who I was.

Or maybe I never knew. Maybe none of us do. Perhaps the only ones who feel comfortable in themselves are those who aren’t looking. I loved the scene in Annie Hall when Woody Allen wonders why some people seem so together and decides to ask a beautiful couple passing on the street. “What’s your secret?” he asks. They stare blankly back, blink, shrug and say that they are simply vapid and superficial.

So are we destined to writhe in the turmoil of unsettled being or simply check out and join a cult? Many people driven by the insecurity of loneliness join movements led by charismatic figures who seem to supply them with the confidence they lack. That dynamic becomes heightened when the leader points to those we should blame for our woes. Once we have the bogey people, we can feel united with others in our ire. People lacking in self-acceptance and awareness are ripe to be led. The drive for acceptance is so strong we will sell our souls to feel united.

Thank goodness for the congenitally cynical. A slogan posted at Trungpa’s center said, “A healthy distrust of the rules will bring success.” He didn’t encourage anyone to be a joiner. He didn’t expect anyone to believe what they did not discover for themselves. Meditation, free of manipulation, is pointing to what is already there, not making shit up to make us feel better. Tara Brach teaches about “radical acceptance” — accepting the shadow, the doubt, the fear, and the loneliness.

Accepting loneliness means we can rest in our unease without trying to fix it. When we are able to rest in the places we are less comfortable, when we are less willing to throw ourselves away just to belong, we begin to really know ourselves. Loneliness becomes aloneness. Aloneness is a space of self-acceptance. When we accept ourselves, our ego can relax and become less inflamed. Then there is more space for everything else — for everyone else. People have room to be themselves instead of feeling coerced. Self-acceptance allows others to feel less pressured and more inclined to accept us. Ironically, the crippling need to be accepted had become an obstacle to acceptance.

Once free of the need to occupy myself, once I was willing to accept me and the moment I was in, once I loosened the grip of needing acceptance from others, I found I could make decisions for myself. If I was wrong, then it was mine. Nothing is set in stone except our gravesites.

The fact is we were born alone despite all the fuss around us. And we will die alone despite all the fuss. If we accept being alone, we can become free of the crippling need to belong to anything just to be part of something. Then I think it’s possible to become part of everything.

Or, like Buddha’s hot dog — one with everything.

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

EINSTEIN’S BRAIN

Building the Brain’s Neuroplasticity and Connectivity Through Meditation

 

After Einstein’s passing in 1955, the pathologist performing his autopsy quietly removed his brain. When researchers eventually examined it, they expected something extraordinary—more neurons, unusual size, some physical marker of genius. But by all conventional measures, Einstein’s brain was unremarkable. The one meaningful difference was the density and organization of his neural connections, particularly those supporting information processing and communication between the hemispheres. His brain was wired for unusually high interneural integration and conceptual thinking.

Einstein’s brain was structurally similar to ours, but his unique relationship to learning allowed him to cultivate an exceptional degree of openness and connectivity. The brain is not fixed; it changes in response to experience. Through meditation, we deliberately train the mind toward greater receptivity, presence, and spacious awareness. In Shambhala teachings, we practice opening our senses to awaken the mind and connect with the world as it is. This very act forms new neural pathways that keep the mind vibrant, youthful, and capable of creative insight. Zen Master Suzuki Roshi simply called this “beginner’s mind.”

Despite his groundbreaking discoveries, Einstein remained approachable and playful. He had a sense of humor and was able to speak with anyone—children, workers, scholars—without losing the depth of his insight. This mirrors how the Buddha was described: someone who could address a child, a soldier, and a priest in the same teaching and reach all of them. The Buddha’s brain was just like ours. What differed was how he trained his mind to rest in profound openness. Our basic human mind is already capable, but like Einstein and the Buddha, we can cultivate that capacity through practice.

Einstein didn’t possess more brain power—he used his brain differently. The most striking discovery from the neuroscientific studies of his brain was a thicker corpus callosum, the band of white matter that connects the left and right hemispheres. If we imagine the brain as a city, the gray matter represents the neighborhoods where different types of processing occur, and white matter represents the roads and highways that allow those neighborhoods to communicate. Most of us work with a handful of small roads. Einstein had an eight-lane expressway. He didn’t have more “buildings”; he had better “roads.”

And those roads didn’t appear by accident. Connectivity grows through use. Structure invites capability. Use builds mastery.

Einstein didn’t become a genius by thinking harder. He created conditions in which insight could emerge. His creativity came not from grinding thought, but from spaciousness. He often took long, aimless walks, allowing his mind to wander. Neuroscience now recognizes that this activates the brain’s Default Mode Network, the system responsible for daydreaming, imagination, memory integration, and spontaneous insight. Rest isn’t the absence of thought—it’s the space in which new connections form.

He also engaged in elaborate visualizations, conducting what he called “thought experiments.” He imagined riding alongside a beam of light long before he developed mathematical models. Imagination preceded analysis. And he valued downtime. “I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me,” he once said. Stillness was not avoidance—it was incubation.

