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None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free. Goethe

I often wonder if we, as a nation have any concept of what the word “liberty” means. We have ceaselessly proclaimed to the world that we are a democracy. That means we are a nation governed by the rule of law[s] and one of the hallmarks of a democracy is the ability of the individual to express him freely as long as it does not go against the spirit of the law.

 

That means that the individual have the inalienable right to express his doubts without the risk of incarceration, death or any other penalty. It means he have the option of daring, making mistakes, of searching, experimenting. That also means he must have the option of saying no to those in authority; be it literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and political.  That’s what liberty means.

 

Liberty is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Liberty is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose. And you can only do that when you have subject all your beliefs, opinions and prejudices to reason. Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the very same time the beginning of his freedom and development of his reason.

We are part of everything; the future, the present and the past. We are part of the human race and in the rapidly ever-evolving world of humanity; we cannot afford to be left behind anymore. We are already 6o years behind the rest of mankind. And we can only protect our liberties in this world by protecting the individual freedom. It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives,

Laws are the totality of our expressed and “proven” rationalities. You can tell what a nation, people are by just looking at their laws. It is not what they say that matters; it is what they have set as their collective guide that defines and determine what they are.

Laws must be obeyed once enacted. It must be observed and respected by all the citizens of a State. Laws must be protective of the weak, the innocent and the down-trodden. Thus before a law is enacted, it must be seen to fulfill a certain obligations to the citizenry. It is only when the population or segments of it can identify with the law especially as it regards their general welfare that a law can be said to be successful.

I completely identify with the following statement. “Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison; I am not free.” Thus, I believe that any person with some dignity must fight to make sure human right becomes a norm in Nigerian political landscape.

I am not gay. I love women and believe that are few things in nature that are as beautiful as a well nurtured woman who understands who she is. There is something almost ethereal about them. And few things can be compared to the ecstasy that comes when you become adrift in the ocean of their seductiveness. But I also believe that this ecstasy do not solely belong to the realm of man and woman. I believe that love cannot be tied up in a certain way. I believe that love is, and can be found in many ways and manner.

Jesse Jackson once said, “No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to flee and fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams”. There is a bill currently before the National Assembly; a bill that will criminalize homosexuality. One wonders whether the other crisis, most in epic proportion that presently besets the country do not warrant the attentions of these honorable members of the Congress. The whole sector of Nigerian infrastructure has completely collapsed and yet these men are contemplating the only one thing that ought to be left alone.

It will be interesting to note that no nation ancient or modern that lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments have ever survive. In fact, most civilization that rose, became great, mostly disappears when their rulers stifles the expression of their citizenry.

John Stuart Mills said, the only part of the conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to society is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns him, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind. If gays attains to this by giving their love to each other, what right do we have in denying them this? What right does the government have in the affairs of 2 grown and matured individuals who choose to love each other in a way that is consistent with their personality, preference and need?

One annoying tragedy of the Nigerian drama is that those in leadership positions in that country and indeed Africa as a whole are often than not, illiterates. And prejudices are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among rocks. What Nigeria needs at this moment is a leader who will rattle, shake and destroy the status quo. It must a leader with an uncanny instinct/ vision to understand where he wants to take the country but more also the need to allow individuals to express themselves freely. A society that stifles or try to control the sexuality of its citizenry will not go far. Creativity and sexuality often go hand in hand.

Another facet of the tragedy is the inability of the people and its leadership to separate religion from the affairs of the state. Since independence, Nigeria have been held within the vice-grip of conservatives; both Muslims and Christians. Though it is still a country where 98% of the populace professes the existence of God and adhere to one creed or another no matter how superficial, we remain the most corrupt country in the world. We have slipped from a country with hope to a country of abysmal performance in every sector of human endeavor. The religious leaders wield immeasurable power on the minds of the political elites and the general populace. And most, at least 95% of the religious leaders are completely ignorant of almost everything else than the literal interpretation of their “holy books”.

The Buddha once said “Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you you test and judge to be true. “I wonder how many people have cared enough to investigate for themselves what being gay really means. In a nation where religion have taken over the media, there is no room for any constructive dialogue so that people can takes well balanced decisions based on unbiased information.

