Category Archives: The Science of Spirituality

We Are All Adam Lanza

In the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary I have witnessed every conceivable reaction. Some want to rage about gun control and security; others want to discuss mental illness. Many want to promote peace and focus on the good. Countless are putting their energy into prayer and espousing religion while others get busy with donations. There are even a few who want retaliation against the NRA. All if it… every. single. last. thing. we are doing is a feeble attempt at making ourselves feel better. They are our personal ways of grieving, coping, looking for answers, explanations, somewhere to place the blame and something to apply a balm for our worst fears come true. All are attempts at control.

I can understand the urge to climb, stand, and die on each of these mountains. I ache to make sense of this random senseless act because I know as humans, if we can contextualize it, if we can fit it neatly inside a label in our heads we can go back to feeling safe again. We can relax a little and cuddle up with a nice, reasonable explanation of why it won’t happen to me.

And then we can all go on ignoring the real issue at hand– the condition of humanity.

Why do we hurt each other, and ourselves? This basic question of self-inflicted human suffering swirls around in my thoughts daily. I ruminate to sleeplessness over human behavior, motivations and masochistic tendencies. My friends frequently implore, “Shannon, stop analyzing everything?!” My reply is always, “Damn it! I wish I could.” These thoughts are second nature to me and it is the fuel for why I write. I know that stories of humanity hold enough power and weight to change the world… hopefully like the one I’m going to tell you now.

My marriage is struggling. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m in therapy. A close relative is falling down the hole of addiction tethered to a spouse and three precious, young children. My 60-something parents lie awake at night, knotted with worry. This was the pain and suffering in my personal life before twenty children and six women were mercilessly murdered by a man whose been described as, “just a kid” an,”ordinary guy” and “seemed normal.”

I’m not saying Adam Lanza was “normal.” For sure there is a degree of mental illness involved, the extent of which has yet to be revealed, but please keep two things in mind: 1) Research suggests that most perpetrators of “rage killings” do not appear to have active psychotic symptoms at the time of the event, and very few have histories of prior contact with mental health services.  It would appear that Adam Lanza did not. And 2)  Mass “rage killings” are a relatively recent phenomenon in human history.

Mental illness aside, doesn’t it make sense to look at what is happening in our society through a much broader lens than mental illness, gun control and/or the prevalence of religion? Aren’t there truths about the human condition that are universal? Things that lead to a collective nodding of heads instead of more battle lines being drawn? Shouldn’t we start by asking the hard questions about our own human condition, first? Maybe, instead of what makes Adam Lanza different from us, we should ask what makes us all like Adam Lanza?

There are parallels in all human suffering. No one is free of heart ache and pain and right now, RIGHT NOW it feels paramount to dig as deep into the root of these things and investigate all possible causes and solutions so that no one else has to die… on mountains, in schools or otherwise.

I’m not talking about the families of the victims. They are victims themselves. I hurt for them physically and emotionally. I am talking about the “painfully shy” Adam Lanza’s, the alcoholic relative insistent upon destroying their life, and yes me, the anger addict struggling to connect with my spouse.

The writing of this essay started before December 14th. It started with this picture of a meth addict. I was compelled to use all my faculties of left-brain creativity and right-brained analytics to discuss what could possibly make a person do something like this to themselves:

face of meth woman

This is a progression picture of a meth addict over six years. It is part of a campaign to create awareness of the physical effects of meth use over time. When I saw these pictures, I did not see the drastic deterioration of a physical person. I saw the drastic deterioration of a human soul.

But then Sandy Hook Elementary happened and I couldn’t help but draw the parallels between what this young woman has done to herself, and what Adam Lanza did to helpless children.

Humanity suffers from the same affliction in varying degrees. Not all of us will commit heinous crimes, be alcoholics, meth-heads or anger addicts; but the same affliction lies at the root of our self-inflicted pain and the urge to self-destruct. The affliction is disconnection.

I have written many times of the light and dark, ups and downs, the yin and yang of life. There is a balance to nature and energy in this world. It is an ancient spiritual wisdom correlated by the laws of science.