Meditation develops these same capacities. We don’t meditate to stop thought. We meditate to stop chasing thought. Meditation allows us to step back and recognize the patterns of our thinking rather than getting lost in their content. It doesn’t change our genetic blueprint, but it optimizes the connectivity that already exists. Through consistent practice, the mind becomes more spacious, more flexible, and more capable of creativity and insight.

Neuroscientific research confirms that meditation produces measurable shifts in the brain. It increases white matter and strengthens communication between hemispheres. Creativity and clarity begin working together. The prefrontal cortex—associated with executive function—coordinates more efficiently with regions involved in imagination and visual-spatial reasoning. The mind becomes more integrated.

Meditation is not about quieting the mind. It is about opening awareness. It is not about forcing insight. It is about creating space for insight.

You do not need Einstein’s brain. You already have the same basic architecture. What matters is how you use it. With presence, spaciousness, and a willingness to return to beginner’s mind, you can cultivate the connection and creativity that lead to genuine insight.

Meditation builds connection.

You just need enough silence for your own breakthrough to arrive.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

WE HAVE EACH OTHER

When We Give Ourselves

Giving of ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of ourselves for another’s sake. What can we offer if we have nothing to give? Perhaps it’s about loosening our grip so we can offer everything. And by offering everything, we lose nothing — we gain everything. It’s like opening our hands, our arms, our heart to another. It means releasing our defensive, me-first nature and connecting as equals, discovering strength together.

Clinging to ourselves or others is a symptom of panic and fear. We often believe that letting go — of our defenses, or even of someone we love — will leave us empty. But when we release our grip, our panic, our hoarding of self, we uncover what we truly are. We think nothing will remain — but we’re wrong. Everything remains.

Caring for others doesn’t diminish us; it empowers us. We access and strengthen our natural confidence by giving to others. From Buddha’s perspective, this isn’t self-abandonment but the softening of our defenses so we can truly see another — what they need, and how we might help. Yet this requires strength. Compassion is not submission; it’s a dynamic, equal relationship.

Countless songs, stories, and films tell us another person is “everything” to us: You are the sun and the moon. You are all I need. Beautiful, yes — but also red flags. If you are nothing without me, what can you offer me? How can love be mutual if it isn’t equal?

When under pressure — attacked, afraid, or exhausted — our instinct is to inflate ourselves in defense. But that self-inflation closes us off. We may feel we have nothing to give, yet what we can always offer is connection — even in asking for help. When we hold each other in hardship, we discover mutual strength. When we’re pushed to the wall, we can let the wall hold us and still reach out to hold another.

There are countless stories of people once in conflict who, through shared adversity, forged deep bonds. One photograph shows a fawn and a kitten cuddling — found by firefighters after a blaze. The image is both heartbreaking and heartwarming. Perhaps that’s the synthesis: heart-opening.

Our hearts break just enough to crack our defenses, allowing connection. That being — holding us in turmoil — touches our heart as we touch theirs. This goes beyond gender, religion, culture, or attraction. It’s the raw human pulse beneath all that.

You could say our world is at a crisis point — and all we truly have to rely on is each other: our hearts, hopes, dreams, and shared aspiration to live with kindness and respect.

If we want a world of kindness, we can’t wait for others to model it. Nor can we carry it alone. Compassion is a mutual agreement among beings.

Buddhist compassion asks us to look beyond labels and see the truth at the heart of being. What makes us human, animal, alive — part of this planet — isn’t hatred, fear, or violence, even for survival. Our survival depends on union and communication.

Benjamin Franklin said, “If we don’t hang together, surely we will hang separately.”

At the root of compassion, in the heart of the Mahayana tradition, lies the knowing that our heart is vast, capable, and strong. Our limits are not imposed by others or society — they are imposed by our belief in those limits.

When we trust the vastness of our heart, extending it to others becomes natural. And necessary. We have the freedom, power, and strength to do so — not for reward or debt, but for shared survival.

This isn’t a power play. It’s an act of mutual care that may be accepted or misunderstood. Still, we return to letting go — not discarding anything, but keeping the heart of kindness intact. Letting go of the outcome. Letting go of ourselves — not to diminish, but to open, open to the sadness and the joy, the beauty and the dross, the fear and our bravery in the face of it all.

We don’t need to put others down to lift ourselves up, nor shrink to help anyone rise. The weak claw their way over others; fomenting hate to get ahead.  True strength comes from openness — from seeing ourselves in one another.

And our bravery in the face of it all.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

THE UPSIDE DOWN

When the Universe Falls on Your Shoulders

That feeling of overwhelm — when everything seems to reach critical mass — is unsettling. Yet it can also be an invitation: a chance to practice mindfulness within crisis, not apart from it.

Often, what we call a “crisis” is simply too many things happening at once for us to navigate. This makes it hard to see what’s what. The pressure compounds because in the mess there are always few tasks that must get done — or else they might turn into a crisis. Letters unopened, emails unread, a bed unmade, laundry spilling over the hamper like it’s coming to get me. Most of this happens in a dimly lit room — and somehow this feels heavier on a beautiful day. It’s as if I’ve come to resent the sunlight.