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth anything. As long as Nigerians continues to believe in absurdities, nothing will ever get done.

We must move away from judging people with their beliefs, tribe or religion. We must view and judge people based on the content of their character. If we who suffers most when it comes to racism can in turn inflict such on those that do not conform to our ideals of what sexuality is, we must also bear with any grumbling whatever insult or degradation that other races heaps on us.

We often do not see things as they are; we see things as we are. Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd. Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. A weed is a plant that its virtue has not been properly understood.

The Great Soul Gandhi said that the Roots of Violence:
Wealth without work,
Pleasure without conscience,
Knowledge without character,
Commerce without morality,
Science without humanity,
Worship without sacrifice,
Politics without principles.

This is what you see in Nigeria today. That’s why though seemly a religious country, it remains both backwards and spiritually/ morally depraved. The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion. If we are to practically apply the teachings of the sages, the wise ones, saviors and prophets, we must allow others to be themselves. This bill [with others like it] currently been debated in the Congress must be thrown out.

 

 

 

 

 

Something inside of a man withers and dries up when he accidentally or deliberately stumbles to the reality that what he has given his life believing is just hollow and false. He becomes a shadow of himself. But a man must believe in something; something that he will be willing to stake and give his life for. He must select any illusion that appeals to his temperament and embrace it with all the passion he can muster if he must be happy.

I did! For the better part of my brief life so far on the plane, I have embrace the idea that I must find that special Soul to share this life with. I have in the inner-most part of my heart hidden this conviction that out there is an individual who I have spend countless life with in my past incarnations and that to live anything close to what I have construe to be life in this one, I must find and be with her. I also unconsciously have accepted that failure to do this will reduce this existence to a mere shadow of what it ought to be. It is a conviction that I have borne me through all the challenges that have come my way thus far.

I met her this year! Or, I believed that I did! I have never had such a certainty about something like I did when she came into my life. I came alive with passion and endless quest to make her the happiest woman on earth. All passions make us commit faults; love however makes us commit the most ridiculous ones. In my passion afire for her, I forgot that she too is human, with its frailties and weaknesses. In my zeal to make her see what she means to me, I lost her.

I have not written anything constructive for a long time now. I just got frozen up since she left. I dried up like a stream without its source. All because I realized that what I have given my life to, what I have sacrificed a lot believing in is just an unattainable quest. Or how can something so beautiful, so certain, so real bring so much heartache and pain? Lost love I tell you is such thing that cruelly brings sweet memories back to haunt you. For weeks and months it is a steady physical pain, an ache about the heart, never leaving one, by night or by day; a long strain on one's nerves like toothache or rheumatism, not intolerable at any one instant, but exhausting by its steady drain on the strength.

Broken heart, broken dreams, and great grief! I am completely at loss on how to explain this to myself. How do I make myself understand? I know what I ought to do yet I have no single energy to effect any positive change in my life. I am adrift, unsure where the tide will take me. Doubt of the reality of love ends by making us doubt everything.

Should I not create a new dream and follow it up? Should I not just shrug my shoulder, lick my wounds and move on. Yes! That’s what a reasonable and mature mind will do. A man learns how to skate by staggering like a fool. Indeed he progresses by making a fool of himself. I have made a fool of myself by believing in her yet something within me tells me that it was an experience that I needed. .

I just came across another woman. Actually she found me and made me hers. I am getting fonder of her each day and I know that if I open, I will fall in love with her. My mind however keeps asking this question “is she not going to walk away like Noriko”?

This is a New Year. It will determine the course of my entire life. What decisions that I will take beginning today will affect all aspect of my life. I know I will take the right ones because I have hope. And one who has hope is never a prisoner. Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. I will be swift to love, make haste to be kind.

Yes, I must fall in love again…because that’s the only way I know how to live. I must allow this soul who came to me in my stupor and grief and have offered to lead me out of my desolation. I must give her my hand and heart. I must learn to trust again. If things do not turn out as we wish, we should wish for them as they turn out. Yet, as Shakespeare one said, “I shall the effect of this good lesson keeps as a watchman to my heart”

1. Stopping Seeking Takes Seeking

The point of the spiritual search is to stop seeking. But not in the way it seems.