In our world today our ability to numb, distract, disconnect and ignore has never been so easy. With the swipe of a finger across the screen of a smartphone we can avoid our lives, have an illusion of connection, while sitting comfortably alone. This ease at which we are able to keep the world at arm’s length behind a screen has had an equal and opposite effect of desperate disconnection from each other and our inner lives and of whatever one calls God.

Sounds almost counter-intuitive right? How have we become so disconnected in a world where it is so easy to connect?

The answer is shame. Shame is a powerful and painful emotion. Shame is what makes us hide, duck, shirk, defer and numb. Never has there been so much to be shameful about when connected to a world that is so big, so glossy, that has so much to desire and so much to compare ourselves to. It’s quite easy to feel hopelessly insignificant and ordinary in this world. Shame is the by-product of one central, core belief we all have in varying degrees about a variety of ideas:

I am not enough.

The reason we feel that we are not enough? We look at this big glossy world and we feel inferior and alone. Lonely. We do not see past what we want to see. We do not recognize the divinity that lies within ALL of us. That divinity that makes us the same; connects us to each other; the part that tells us that we are not alone, never alone; that we are not so different, that we are all basically the same and that we are all loved no matter our flaws. The divinity that tells us that we need to be nothing other than who and what we already are. In a word (that means so may different things to so many people) we are disconnected from God.

This human condition of shame and disconnection is a vicious cycle. It is one that I have traced and re-traced a million times in my life. The more I disconnect, the more I feel alone. The more I feel alone, the more I self-destruct.

In light of what is happening in my own life, and now, in darkness of the events in Newtown, Connecticut, my hyper-active analytic right/left brain kicked into overdrive. I sat down one day, when I should have been doing something else, and what poured out of me was the following flow chart of The Human Condition. It was my attempt to understand my own disconnection and the cycle of toxic thinking that plagues my life, my relatives, the meth-addict you see above, and perhaps, too, the painful shy (i.e. painfully alone) Adam Lanza.

The Human Condition Flow Chart

It has taken me years to come to these conclusions. I could provide a bibliography along with the number of hours spent analyzing human behavior, but would that make this any more, or less true? The true test of its validity does not lie in a text-book but if you can see yourself on this treadmill of pain. If you do, then I welcome you here. I welcome you to connect with me to explore our humanity together. I have worn path after path along these lines and I am trying, with stories, awareness, yoga and seeking a God-centered life to stay connected to my life; to heal my own pain and if I am so honored, help others do the same.

This isn’t about religion. Religion can be a road map to God but it is not the same as God. It’s a road map that has been helpful in my life. But religion does not own the only connections to divinity and anyone who insists their religion is the only way, is continuing to draw lines that divide and disconnect humanity. I’m not interested in that, but I will respect you all the same.

I am also not a professional. I do not have a list of letters behind my name. I am just a person who thinks a lot about people and is willing to share my stories.

daring greatlyI also read a lot of books on the human condition. Lately, I must give credit to someone with an impressive resume whom I’ve been connecting to; the incomparable Brene Brown, Ph.D.  I have watched her Ted talks and I am reading her book, “Daring Greatly.” This woman, she is brilliance. She is the perfect mix of left-brained, creative, compassionate wisdom, and right-brained, structured analysis. This happens to be the exact dialect I speak.

If you are reading this and you can hear me; if you can connect with anything I have written, then know you are one less lonely person and now, so am I. If we can create a collective web of less lonely people, no matter their dialect, no matter their religion, perhaps no one will slip through the cracks again.

You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. ~Matthew 7:5

Pain removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul. ~C.S. Lewis

All that we are is a result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become. ~Buddha

Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom. ~Rumi

And we say Namaste: the divine in me honors the divine in you.

A Life in Motion

I spend a lot of my day in motion–cleaning, cooking, carting–basically, careening from one moment to the next. It’s a perpetual cycle of ups and downs, back and forths, over here, to over there, go, go, gone. On the surface, there isn’t much to show for all this movement except mud-tracked floors, upturned shoes in a heap, and crumbs from everything you could possibly imagine–good Lord the crumbs! For all the work I do you’d think things would be cleaner.