Maybe that’s a New York thing.

I once heard a story about the Ramones’ first trip to California — they bought umbrellas. People laughed and said, “It doesn’t rain that much here,” and they said, “No — they’re for the sun. We can’t go back with tans; that would ruin us.” Everyone seems slimmer, happier, more functional — while I’m here staring at a pile of papers, an inbox full of needs, and laundry whispering my name. My throat tightens; my shoulders rise. It feels like I’m living in The Upside Down — to borrow from Stranger Things.

This “upside down”  might a self-imposed form of defense, as though chaos is our invisibility cloak. But the more we hide, the more life keeps calling from outside the door, and the higher the piles get, the more overwhelmed we feel.  Avoidance doesn’t stop the demands of living. It just enables more pressure.

So, how does anyone seeking balance, keep their sanity when life feels like it’s closing down on us from all sides?

Before any tasks are attempted it’s important to eliminate what we don’t need. Self-recrimination, distraction, longing looks out the window.  Let’s turn toward the chaos, so we can navigate a way through it.

 

R A I N

One helpful approach is the RAIN method:

R — Recognize that life has become unmanageable.

A — Accept that this may stem from a lack of mindfulness or attention.

It’s been said that the only real mistake we make is failing to pay attention — because if we’re truly present, we have the capacity to meet whatever arises.

The less attention we give, the more pressure builds, and the less capable we feel.

I — Investigate what’s happening. Sometimes that simply means doing one small thing to get started. Maybe its triage, just creating a list of things we need to address in descending order.

I once had a coach who told me, “Today, just organize your paper clips. Nothing else.”

That’s from Kaizen — a Japanese method of steady improvement. It’s based on the idea that we aren’t failures; we just haven’t yet learned to succeed. We don’t accomplish what we wish to because we’ve never learned how to look.

And finally, N — Non-identification through Nurturing. Don’t take the overwhelm personally. It’s not a verdict on your self-worth. It’s not a punishment. It’s just a state that we can see best by stepping back and taking a clinical view.

What can I do now?

In an advanced coaching seminar, my assigned mentor asked, “What are your goals?” I said, “I just want to be competent.” He frowned and pushed for a grander ambition. But honestly, that was it. I had come to see that chasing something “grand and wonderful” often creates more pressure — more weight — and keeps me from seeing the ordinary, manageable things right in front of me.

It is said that people tend to overestimate what they can do in the short term and underestimate what they can do in the long term. The antidote to both is simple: take the pressure away. Pressure is not conducive to mindfulness. Mindfulness is essential for competence and simple competence is what builds the confidence to learn more.

Learning more about our unmanageability does not require unpacking the labyrinthine motives of  self-sabotage. We can just acknowledge a manageable problem and begin to take the simple steps toward it – instead of pulling away from it.

TRIAGE

So, we’re talking about a kind of triage for our lives — a way to sort what’s essential from what’s noise. Much of what overwhelms us is self-recrimination: “I should be walking more… I should be meditating longer… I should be better by now.” We seem to love piling on and then feeling incapable because we can’t see our way clear. “Unless I can do it all perfectly, it’s not worth doing at all.” We’re trying to comb through the chaos and still having conversations with our parents in our head. Just stop. Be a scientist. Let all the unnecessary voices go. Maybe we can figure it all out. But what can be done now?

We can love ourselves now. We can encourage ourselves to regain mindfulness.

The first priority must be our own well-being — physical, mental, spiritual. Without that, mindfulness itself becomes hard to reach. So start small: ten minutes of meditation, then look at the work you wish to accomplish and break it down.

What can I do today? How can I prioritize the tasks?  Then break it down. If you’re like me it’s too much, so break it down. Do less so you can learn to do it better.

One task at a time. One breath at a time. Learn how to accomplish less right now, so you can accomplish more over time. Breath  And let all the unnecessary judgment fall away. Self-punishment doesn’t motivate; it corrodes. We don’t need to prove our worth by suffering harder.

Feel your body. Tension doesn’t help. It never helps.

Breathe. You’re a human. Treat yourself with respect. Pull away and go back. Find your flow and since you’re so expert at avoidance, avoid all tomorrow’s tasks, so you can learn to work with what is here now.

Then the Upside Down begins to turn right-side up again.

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

PUSHING BACK WITH LOVE

The Power of Love to Heal a Broken World.

If we’re unhappy with who we are, how we are, or the world we live in, we must first see our situation clearly before anything can change. The first step is recognition—knowing what’s happening and seeing that whatever arises externally in the world is echoed within our own hearts and minds. This isn’t to say we align with the hatred, bigotry, or aggression around us, but that all of those forces reside in every human being. They’re activated whenever we give them credence, become trapped in their logic, and start believing in the power of hate.

Hating those who hate is a vicious loop—like Ouroboros, the mythical snake eating its own tail. There is no fruit in hatred, no matter how justified it seems. Justification often leans on logic, and logic is easily skewed to support beliefs. If we can’t fully trust the news or the internet, we certainly can’t blindly trust the internal arguments we build to justify anger. We don’t have to clear all darkness within us before trying to change the world, but we do need to acknowledge that we’re all prone to aggression. Those who promote love aren’t free of hate; they’ve learned to see it and step beyond it.