Stopping seeking actually takes a great deal of effort, because human beings are genetically and environmentally conditioned to seek all the time. Every moment, most of us are thinking about the future or the past, chasing something pleasant, or trying to avoid something unpleasant. Sometimes we're just clueless. And once in a blue moon, we're happy with what we've got. But usually, in ways so subtle that they escape attention, we're seeking something.

For example, each day as I rides the train to get from one point to another, I can see lots of people doing different things: some people are reading, many are typing on their mobile phones (seeking distraction, information, entertainment, etc.), others are trying to sleep, others are talking – all of us subtly looking for something. So ordinary it goes without saying, and of course nothing wrong with it, except that seeking necessarily involves a little bit of suffering. See what happens if you seek distraction but can't find it. Or what happens when you can't sleep. Or can't get your work done in the way that you would like. And, for me, even when I do get what I want, there's the potential for suffering when it's taken away, or when it doesn't fully meet my desires. Or when, having enjoyed it once, I want to taste it again.

Seeking also necessarily privileges something which isn't here (i.e., that which is being sought) over that which is. From a religious perspective, if “that which is” happens to be What Is, that is, God, Being, the Divine, well, that's quite a shame: God may be everywhere – but how often can I say, like the heroes of the Bible, hineini, here am I? From a non-religious perspective, it's obvious that life is more worthwhile when you're there to enjoy it. How many times have we all eaten a meal and barely tasted the food? Let alone had sex while worrying about how it's all going.
To "stop seeking" is thus to start living. Naturally, searching, wanting, needing, and righteously arguing all have their place, but the processes of waking up, drinking more deeply from the well of life, and pursuing the mystical path are all about slowing down the seeking and inserting more and more pauses in the mind's relentless, evolutionarily designed efforts to search for that "something else" that is going to bring happiness.

Paradoxically, to stop seeking also requires seeking, because it takes effort to be effortless. Once in a while, we are forced to stop seeking, as in peak experiences of amazement or delight or danger. And sometimes life is so pleasant - holding a baby, relaxing after sex, eating a gourmet meal - that seeking stops on its own. But most of the time, to learn to stop seeking requires some kind of work - in particular, a search for the ways in which seeking is still going on, and the ways it can be, if not stopped, at least relaxed a little bit. This "search for non-search" could be as simple as remembering to relax or as life-altering as having kids, or meditating, or religion. But what it really is about is the purification of the present moment from desires or fears of other ones. It’s about showing up.

2. Seeking to Stop Seeking Can Stop Stopping-Seeking

Of course, there's always a catch: in this case, at least three of them. First, seeking ways to stop seeking can become, itself, a narcotically addictive search. Comparing this meditation technique against that one. Searching for ever-more-transcendent peak experiences – "well, I did really forget myself and stop seeking last time, but I'd like to do it even more." Falling into the trap of thinking that it's the particular way of walking that matters on the journey, instead of showing up for every step of it. Talking about meditation instead of doing it. And, despite oneself, turning the whole thing into a goal-oriented process with goals and accoutrements. It's said that spirituality can turn into a kind of narcissism, but narcissism doesn't quite capture the angst of unbridled self-reflection. After all, Narcissus just saw his beautiful reflection – in meditation, you see an ever-more-clarifying picture of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Thus endless self-reflection can end not in clarity and calm, but neurosis and paralysis.

Second, there is what Trungpa Rinpoche called "spiritual materialism," in which the path to non-self becomes instead a path of gratifying and pleasing the self. Yoga, meditation, prayer, entheogens, energy work – all of these can easily become about enriching, enlarging, and serving the self, when they are meant to do the opposite. Spirituality can become an a consumer lifestyle, and a way of enhancing, relaxing, and generally pleasing Me – witness the success of the ego-empowering Kabbalah Centre, and the promises of eternal youth from some of today's most financially successful institutions. Even a sincere motivation for learning can becomes twisted: the search for occult, hidden realities can lead to both surprising truths about subtle energies that otherwise escape our notice – or a great cosmic treasure hunt, in which the goal is to know as much esoteric nonsense as possible.