I’m finding a lot of contradiction in my life right now and this reality is leaving me frustrated. For instance, I spend a lot of mental energy wishing for more time alone, but if offered, there’s no where else I’d rather be. I spend a fair amount of time covered in food, sweat and children, wanting it all to be a little easier and maybe a little slower, but at the same time, infinitely grateful that my children need me so much; hoping that I’ll always remember their weight resting on my chest or the smell of their sticky breath in my face. I frequently lament the never-ending dirt, but there is something so sweet about washing tiny, impossibly flexible hands that makes my heart sigh.

These busy years of my life with two toddlers, my only choice is to move. I swing from one side of my day to the other, from busyness to boredom; burdens to beauty. I feel like I’m riding a pendulum, never still, in perpetual back and forth. The higher and harder something rotates to one side of my life; my angst, my fear, my doubt–the faster, easier and higher it rotates back to the opposite of it– my faith, my bliss, my calm.

One thing is always certain, I have never been more exhausted.

Laundry, wiping sticky counter tops, preparing pb&j sandwiches for the frillionth time, these things make up the bulk of what I do in this stage of life and yet they have nothing to do with the reasons I became a mother. I have come to realize that this is an unfair, frustrating reality. That these monotonous things are the motions I must go through to find the ultimate purpose at the core–the active toddler in just the right mood to cuddle, the perpetually dirty, easily edible, baby fingers–or my favorite–experiencing a whole new world through their eyes.

This menial, often overwhelming tedium that I must endure is what allows me to swing back to the other side of this life– the glorious, random moments. There simply is no amount of money or fame that could pull me away from this life because the more hands I wash, the less likely I am to forget how they feel inside mine and I know enough about life that one day will pray for that simple, priceless memory.

There is so much work that goes into each day, and yet on the other side of the pendulum, there is so much joy smashed right up along side it. But I also know that it takes a conscious effort to realize that joy.

It’s easy to believe that the tasks, the labor, the work is where we spend most of  our time and energy because it’s the hardest part and easiest to explain. It’s simple to complain about the endless paperwork, the commute, the mess, incessant whining and tantrums that come with more ferocity than ever. These things are universally understood and will illicit loads of sympathies and commiseration.

What’s harder is making a conscious effort to notice and express the other things.

There is no simplistic way to explain how the telepathic connection with your 3-year-old works… or feels. It’s impossible to quantify the invisible bonds that tether you to your children with just one look. Bonds built through familiarity, dependability, proximity and all the many repetitive acts that go into each day. People might think you weird should you stop to wax poetically about the way your one-year-old studied a rolly-polly bug this afternoon. Those are the subtleties. The subtleties that are often forgotten as you swing through your day from one chore to the next. I have a feeling that it’s these subtleties that will come barreling at me when I send them off to college. And although they often allude me, it’s why I must strive harder to take note of them– to attempt to make them equal in strength (if less in quantity) to all the other mundanity of my days.

I think there’s an important lesson in this life that involves learning how to balance these swings, or at least acknowledge them. To make the methodical cleaning of toilets, mildewed swimsuits and fingerprints on every glass surface (or long day at work dealing with the public or a jerk boss) be as equal in strength to the wondrous awe of watching the sunlight hit your baby’s hair revealing the colors of your own for the first time. (Or, let’s face it, what you think the color of your own might be.)

And perhaps it’s not something as precise as an equation to be equaled, or pendulum to be steadied, but instead, something more natural, arcane even; more like a gravitational, orbital path. Because if it’s an orbit, that means there is a core; something with a pull so strong it can both swallow, and save us. It’s gotta be the whole reason for this Life in Motion; the force behind the pull in opposite directions, around and around.

Something I must try less and less to fight and more and more to slip inside of; make peace with.

Yes… a spinning, orbiting, rotating, paradoxical life of happiness and discord in equal strengths, if not measures, but always surrounding the same white-hot center. A burning, beating heart of reason and purpose. The only thing that matters anyway… always.