Fear, hatred, and anger are natural human responses—especially in times of struggle. The warrior principle says we can recognize, accept, and then move beyond these reactions of body and mind. I’m depressed—I see that and accept it, but I’m not limited by it. I’m angry—I understand that, but I don’t have to react to it. I can use it as fuel. I’m frightened—seeing that offers power, for how often have my mistakes and aggression been rooted in fear? By noticing fear, even when subtle, and looking into our behavior, we can use it as a stepping stone through the doorway of clarity and compassionate action. Our afflictions may lie dormant and still affect the world, or we can push them away as beneath our virtuous image, or act them out and create more aggression. But there’s another way: accept the feeling and step beyond it.

How do we do this? With love. By recognizing a problem and accepting it, we can look into it and see what motivates it underneath. Then we can affect change through positive means. Positive actions don’t create karma in the same way negativity does. They are steps toward healing, requiring patience, perseverance, and the softening of ego. Negative karma happens instantly—when we lash out in anger before seeing or feeling the situation, we open ourselves to resistance and create more hatred. When we recognize and accept the problem, look under it, and see the forces at play, we find common ground with aggressors. By accepting their behavior as human and historically repeated, we create an opening for change.

Compassion takes many forms. I think of a video of a baby bear running along a highway against a guardrail, its mother on the other side. When she had the chance, she grabbed the cub and yanked it over the rail, tossing it into the woods. It wasn’t gentle, it wasn’t sweet.it wouldn’t show up on a cute animals video, but it was compassionate—she did what was needed to protect her child. Compassion manifests in many ways, like Avalokiteshvara with 10,000 arms, each representing an expression of love. So when faced with aggression, soft, sweet love may not be our best approach. But reacting from righteousness—believing we’re right and others are wrong—locks us back into hatred devouring itself. We must step back, release panic and inner aggression, accept what’s happening, and look beneath it for energies that can meet in real communication.

Whether soft or fierce, quiet or loud, compassionate action is effective because it’s not a reaction from the lower mind, but a higher power within us radiating healing as best it can. Our work is to step beyond personal aggression and communicate clearly with the world.

Retreat is not surrender. Surrender is not defeat. Defeat is not the end. The end is only a beginning. By surrendering our point of view, anger and hatred, we are able to face the world and see clearly what the most effective way of healing our broken world. That’s love, in whatever form it takes. And love is the most effective step toward change.

By looking at the world, we are showing we care. We are not abandoning it. By acknowledging our own doubt, we can step toward healing. Our work is to persistently, doggedly, continually, push back against hatred with love, humor, and kindness.  Our only justification being that this is the best thing to do.

Perhaps it’s the only thing to do.

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

FEELING THE FEELS

Learning to Work with Emotions

The idea of the “inner child” may sound simplistic, but it gestures toward something true about being human: our emotional life is often far less sophisticated than our thinking mind wants to understands. The intellect would rather manage, dismiss, or reinterpret emotion than feel it directly. But like any child, our emotional world doesn’t grow through suppression—it responds to being seen, accepted, and guided with care.

When people hear the word emotion, you can practically watch them contract. Some get sad, some start overthinking, some feel perplexed, as if feeling were a foreign language. I have a brilliant tech-minded friend who looks at emotions the way I would look at a confusing line of code—she identifies so strongly with her mind that her feelings get overridden. But when we ignore or exile what’s happening inside, our “inner child” doesn’t disappear; it acts out in subtle or hidden ways. We go on pretending we’re sunning on some Malibu beach while a storm is quietly raging in the background.

Although sunshine seems appealing, humans cannot live by beach alone. And those that do, find ways to challenge the beach, such as surfing, deep sea exploration or operating a cabana. But the most successful surfers have real love, acceptance and understanding of the waves. This deep connection is not intellectual, it a felt sense. One doesn’t think their way through riding a wave. That would be a sure way to crash. As the song goes’ “ya gotta feel it.” Maybe when our emotional state crashes it’s because we are thinking rather than feeling our feelings.

Working with emotions doesn’t require a degree. Emotions don’t need to be traced back to their original parents before we’re allowed to meet them. Therapy can be valuable for history and context, but meditation begins in the immediacy of now: What am I feeling? Can I acknowledge it? Can I allow it? The practice is less about solving and more about connecting.

One skillful way of doing this is the RAIN process: Recognize, Accept, Investigate, Nurture, which naturally leads to non-identification. Recognition is like taking a snapshot—you see the child as they are in this moment without insisting they be otherwise. Acceptance is the simple bravery of letting the experience exist without making it bigger or smaller than it is. In loving-kindness practice, this is like the first soft smile before compassion opens.