Third, and most familiarly, because spiritual practices bring about highly pleasant mind states, and among the most indescribably beautiful sensations I have ever experienced, they can spoil precisely what they are meant to enhance. Give me more of the mind-blowing contentment, bliss, and sensations of unity I feel on meditation – the regular pleasures aren't enough. Like a connoisseur of wine no longer being able to enjoy ordinary merlot, I only want the extraordinary stuff. Thus the practice of waking up to ordinary pleasure can undermine exactly that.
In all three of these cases, the search to stop seeking becomes, itself, a search with goals. It's tough, because, as goals go, bliss, contentment, and the deepest joy I've ever experienced are pretty good ones – and my experience is that meditation brings them about. But that is one of the paradoxes of the spiritual path: like love, you only truly experience it when you're willing to let it go.

3. Stop Seeking for a Reason to Stop Seeking

There's one final way that the search for not seeking itself becomes a search, so insidious that I and many other contemplatives still wrestle with it all the time: the search for a justification of the search itself. Naturally, since spiritual practice takes a lot of time and effort, and since it gets sneered at by many smart people, those of us who do it spend a lot of time explaining why it's so important. Not just something we want to do, and not just something which helps life be a little juicier, a little more meaningful - but really Important. Thus one hears all the time that "the purpose of our being here is to awaken to who we are," or that people who aren't "awake" aren't truly happy. Nonsense. That's just the New Age version of Jews thinking we're the Chosen People, or Christians thinking that only Christ can save you.

The fact is, we spiritual seekers want to be doing what we're doing. That's it. We notice that it brings us more happiness, more joy, more equanimity, and we want that. Maybe we're just more dissatisfied than other people. Maybe we just like new mind states. But the rhetoric that "what I want is the most important thing to want" is just odious, no matter how soothing the voice that says it.

I've come to a place in my meditation practice where I'm okay with saying that it's just my preference to do it. And I understand that, for many people, a less-reflective life is simply more enjoyable. I look at my friends and they seem perfectly happy living a more or less conventional life. Perhaps they're too busy to question the meaning of it all, or perhaps they no longer want to, now that non-rational answers to those questions are right in their arms, or needing a diaper change.

There was a time when I would look down on this kind of "settling," either blaming it for all the unconscious evil we do in the world, or castigating it in the name of Socrates. But no longer. I do still think that some degree of "afflicting the comfortable" is necessary to keep us honest – without some way to disturb the calm of a peaceful, bourgeois life, it's quite easy to be ethically irresponsible and spiritually somnolent. But there are many ways to do that, and many comfortable, settled people who are, after all, quite responsible and awake.

Nor do I buy into the myth that meditation is really for everyone. For many people, the resistance to meditation does indeed come from fear – fear that can be productively lifted through meditation. But for many others, it's just not of interest. On the contrary, I sometimes wonder why it's even for me. Why am I not simply satisfied with the ordinary, un-enhanced, un-mindful pleasures that most people seem perfectly content to enjoy? Yes, at the extreme, such a lifestyle is a degraded form of human existence: draining away in front of the television, marching from mall to SUV and back again, being programmed by the vulgarities of pop culture. But that's just the extreme, and a bit of a cliché in any event. Usually, life provides its roller coaster of pleasures and pains no matter how prosaic the daily routine. Some are too intense, others are too dull. But some are quite nice. What's so bad about that?

Although there are plenty of possible answers to that question, I think searching for one is just the kind of "seeking" that the spiritual search is meant to arrest. Why do we contemplatives need to explain why everyone else is not a contemplative? Why can't we admit that we're on the spiritual path because we want to be? Because it's what we like to do? Personally, I find meditative practice leads to more enjoyment of the simple pleasures of my home, my lover, my career. But I also find it interesting in and of itself. Exploring ideas, refining the mind, and learning the subtleties of attention and desire are not, for me, stages to go through until I "find myself." I find them interesting on their own. Isn't that enough?

Now, it's also true that I am just the kind of person who likes to explore, explain, and articulate. As Alan Watts once asked rhetorically, "Why not sit back and let things take their course? Simply that it is part of 'things taking their course' that I write. As a human being it is just my nature to enjoy and share philosophy. I do this in the same way that some birds are eagles and some doves, some flowers lilies and some roses."