“A light came and kindled a flame in the depth of my soul. A light so radiant that the sun orbits around it like a butterfly.” ~Rumi

The Law of Attraction

magnetic thought bubble

I’m a big fan of self-help. In my late teens I started going regularly to what I call, “poor man’s therapy” located in my local Barnes & Noble. Often times, I found some answers to my emotional ailment du jour between those glossy covers with catchy titles, and if I couldn’t find answers, I found solace in knowing that I wasn’t the only one looking for answers. It was kinda of like church.

It was also a main reason I chose Psychology as my major in college. Well that, and a penchant for self-destruction and a flimsy support system.

On my bookshelf you can find a historical roadmap to my psychosis. It began by wanting to understand myself. Under that category, you’ll find The Undiscovered Self by Carl Jung, and Self Matters by Phil McGraw better known as Dr. Phil.

Then, I moved on to the more existential topics of meaning and purpose. In that section, you’ll find Victor Frankels Man’s Search for Meaning, Deepak Chopra’s How to Know God, and Gary Zukav’s Seat of the Soul.

After that, I got married and wore butt prints into the chair at the end cap of my local B&N Self Help section because I was in some serious trouble. Under my how-the-hell-do-I-be-married? category you’ll find, Getting the Love you Want by Harville Hendrix and, Please Understand Me II by David Keirsey, because Please Understand Me I just didn’t leave me feeling understood enough.

In addition to these categories, you will also find books on how to be a successful sales person, how to have a healthy pregnancy and how the f*ck to get your baby to sleep–the latter is an ongoing issue in my house.

As I type this there are 18 books on Amazon’s Top 100 that could be categorized as “self-help” NOT including diet books. Among them, there are several about the brain as it pertains to habits, depression, happiness and health. It seems that the biological understanding of behavior is all the rage now. I have been doing some reading into this new scientific, self-help genre, and there are a few common themes:

1.) Our thoughts can have a real, tangible power in the world based on the energy they produce. This energy, attracts like energy. 2.) Our thoughts create habits, our habits determine our actions, and our actions create our reality. 3.) If you want to change your reality, change your thoughts.

The basic premise being thoughts first, feelings second, then reality.

This new genre of self-help is another, more scientific derivative of the principles of popular theory known as The Law of Attraction, of which the main premise is, what you think about is what you attract into your life, for better or for worse.

I have believed this for a long time, even before it became a self-help genre with a trademark name. Actually, I used to think I was a little bit psychic.

I am a thinker and a dreamer by nature. If something is important to me, I spend energy thinking and day dreaming about it happening to me. Often times, it really happens the way I dreamed it would.  I get lost in these fantasies of receiving things I want–a promotion, a sought after client, a surprise–I go all the way, I fully allow myself to feel as though they are really happening. I rehearse future conversations, reactions and phone calls pertaining to the event. It used to freak me out a little when they came true right down to the minute details.

In 2004 the first of my core group of best friends was getting married. It was the first everything from bachelorette party, to wedding shower to actual wedding for anyone of the girls in my close friend group. At the time I was already living in another city, and so making every event was unlikely. Not one to miss a good party, I decided that I MUST attend the bachelorette party, but I decided that I didn’t want to just attend. My friends are very important to me, they are like my family. I wanted to contribute to the specialness of the occasion by making it even more memorable. I wanted to do something unexpected and outrageous.

I hatched this hair-brained idea that I was going to surprise everyone in some dramatic way. I planned to secretly fly into town. I thought maybe I’d pop out of the partition that separated the back of the limo from the driver’s cab while they were driving to the first bar. I thought maybe I’d write a funny poem about how I wish I was there to call shotgun one last time (which I was infamous for). I’d call them from the front seat of the limo and read it to them on speaker phone. As they laughed I’d stick my head through the partition and say, “shotgun.” They would start laughing and crying and it would an amazing way to kick off the night.

And it was, down to the last detail. Although there were a lot of variables to making that situation happen that weren’t necessarily in my control, it still happened the way I’d hoped and it was then that I started to believe.

Then there was my wedding day, my career, my awards, my children, our financial issues–all visualized, all happening very close to the way I visualized them. This belief in being the co-creator of my life is the very reason that when my life went to shit after filing a sexual harassment complaint against my boss, the first thing I did was make a vision board. I needed my visualizations made into something tangible so that I could physically look at them while going through some of the most painful months of my life. A time when I knew my optimism would wane.