After being seen and accepted we can investigate. Meditators do this by looking into their present experience. Not with analysis, but with curiosity, with feel, just as an improvisational jazz player feels their way through music. Trungpa Rinpoche spoke of “feeling the feeling” fully, letting it be absorbed and digested until it becomes nourishment rather than poison. If we attempt to push our feelings away, or cling to them with tight identification, emotions are prone to the poisonous.  The nurturing in RAIN isn’t coddling—it’s intimacy. When we let the energy of a feeling move through without argument, we can allow it t nurture and enrich us. And we don’t need to keep identifying once it passes. There was anger and now it’s gone. Suzuki, Roshi said his anger was like a comet scorching across an otherwise open sky.

Emotions rarely respond to logic. Reasoning with fear is like telling a frightened child there are no monsters, or instructing a dog to let go of a stick because it has no nutritional value. The wise parent doesn’t exile the child for being afraid—they hold, guide, and stay present. At different moments the child may need a hug, a boundary, or a quiet “back to bed now.” But always, the foundation is relationship, not rejection. The parent understands the point of the family are it children. But the children don’t need to burden of making decisions for the family. The wise parent knows that the child, despite its protestations, needs to be guided.

Tara Brach calls our emotional inner terrain “the muddy middle”—the space between the narrative-making mind and the body where feelings actually live. We identify with thought, but emotion often starts and storms in the body. The mind scrambles to define and control what it hasn’t yet acknowledged. Artists understood this long before psychologists named it. Freud and Jung began to map the inner world, but it was people like Artaud, Picasso, and Francis Bacon who refused to squeeze feeling into rational shapes. They gave form to what can’t be neatly explained.

Feeling is not a problem to be fixed or a possession to defend. Emotions arise, move, and dissolve when they are not clung to or condemned. When we acknowledge, accept, investigate, and nurture them, identification loosens on its own. Then we’re no longer saying my anger, my fear—we’re simply noticing, there is fear, there is anger, there is grief. This quiet shift is the beginning of freedom.

Feeling our feelings is not indulgence—it’s our birthright, and perhaps the central labor of being human. When we stop treating our inner life as an interruption and start relating to it with courage and kindness, our emotions mature. And so do we.

 

  • The image in the post is of a Tibetan Buddhist deity called Dorje Trollo who is the embodiment of compassion in the form of liberated passion and anger. Once released of constraint, emotions can become a liberated a force for deeper understanding of the art f being human. 

__________

Posted on by joseph mauricio

ALL WE ARE SAYING

THE WILLINGNESS TO CHANGE

The bombs fell on their generation as they were born — drums pounding in the night sky, explosions lighting the heavens with fire and rage. Nazi cruelty tried to pound Britain into submission. But sometimes when cruelty strikes deep to the heart, a seed is planted. John Lennon, Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, and others were born into this thunderous rage — and with them, one day, the world would change.

On October 9, 1940, the bombing paused momentarily over Liverpool. John Winston Lennon was born into that fragile silence and was carried away into a middle working-class life. His parents were unreliable — his father, a merchant seaman rarely at home, and his mother, Julia, a gentle, artistic soul who suffered from anxiety and depression felt it hard during those harrowing times. John was given to his Aunt Mimi, a strict disciplinarian who ran a very tight household, for his upbringing.

When John was 14, his mother Julia was struck and killed by a drunken off-duty police officer outside her home. She had taught John to play her ukulele — and years later, Lennon, having failed to learn proper guitar instrumentation, would still be using ukulele and banjo chords in his early bands. All of these shortcomings — or rather, these wounds — became the crucible that forged his restless creative spirit.

If there’s a theme to this story, it’s the indomitable power of the human life force — and how often that force is held in check by inner and outer circumstance. Yet rather than extinguishing the life force, this tension only creates a kind of dissonance — a pressure that drives creation itself.

Playing ukulele chords and gathering a ragtag group of friends, Lennon began pounding out the rhythms of his heart. He was an artist, a clever writer, a satirist — and quickly became a bandleader. His band members changed and grew in skill over time, but Lennon and his relentlessly urgent guitar was always the driving force. He was brash, foul-mouthed, arrogant — and if you steered clear of his acid tongue, very easy to follow.

At the famous Woolton fête in 1957, John met Paul McCartney — and instantly found his counterpart. Paul had the musical discipline and melodic gift that Lennon lacked. The two would sit, nose to nose, tossing lines and chords back and forth, learning their instruments and honing their craft.

The life force burns brightest when there’s a clear vision ahead. Despite the world telling them to stay in their place, Lennon and McCartney had one simple, driving goal: to get the girls to notice them.

As obvious and mundane as that sounds, for boys in their late teens it was everything. The primal human need to be seen — to be accepted — was their rocket fuel. Driven by the rhythms they heard late at night under their covers from American broadcasts, British bands began to form — boys chasing girls, chasing sound, chasing truth.

In Tibetan Buddhism, the feminine principle is referred to a the womb of the universe — the space in which all creation occurs. The masculine energy quickens that space toward creation; but always at service to the feminine. The girls were the first to fall in love with The Beatles. Together they opened the gates to the most profound cultural shift of modern times.