That effortlessness, that justificationlessness - that's the ticket. If I keep trying to justify my search for not seeking, the stories will never end. "Maybe I do dislike my ego more than some other people do. Maybe I was just raised neurotic, and so spiritual practice is more important for me than for other people. Or maybe I just can't figure life out, dammit! Now, in the life that I have chosen – "integral" on good days, "fence-straddling" on bad ones - some of this "bad" seeking (comparing, striving, demanding, berating) is inevitable. It's hard to cultivate enough ambition to succeed but not so much that success becomes the only goal, and competition the only way to achieve it. It's also hard, having given up my military career, not to look at my peers who stayed on the straight and narrow, and flourished. So... stay with me... I'm learning to stop seeking the reason why I'm seeking to stop seeking

See, isn't spiritual life fun?

4. The Kicker (Nonduality)

Most of the wisdom of "stop seeking" comes from the four noble truths of Buddhism, which boil down to the observation that suffering exists because of clinging/seeking/wanting/thirsting, and that it can be ended by learning to stop seeking so much. What's great about the Four Noble Truths is that, now that the Buddha said them, they seem intuitively correct, and more importantly, can be tested in a relatively short period of time. But there is one final element, which might just be the kicker.

Stopping seeking is more than just good for you, in the way that flossing is good for you. It is the only way to turn down the incessant demands of the ego so that it's possible to identify not with the ultimately unreal "small self" created by the illusion of interior consciousness, but with the greater processes of which each being is only a part. This is the Buddhist teaching of anatman (non-self), the Vedanta teaching of tat tvam asi ("you are that"), the Chabad teaching of acosmism: that what seems to be "me" isn't really me at all. Sure, I seem like "Armstrong" most of the time, especially when "Armstrong" wants something. But when I look at this personality closely, I really do see how all of its myriad pieces come from somewhere else: my upbringing, or my education, or wherever. "Armstrong" is really just a bundle of these other things, a temporary one at that, and a bundle which, on its own, never actually does anything; it's always one of the other things. A tactic I learned as a child; a talent I was born with; a way of speaking I picked up along the way. Each act, each decision, and each preference is ultimately ascribable (and, on a quiet retreat, observably so) to one of these sticks in the bundle. So what is so important about this "me" that needs to get fed, and that thinks that if it doesn't get what it wants, the world is somehow in disarray?

The "me" is a phenomenon, but not an important one, and it is possible to stop identifying with it so much... by stopping seeking. And then the "non-seeking, non-desiring mind" (in Zen teacher Genpo Roshi's words) can actually be revealed for what it is: sufficient, blissful, ever-present, enlightened. And not "me." If you've never actually experienced that mental space, where you really don't want anything, this all probably sounds quite vague. But if you've been there, you know it transcends words.
Even in talking about the "non-seeking, non-desiring mind," however, there's a bit of seeking, of justifying, involved. Am I, at such moments, really in touch with Kosmic Mind, Brahman, God, or whatever? Certainly, it makes sense on paper: if the self is an illusion, a phenomenon that only exists when seen from a certain perspective, who is doing all this knowing, if it's not "Armstrong"? And it also does feel that way, as if the quality of the universe's knowing is present in my own, miniature knowing as well. It feels quite certain indeed. But then, we feel certain about a lot of things that turn out not to be true. Which is it - cosmic consciousness, or a nice bit of relaxation?

What I've found, lately, is that the claim to cosmic consciousness is itself a form of seeking. As if it's not enough that meditation makes me happy and opens my eyes to pleasure and pain - it has to also take me to God, which is somehow more present when I'm relaxed than when I'm stressed out. As if "God," rather than simply experience or insight, is somehow necessary for the deal to be worth it - and that God has a certain flavor, which is exalted or great or wise. As if something has to be holy to be worthy.

Whereas, when I'm able to sit back and let be whatever will be, then real receiving (kabbalah) can take place. Then God, in the sense in which I understand the term, really does show up - precisely because I'm not looking for God, labeling an experience as God, or in any way claiming something is or isn't God. This is not the God of special mind states, particular revelations, or spiritual "holiness" in the way that makes you want to wave your hands in the air, but the omnipresent God - the one who shows up not because God wasn't there before, but because I was looking somewhere else. And so, stopping the war has no limits. Again I relearn and relearn and relearn: Stop looking somewhere else for God. Really – stop looking in every way. Stop seeking!