It worked.

I set a date in my head when I thought would be an appropriate time to start getting paid for my writing. It was a specific week for a specific reason. Actually, it was this week. Out of the clear blue visualized sky an online publication asked me to write things for them on a part-time basis. For like, real money.

I’m telling you guys right now, if I know one thing, I know this… watch your thoughts, they are who you become.

Now, before you think I’m crazy let me say this; not EVERYTHING I have visualized has come to fruition. I have yet to win the lottery or meet Oprah and I have visualized the SHIT out of those situations. In fact, the skeptic in me wants to chalk it up to coincidence, or a trick of the mind. Part of me thinks that maybe I just revise my visualizations after the fact to match my current reality. I’m tempted to think that.

But then I come across another quote, anecdote or self-help book that supports my belief in being a co-creator of my own reality. It’s a profound wisdom that has been espoused for centuries by many people, in many ways:

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it. ~William Arthur Ward, Author

Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right. ~Henry Ford

… and my second favorite:

Watch your thoughts, for they become your words.

Watch your words, for the become your actions.

Watch your actions, for they become your habits.

Watch your habits, for they become your character.

Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

~Author Unknown

In the latest self-help genre focusing on brain chemistry, they are getting closer to understanding this phenomenon on a scientific, physical, biological level. Although I strongly believe in science, I also believe in miracles, and faith. Because my ALL TIME favorite quote regarding The Law of Attraction is:

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  Matthew 7:7

The Human Metamorphosis

butterfly in hand

met·a·mor·pho·sis [met-uh-mawr-fuh-sis] noun, plural- A profound change in form from one stage to the next in the life history of an organism, as from the caterpillar to the pupa and from the pupa to the adult butterfly.

The life cycle, or metamorphosis of a butterfly is simple: larvae, caterpillar, pupa, adult butterfly. A butterfly is a rather simple organism. The more complex the organism, the more complex the metamorphosis. Human beings are the most complex organism on the planet and therefore, our metamorphosis isn’t so straight forward.

Throughout our lifetime we are forever transforming. It starts with a tremendous outer growth. In 40 weeks a single human egg cell can grow into a 7lb baby. My son is 5 months old and he literally looks like a new person every week. My toddler grows out of her shoes every four months. As adults, the different cell types of our bodies are shed, repaired and regenerated sometimes daily. Scientists estimate that we regenerate almost every cell in our bodies every 10 years.

As we get older the outer metamorphosis slows and (hopefully) the inner metamorphosis accelerates. As we settle into our bones and make peace with our bodies our minds start to expand. For better or worse, we are familiar with the way we look on the outside. As we get older, we feel the need to become just as familiar with the way we feel on the inside. It’s not an easy or simplistic growth chart.

Many of us who are in, approaching, or have already experienced our 30′s might have noticed something happening in this peer group. I call it, The Great 30′s Shake Down. It’s that time in life when people start to splinter off into groups of like-minded people. They also get divorced, downward spiral or commit to a career path or faith. It’s the cycle in our metamorphosis when we tend to step back and ask… “What is it that I really believe?” And if your life isn’t all that you’d imagined it to be (and let’s face it, it rarely is by the time you reach your 30′s) or perhaps a little scarier than you’d imagined, you start to ask yourself, “Is this all there is?” That question is usually followed closely by “Oh God, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, PLEASE don’t let this be ALL there is?!”

These questions are the beginning of the inner metamorphosis.

Some people get scared at this process, and rightly so. It’s a hard and winding road toward discovering your inner world. It’s full of wrong turns, detours and obsticals. It’s not only difficult, but it’s scary because there are demons to slay and pasts to make peace with along the way. It takes a fortification of the gut that many people don’t yet know they have in their 30′s. For many, this process is prolonged until their 40′s, 50′s or unfortunately, maybe never.

Many will decide to put their faith in something that millions of others have put their faith in. They put their faith in something outside themselves where thousands of other’s have claimed they have found all the answers. And many of those thousands will have found what they were looking for but not unless, and until, they searched inward, too. The journey to discovering of your inner-self can only be found inside YOU.