The brute, manipulative power of male-dominated society had been given its notice — though the men didn’t yet realize it. They still stomped around, chasing power, money, and armaments — not learning the lessons of fascism’s collapse. America helped rebuild Europe, yes — but it was not pure altruism. The U.S. waited until the moment best suited to its own advantage to enter the war. While their intervention freed the world from fascist rage, not all lessons were learned. The victors rebuilt — but also clamped down, holding the world in place.

That grip, however, would not last. Cracks began to appear — in miniskirts, in teenagers dancing and screaming at concerts, in the pure, unrestrained joy of feminine exuberance. Like Sinatra and Elvis before them, The Beatles rode that wave and crashed it against the shores of convention. But this time, it shook the foundations of a repressive world.

Lennon was arrogant, difficult, sharp, and fast. But he was smart enough to push against authority when it stifled him — but willing to pause and listen when it served the music. He, sometimes grudgingly listened to producers, his manager, and to Paul, George, and Ringo. Together they created a unit brilliant enough to become something larger than any one of them.

For perhaps the first time in modern pop culture, there wasn’t a single frontman — but a band. A collective. Each member offered an archetype for fans to project upon: the cute one, the clever one, the quiet one, the lovable one. Lennon encouraged each member of the band to play as they would as they developed his songs. He gave them freedom within the structure of the song.

In Tibetan iconography, great deities are depicted with archetypal manifestations — the sharp one, the gentle one, the deep one, the radiant one. The Beatles embodied these archetypes for a new age. And through them, the world — once pounded by bombs — began to sing again.

Our life force is indomitable. But should we refuse to listen to the music of our heart, we will grow ill and unhappy. If we let this life force have its way, it may lead to chaos. But, the middle way would be for us to allow our spirit to sing, but curtailing ego, allow the energy to be shaped into a manifestation that serves the world.

When Lennon finally found the girl, he turned his sights toward peace. Many people felt he made an ass of himself with his bed-ins bag-ins and protests. He tarnished his career, and nearly destroyed his fortune. But he was using the power of wealth and celebrity in a way that had never been done before. He was not afraid to be a fool. And in his lifetime, he grew from being an arrogant misogynist into a feminist and an advocate for peace that inspires people to this day.

When confronted with his aggressive past in later years, Lennon said that because he lived violence, he understood the value of peace.

At this writing, today the American military is being used to assault the people of Chicago. Some feel this is the next step in the current administration to institute a national police force. The change many of us have feared is actually here. Actually here. I am angered to the point of imagining violence toward those instituting this clampdown. Yet, violence will not win. The only alternative is to push back as we can, and to refuse to lose heart. To be willing to change in order to bring change. Being peace, will bring peace now as it did in the 60’s.

It is my aspiration that I may step beyond personal aggression and truly be willing to give peace a chance in order to give change a chance.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

ALL ABOUT ME

       THE NARCISSISTIC REFLECTION OF EGO

I like to reference Milan kundera’s The Incredible Lightness of Being when discussing ego by reversing the logic to the incredible heaviness of being … me.

Ego is a shallow reflection, an inordinately pronounced subset of mind charged with aligning ourselves with the societal acceptance. Shallow as it may be the need for societal acceptance is nonetheless deeply ingrained within us. Our need to “fit in” is an ancient protective strategy. Without the acceptance of our clan, we would fend for ourselves.  At some point in our history, that would render us some predator’s lunch. The need to assimilate is, at its core, a protective strategy. Ego aligns us with what society seems to require—sometimes to shield us, sometimes to make us competitive, sometimes to keep us hidden. Whenever we feel threatened—by external pressures or internal doubts—ego steps in. For those who have lived through trauma, the ego’s protective reflex can become inflamed. And like any inflammation, it grows painful, restrictive, and difficult for both ourselves and others to be around.

Ego inflation is not unlike economic inflation, as when the value of currency diminishes, everything else becomes more expensive. Likewise, when ego expands, our sense of worth actually decreases, and we must spend more psychic energy maintaining the story of “me.” The more bereft we feel, the more inflamed ego becomes. It is a costly burden—like lugging around a heavy suit of armor, or as Milan Kundera might put it, the “incredible heaviness of being me.”

Ironically, while ego is designed to connect us with others, it often serves to separate us. The more it inflates, the less it sees—both of the world and even of the self it is meant to protect. Ego seems to operate behind a firewall: impenetrable, self-justifying, resistant to inspection. We rarely glimpse what lies beyond, because ego convinces us its stories are the truth. We see what ego wants us to see. Self-awareness becomes diminished, lost in reflection of a small, superficial self-image.

Yet ego’s strategies are not only aggrandized. It has many “small” strategies such as feeling inadequate, playing the victim, hoping to be seen, or withdrawing because attention feels insufficient. They may look different—grandiosity, self-pity, defiance, or despair—but they share a common thread: they make life all about me. When ego dominates, we are not listening to others. We are manipulating, trying to coerce the world into affirming a version of ourselves that we are desperately telling ourselves.

Sometimes the weight of this self reflection means we expect too much of ourselves and our world. Like an inflamed infection, our ego inflation becomes painful. We are lying in wait for someone of something to insult or disappoint us. I have been avoiding a community meeting which is very large, and I feel no one notices me. This is true, but most of the people there are unnoticed unless they share. But I keep myself bottled up out of fear of looking foolish. This is not humility. Its ego. By withdrawing, I deprive myself of any connection and benefit I might receive. Who am I hurting? Ego, in its fear of invisibility, tricks me into actually vanishing.

This is ego’s paradox. It promises safety by keeping us in control, but the cost is limiting everything to that which it can control.  And that is a much tighter set than makes me feel comfortable. So, I tend to blame others for not knowing me. Not seeing this delicate flower with is poisonous spines.

A classic ego refrain is That’s not me. I could never do that. But not out of discernment, out of fear of failure. And in so doing, ego robs us of the chance to learn, grow, and risk being seen in our fullness. How many opportunities have we refused simply because we lacked the energy to drag our own self-importance along?

The “heaviness of being me” rarely translates into the world in the way ego imagines. Instead, it leads to exhaustion and estrangement. To carry one’s importance everywhere is to carry a burden that no one else asked us to shoulder. The question arises: how important must we be to ourselves? What would it feel like to be less important—to set down this inflated carriage of “me”?

Dylan suggested, “I’m not here.” Buddhism teaches that ego is ultimately empty. My teacher once smiled at a question about how to work with ego and answered, “there is nothing to work with, because it doesn’t exist.” Perhaps the answer is to look beyond the event horizon of self-protection and see that the reflection is entirely made up.

Maybe this challenge becomes an invitation: to loosen the grip of this Michelin-man suit of self-importance, to move more lightly, and to test what life feels like when not filtered through our defenses. How exhausting it is to carrying the weight of “me” everywhere. What would it be to look beyond ourselves and meet the world directly, unburdened and free.

Maybe the key is to stop fixating on the reflection and working so hard to believe it so so we can see what else we can be.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

ENOUGH, ALREADY

Enough.

What does that even mean? How much is ever enough? In a world where scarcity is a commodity, our panic drives us to fill the larder. If less is more, then more is better and the most is the least you should hope for.

My late boomer generation felt the sky was our limit and that is was incumbent on us to do better than our parents. “You  can do anything you put your mind to,” was my father’s mantra as I scurried behind him trying just to catch up. I was programmed to succeed while setting myself up to fail.

You can have it all. Name on the marquee, house in the country, kids, dogs and a turtle named Teddy. But will any of this make us happy? Who knows? Just keep swimming and don’t look down even if you have to mix metaphors.

I was born Taurus, so red flags that might indicate a warning or slowing down to someone else urge me on with fury. The walls I hit are more reason for me to keep banging my head until something gives way. Know my limits? Really? When I hit the floor there’s always someone to help me back to the bar. Exhaustion is for babies. That’s why the lord gave us coffee. And if the lord sends us coffee, the devil gets the cocaine. The party never ends.

I managed a comedy club in the 80’s. My cousins sold cocaine at the door, the bathrooms were always full, everything was paid in cash and I otherwise ran on coffee and vodka. One night our MC was running later than his usual late. I was holding the show with my stomach grinding when the MC finally rushed in. I tried to upbraid him, but he interrupted me and told me this was his third show that evening, and on his way to the club he stopped at a porn video store to exercise his libido in a cum booth. “Do you think I have a problem,” he asked? and pushed past me, leaping on. stage and punching his way through through a remarkable set. God forgives those who don’t ask forgiveness, I guess.

I was so angry I hit more shots, chugged a coffee and hit the bathroom. I’ll show them.

Show who? Ah, who knows. Who cares. In those days there was always more. Cabs were hungry and always at the ready.  Clubs gave way to later clubs that unearthed unmarked after clubs. Those opened their squeaking craws to further under, darker, louder levels of underground where some band with a name you could never utter in work would be  slamming out music inspired more by the violent shatter of the subways than any music that had come before.

One time, I couldn’t put it to sleep, trying to outrun my anxiety, and found myself heading into a neighborhood I had absolutely no business being in. It was a horror movie of watchful shadows, burnt out buildings and silence. It was space between the chaos. I was terrified and alive. I walked into a parking lot, as I was told to do. There was one van. I walked around, and there was another world of white kids like me, college kids, and would be rockers nodding out on couches. I took what I could afford with me for the ride home. The sun was reluctantly rising as I got back to the civilization and the subway. I was exhausted and sat on the empty street watching the orange reflection in the new mirrored buildings. I heard birds singing. There was a comic in the club who used to say he was always told birds singing in the morning was meant to be a blessing rather than a curse.

My grandmother used to describe that feeling of exhaustion when you still can’t sleep as being “overtired”.  Like a kid walking in circles, refusing to go to bed. Feeding off the fumes. “No retreat,” said the boss, “no surrender.”

Even when they’ve lost it all, addicts fill themselves with recovery, their god, repeated homilies and the need to feel great and wonderful. And that’s okay for them. Whatever pulls you beyond the pit. My recovery didn’t really take hold until I admitted there was nothing more. This was my life. This was what I made of my life. And before I could step into something else I needed to take a long look at  this. Good bad happy sad this is what is happening now. And now is all that matters. And rather than fix myself with self-help hocus pocus, or herbal voodoo I needed to heed what I was feeling right now. Rather than joining the societal bandwagon to more more more, I needed to shut the fuck up and sit my ass down.