This inner journey, if you’re willing to take it, unlocks your purpose in life. It unlocks the purpose of life. If you think I’m talking about a state of nirvana wherein all your problems blow away on the wind well… I am… and I’m not.  You can certainly find that happy place, but it takes years and years of practice to maintain it. The inner journey is never-ending, like a spiral into and out of everything. It is the last frontier in our modern world and it knows no bounds and has no limits. It’s a journey worth the effort, but might I suggest taking some Pepto Bismal because this metamorphosis isn’t for the weak constitution.

I am still on this journey. I have had mere seconds of understanding the depth of what I attempt to write about here, but those seconds have clung to me like a promise of wings.

If a butterfly isn’t allowed to break through the chrysalis by itself, it will never gain the strength to fly. If you’re willing to build the strength it takes break through your own cage, the payoff is as wonderful, as simple, as liberating and as beautiful as a butterfly.

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasures you seek. ~ Joseph Campbell

Global Consiousness… It’s Totally Significantly, Significant

Holy shit you guys, my brain just exploded. I ran across this tonight. WAIT! Don’t click it just yet. (That’s what she said. ;-) ) First, let me explain.

That link is to a static page from a Princeton University website. It explains an experiment that took place between 1998-2002 that attempted to measure global consciousness. It uses these little machines that look like power strips with no plug-ins called Random Event Generators (REGs). They were placed in different spots in the world and over a four-year period they measured electric pulses, static, wave lengths (things having to do with energy) and from these measurements, they produced a random set of numbers. When major events happened, (such as September 11th), these RANDOM Event Generators went all NOT RANDOM AT ALL.

Basically, when there was something that galvanized human thought and emotion, these REG’s showed there was definitely something going on energetically in the atmosphere to the point that it was statistically significant (which is science speak for, “why yes, these two things really do have something in common and complicated, irrefutable mathematical statistics proves it.”)

Remember how I was saying WE. ARE. ALL. JUST. ENERGY??

When I was in the eighth grade a friend and I ran across an article about mind reading. The article said that if you concentrated hard enough with another person, you could communicate telepathically. The article gave guided instructions on how to do this by guessing what color another person was thinking. To an eighth grade girl this stuff is like sour patch kids and full-sugar soda, totally irresistable. I remember sitting in a doorway entrance of our middle school waiting to be picked up from school when we tested this theory. We sat facing each other with our palms touching like the article suggested. When it came time for me to guess the color she was thinking, it totally freaking worked!!! It not only worked once, but it worked several times!!! Our little 13-year-old minds were sufficiently blown and we thought we were witches. Of course we used our powers for good and went about trying to get certain boys to like us (which I hate to say never really worked), but ever since that innocent, mind-reading experiment, I’ve been fascinated by the reality of this idea.

Fast forward seven years and you get to the part where I’m in college working as an intern for a television station. On one of the most boring morning shows known to man, at an ungodly hour wherein only birds should be awake, I was operating a teleprompter. I can’t remember the guest’s name, but the topic was consciousness (back before consciousness was cool). Whatever this guy said got me so intrigued that I went to the lecture he was promoting that evening. There, he had one of these Random Event Generators. At one point he asked the audience to simultaneously think positive thoughts and then watch the REG in action. It worked! Right before my very eyes this little machine fluctuated solely based on the collective consciousness in the room. But I didn’t believe it because of what I saw. I believed it because of what I felt. As I sat there in this room with 30-40 like-minded individuals all thinking positive thoughts, I felt the air change around me. All the sudden, I felt happier, more peaceful, at ease and at the risk of sounding like a total hippy… totally one with the universe dude. Consequently, it’s the same thing I feel at a really kick ass yoga class. If you pay attention, the feeling is real, it’s palpable, it’s irrefutable, it’s emotionally significant.

This single, anonymous, lonely, non-linking-to-anything-else-on-the-whole-Internet, web page, just proved something I’ve always believed, but could never prove with science. Yes, my mind is statistically, emotionally, significantly, sufficiently, blown.