The Buddhist schools that spoke to me instructed there is nothing to gain, no one to be and nowhere to go. Just sit and let it settle and clear.

In time, rather than being driven by anxiety, rather than measuring myself be what I didn’t have and competing with shadows of my past, I learned the art of listening to me. Not the words, for there are too many words. Just listening or feeling in to when I’ve had enough. When I need to put down the drink, step out of a relationship or turn off the news. Everything can be t0o much until we learn to respect ourselves enough to say “enough.”

Which seems dependent on feeling that we are already enough.

 

 

________

Posted on by joseph mauricio

FACING THE MAELSTROM

MONKMODER DOOMSCROLLING

 

Like monks facing the maelstrom, we have may have our best intentions and ethical training. And yet, we may feel paltry and inadequate standing in the face of hatred and conflict.

Our society is currently at war. Those who have chosen a side may have the luxury of being determined and clear. They are able to push through the chaos with a surety that those who feel deeply cannot. But what of those who wish to understand or listen? Their experience is less assured. In fact, their experience might be disconcerting and painful.

Those trained in the ways of compassion will feel the need to help assuage the violence they see. Yet, how can we do so without declaring a side? Once we have taken a side, the other side will likely no longer be listening. The irony of side taking is that the very people who may need to hear what we have to say, are likely to not listen. This is why commitment to nonviolence is so frustrating in the short term, but yields more effective change over time. So how do we deal with the impulse to react with our guts in knots and our mind aflame?

A Bodhisattva must first train to calm their own passions before they have the clarity to help others.  When facing chaos, we may feel the need to do something. And yet, the nature of chaos is unclarity.  A general rule is when the world is chaotic and uncertain turn our attention to ourselves. Change what we can change.  If we could breath, relax and bring ourselves back to balance, we might see the pattern in the confusion. And like all patterns this has happened before and will happen again. From this point of view, the idea that there is a “right side” is absurdly reductive.

If scrolling through your doomfeed makes you angry, frightened or depressed it’s because 1) you care and 2) you have no idea how to help.  So the Bodhisattva is trained to rest in the chaos until a natural confluence emerges. And how might a natural confluence differ from taking sides? From the Buddhist perspective, the view is fostering kindness and compassion. If the world is falling apart, we can choose to add no harm and sit in the turmoil until our time for compassionate action becomes clear.

Water flows into water — sometimes quite rapidly, with significant turbulence. But this is not the fault of the river. Nor is it the fault of society, the world, or even our political systems when they undergo upheaval. Change is not an anomaly; it’s a basic rhythm of human experience on this planet. The planet changes. The climate changes. Political systems around the world shift, often with great pain or even lockdown. From a data point of view, the problem is not change — it’s the challenge of navigating change when we cannot control the outcome.

The work is for us to relax into not being able to predetermine results. Facing this chaos all while maintaining an upright posture of goodness, dignity, and strength. We might experience fear and resentment, but these, as is said, are like drinking poison expecting our adversaries to become ill. Usually, the others just go on their merry way, defiling and defaming others, and we are left feeling ill. Thus we become weak and unable to help anyone. Our first step in warrior training is to hold our seat and gather our strength. The next step is to adopt a posture of bravery and simply represent goodness without proclamation, arrogance or aggression.

Until we’re able to manifest dignity and strength we may become victims. Or worse yet, we may blindly react and become part of the problem.

This is why we need mindfulness, intention, and clarity about what we are doing. We need to interrupt immediate, automatic reactions. Yet these reactions happen so quickly it’s like trying to corral a bull after it’s broken free of its pen. Wherever we catch ourselves bringing aggression into our body or mind, we can just stop. Avoid blame, as blame, which feels so justified, only serves to perpetuate aggression and blindness. Anytime we become aware of the hijacking of our body by fear — whether anticipating what might happen, experiencing it as it unfolds, or reflecting on it afterward — we become more attuned to this very immediate and incredibly powerful process. Simply said, our mind and body are being hijacked by our own nervous system. It’s no one’s fault. However, it is our chore to work with. The work is to free the body, open the heart and let the mind see before we jump into the fire.

It’s natural to want to protect ourselves. But it is not natural to scapegoat a segment of society, to cling to resentment, or to nurture hatred in our heart. The issue here is not “right-wing” versus “left-wing.” The issue is that when we blame others, we harm ourselves. The violence we inflict on ourselves is profound, especially when we mask it as blame toward others.

When we are awake and open to our immediate experience, our natural human dignity will allow us to do the right thing. When we are reactive, our basic animal instinct only pushes us into ignorance. By creating a gap before acting out retribution, we can hold our reactions lightly, release them, and see more clearly. Otherwise, we’re not only grabbing the bull after its left the pen, we’re letting it carry us as it may — all while blaming someone else for leaving the gate open.