There IS a collective conscience in this world. We are all a part of it. We are all connected through it. Because we are all just energy. Because WE. ARE. ALL.

Leggo My Ego

I first learned the true definition of the Ego when I read Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth; Awakening to Your LIfe’s Purpose. This was, (shockingly), prompted by Oprah and an online class she conducted surrounding the content of the book in 2008. It was mind-blowing AND eye-opening to say the very least. One of the central themes of the book is to describe, understand, and ultimately, break free from our own ego. Before I read this book, I thought that only certain people had egos. That to have an ego and to be egotistical, meant that you were exceptionally arrogant and into yourself all the time. It wasn’t an adjective I would have willingly bestowed upon myself… until, I read this book. Fact is, we all have egos and they are all larger than life. Every second of everyday we go about thinking our way into bigger ones because our thoughts are the oxygen that fuel the ego’s flames.

One of the definitions Eckhart uses to describe the ego is on p. 27, “…a misperception of who you are, an illusory sense of identity.” Basically, every label you have ever used to describe yourself both publicly and privately; mother, father, conservative, liberal, fat, stupid, doctor, liar, martyr… each one of those words elicit an emotion, a perception, all of which activates a feeling inside of you that you choose to either identify with or reject. That is your ego trying to define and put limits on you. Have you ever noticed yourself get upset when someone puts forth an opposing political viewpoint? Don’t you sometimes get down right ENRAGED at people who can’t see what you clearly see so well? That is because the idea they are putting forth is a challenge to your ego or the misperception of who you think you are.

I like to use visual aids for clarity, so let’s use one here. An egg. An egg is a symbol used in many different cultures and religions as a representation of life. Why shouldn’t it be? It is where so much life begins. On a basic, structural level, it has a core surrounded by a gelatinous substance, encased in an elliptical, hard shell.

Think of the core, as your true self. The part of you that contains the energy of all life. It’s your truest, most sacred self; free of definition, restrictions and limitations. It is everything you were ever meant to be and already are. It is also the part of you that is connected to all other forms of life.

Think of the gelatinous egg-white,  (albumin), as your ego. It is larger than the core and has the important job of protecting the core, or your true self. It is constantly swirling, shifting and can even get cloudy depending on what it’s being fed. It prevents the core from getting too jostled or touching the sides of the shell where it might get bruised.

Then you have the shell. The house. And for that matter, the car, the boat, the Coach purse, the Mercedes-Benz and this season’s knee-high boots. This is what the world sees.  Unfortunately, this is what we all use to judge everything else that’s inside.

Even the proportions are poetic. An egg is 11% shell, 58% egg white and 31% yolk. The smallest part of ourselves is the shell and yet that is where many of us spend 90% of our focus. As far as our insides are concerned, the largest part of us is our ego and the smaller, more dense core is a mere 31%. And still, it is an elegant, perfect system for developing life as well as a tasty and nutritious breakfast. The healthiest chickens produce the brightest and richly flavored yolks and if you’ve ever had a good quality egg, you know that the yolk, ”tastes like buttah.”

This analogy could go on and on and on…

Since starting this blog something insane is happening in my life. No, Oprah has not called me…yet. What is happening is a metamorphosis of sorts. Layers of my ego are being stripped away and like an egg, I am being broken open. I am feeling exposed at my core; raw and tender, and strangely, stronger than ever.  The reason this is happening is because of the intention that I stated for this blog endeavor. That intention is to become more conscious and to use my life and experiences as a mirror to reflect a light into the world. I have drawn to my life the ability to pay attention more closely, more keenly… more.

It is ultimately, Matthew 7:7  Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: 8  For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

When I pressed publish on this blog I called forth consciousness into my life. It’s like when you ask God for strength… you don’t get strength, you get the opportunity to be strong. That is what is happening with me right now. I am becoming more spiritually healthy, and my core is getting brighter and richer.

Now ready for your mind to be blown, AND your eyes, opened? Let’s start big, and then go small, shall we?

The Milky Way Galaxy

Our Solar System

Our Planet Earth

Ovum, or Human Egg Cell

An Atom

Starting to see a pattern? I am, and it’s all connected. All you have to do is…

open your eyes.

The Science of Spirituality

I’ve got this side of me that geeks-out over science. I have been known to wander aimlessly, by myself, in some of this country’s best science and natural history museums while on business travel. I visited Bodies: The Exhibit, twice, alone. I aced college level chemistry in high school and almost chose it as my college major until I realized how much math was involved.  Science = bueno, Math = no bueno.

I suppose I get this trait from my father who is a chemistry teacher and a science nerd to his core. The man wore a t-shirt imprinted with the periodic table of elements when I was kid. (A t-shirt I rescued from the donation bin and still have to this day.)  I seem to be genetically hard-wired with this insatiable curiosity about how my world works on an empirical, scientific level. The facts about life never cease to amaze me.

Then there’s this other side of me that geeks-out over the spiritual. The side that loves yoga and meditation and learning about religion. It is where these two worlds collide that my brain explodes into a frenzy of hyperactive, toddleresque-overstimilation and I want to pee all over myself like a nervous chihuahua. I could literally talk about this for hours.

Oh will you looky there, I went and created myself a blog wherein I’m pretty much free to talk about whatever I want so…

There are two theories in particular that I think about often as it pertains to science and spirituality. The first, is Newton’s Third Law of Motion. Newton’s Third Law of Motion states: The mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and collinear.

The second law, is a law of physics pertaining to the conservation of energy. This law means that energy can change its location within the system, and that it can change form within the system, but that energy can be neither created nor destroyed.

I know, sounds totally boring right? If you’re still with me and haven’t started skimming to get to the end of this snoozer of a high school physics lesson/ blog post, then stick with me and I’ll break it down.

Have you ever been to an open casket funeral? Have you ever buried the family pet? Do you remember the first time you saw anything that was dead? Do you remember how you felt when you first laid eyes on the deceased? It’s not my intention to stir up a bad memory, I don’t want you to think about the specific person, animal, or situation, but rather the physical experience of seeing it.

I was about six when I went to my first open casket funeral. Since then, I’ve been to more open caskets funerals than I care to recount here, but that’s not the point. My point is that when I saw that for the first time I wasn’t afraid, and I haven’t been afraid since. I wasn’t afraid to see death at age six because what I was seeing might have looked like something that used to be alive, but I knew, at a six-year-old instinctual level, that what I was seeing was not the same as a real person. The energy that animates life was missing because, (and this is the tie that binds it all together so let me be very clear)…

We. Are. All. Just. Energy.

When you understand that, you will start to see life in a whole new way.

We can feel each other’s energy if we pay attention. It resides in the silent, empty spaces between our physical bodies. Have you ever gotten “a bad vibe” from someone? Conversely, have you ever been instantly attracted to another? That’s your energy connecting with another person’s energy. On this instinctive level we draw to us like magnets the same energy we are putting into the world, which conveniently brings me back to Newton’s Third Law.

Newton’s Third Law says that each action (use of energy) has an equal and opposite reaction. To put it more plainly, Karma’s a bitch folks. What you put out into the world, comes back to you. It is up to you to choose what that energy will be. Will it be positive? Or negative? Will you give? Or will you take? Have you ever heard of the saying, the more you give the more you get? It’s true, because it’s science.

Now let’s take the second law, the law of conservation of energy. This essentially states that energy can never cease to exist, it merely changes form. So let me repeat just in case you didn’t get it the first time, We. Are. All. Just. Energy. We never cease to exist, we merely change form.

When our bodies fail us, when it’s time for us to leave the physical world, our energy (or soul, as it is more commonly referred to) lives on in another form. It is our bodies that stay behind. Where we go is the million dollar, highly debatable, unanswered question, but I have no doubt that we all have always, and will always exist in one energetic form or another. It’s true, because it’s science.

Furthermore, (and perhaps another blog post), I believe that all the energy in this world is connected through an elegant system of design that is far beyond my abilities to comprehend. At every moment our energies are speaking and perceiving, connecting and being acted upon by forces that we have yet to fully realize. That’s the spirituality part.

It’s true, because it’s science… and spirituality.