Here is a scholarly reference to watch as a compliment to the article:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpcCoW5gA7w

Last night I got a piece of pizza in South East Portland and, in the midst of conversation, I lightheartedly said to the worker, “It seems like no one in Portland is from Portland…”  It turns out he was from Portland and told me bluntly that he resented when people from other states say this.  After around twenty seconds he was still frowning and I realized he was serious. Talk about awkward!

As I was eating my delicious piece of pizza on the restaurant porch, observing the mysterious flow of the evening, listening to lonely drone of passing cars, and watching the first few stars twinkle their faint intimations of other worlds, I thought about what he said.  The conversation made me reflect on the illusion of inordinate pride derived from being born in a particular place or of belonging to any particular group of people as opposed to another.  So many people derive a sense of identity from being American, for instance, forgetting that “America” is simply a social construction created by people who forcibly colonized a piece of land that already belonged to others.  I am happy to be in America, yet it always seems silly to me when people take pride in the fact that they were randomly born on a plot of land and forget that all these names and places have been simply made up by people in the past.

If you look at the Earth from space you can’t see America, or Oregon, or Portland, or any nation, state, or city at all. All you see is a single planet that belongs to the Divine.  And from a human perspective, all you see is a single species irrationally dividing into competing teams when, in reality, we are all on the same team.  Team human.  Team One Reality. Team Buddha Mind in many forms.  Team Krishna manifesting as many beautiful ethnicities and races.  Team One Love revealed in many faces.  Team Christ in all and all in Christ.  Team This with no that and One with no two.

Its funny how in the modern age cosmic musings often get mingled with shallow pop culture references that emerge from the subconscious like disturbingly old fast food french fries you find when cleaning out your car for the first time in a year.  So, I thought, all the races and nations should become like the Power Rangers, combining their unique swag into a single swag machine that is a greater than the sum of its parts. The Power Rangers was a show from the 1990s (which, according to the consensus of historians, was perhaps the pinnacle of human cultural development [see Boy Meets World, Sugar Ray, and Micheal Jordan]) in which all the rangers each wore bright spandex of a different color and each had unique talents.  But when they faced a big enemy they united their individual animal vehicles into a single vehicle that was immensely powerful (see above video at 0:51).  Could all our diverse nations and ethnicities, with all their unique talents and nuanced perspectives, similarly unite into a single unstoppable humanity to fight our common enemies of poverty, ignorance, bigotry, and hate?  Could this indeed be the answer?  Was Power Rangers actually philosophically profound, or is my unhealthy nostalgia for the 1990s once again clouding my rational judgement?

When will we renounce our made up factions and become like the Power Rangers, merging into a single bad ass multicolored peace mongering unity machine?  When will we wake up from the childish illusion that we are all competing with each other?  When will we realize that the Divine is pretending to be everyone and loves everyone equally?  When will the politicians change their mantra from God Bless America to God Bless the galaxy?  When will we realize that the good of the one is found in the good of the all?  And when will I simply enjoy my pizza without trying to save the world? Oy vey….

Thanks for reading,

Jeffrey

Dear friends,

I just moved to Portland last week and look forward to blogging more about the barrage of new and exiting experiences!  I am living in a place called the Trillium House, which is a house dedicated for lay practitioners of Zen Buddhism in the Zen Community of Oregon.  Although I do not identify as a Zen Buddhist, I practice Zen meditation on a daily basis and find it greatly benefits me on a spiritual, mental, and even physical level.  One of the great things about Zen is that it is fundamentally a practice, and people of all religions or no religion can practice Zen meditation.

Now that I’ve recently graduated with my masters degree I’ll have more time to blog, so stay tuned in the near future for some more substantial posts!  For now, a brief poem will have to suffice:

CLOSER

The waves of mind are always oscillating

Always rejoicing or complaining or musing,

Yet your most intimate Awareness remains

Ever changeless and blissful.

This Awareness is what many call God, or Buddha, or Krishna, or Christ;

Heck, you could even call It Frank!

Whatever you want to call It

Is merely a symbol pointing to the indescribable Reality

That is seeing with your eyes.

If you still your thoughts in meditation

The waves of mind will calm.

Look, then, into the lake

At the Face that reflects

And you will find that you were not

Who you thought you were.

You will find that the Beloved

Is closer than the blood

Flowing in your veins

And is in fact

Your very Self.

May you and all beings be happy and strive to treat everyone with unconditional love!

Thanks for reading,

Jeffrey

I always remember that the Lord is all-forgiving. We must face the consequences of our harmful actions in accordance with the natural laws of cause and effect, but our errors in life should never stop us from turning back to God, the greatest source of happiness and the only everlasting love. Like the sun which shines on us regardless of anything we have ever done, so the love of God does not change based on our positive or negative behavior.

Peter once asked Jesus, “Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother?” Jesus then famously answered, “Seventy times. No! Seventy times seven!” He was not actually doing multiplication but pointing out that there is no end to our capacity for forgiveness. If this is the standard for humans, how much more is God a fountainhead of everlasting mercy and grace, a boundlessly Attractive Magnet of Pure Love that will ultimately cause even the greatest evil-doers to someday return to His irresistibly magnetic radiance?

God does not expect us to be perfect, so remember always that God unconditionally loves you and forgives you when you mess up. So when you do fall, never be afraid to turn back to God, who like an ideal Mother or Father will never stop loving us and gently calling us back to our true home with Him. His arms of love are always open, and in His kingdom no one is ever turned away.

Many people seem to associate God’s love with a particular cookie cutter template they find boring and/or unattainable. They think they must strive to be somebody else and always feel they are falling short. Yet God’s unconditional love is not the requirement to be a perfect somebody else, but rather the total freedom to be your self.

His love is like the all embracing light that inspires a plant to fully flower into itself – it is never inhitibive, but rather infinitely creative and unimaginably supportive! For God created you to be YOU, exactly as you are. And from an even deeper perspective, you express an aspect of God that no one else in this world can express, for “we are made in His image.”

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Hello Again!

Hello again, friends!   I have not been blogging as much as I want to since I have been busy with school, creating my new album, and working at my internship.  But, praise be to God Almighty, He is my SHALOM and “the author and finisher of my faith” (Paul the Apostle). Indeed, through all the diverse activities that color the lives of His servants God is working on their behalf to lead them to ultimate fulfillment in His glorious perfection.  And through bad times and good, busy times and restful times, God is an inexhaustible Source of the love and incomparable bliss that emanate from Him “from everlasting to everlasting.” How shall we respond to such a glorious state of affairs but with this ecstatic exclamation:  Come, let us worship Him forever!

Introduction

In this post I am going to discuss a few perspectives on what it means to surrender to God.  To begin I want to say a few words about the above painting that I called “Surrender.”  This painting is the cover of my new album, The Testimonium, and encapsulates the album’s message in a single image.  In the painting a young man has encountered within himself God’s love and the Infinite Consciousness that exists forever (this is what the heart with the Eye within it symbolize).  From this state of awe he then surrenders his human will to the Great One, and this is symbolized by the blood flowing out of his hands into the heart and also by the cross.  For the cross, among others things, is a symbol to me of complete surrender to the will of God, even to the point of death.

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For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

– Matthew 6: 32-34 (verse 33 is underlined)

Om. I have spent the last few years reading many world scriptures and can safely say that Matthew 6: 33 is my favorite scriptural passage. And if I didn’t think that doing so would upset my mother I would probably have gotten it tattooed on my body long ago (how’s that for spiritual courage?).  To me, it poetically crystallizes the goal of my life and also is one of the most powerful promises of God ever uttered by a prophet on the Earth.

Part of the reason I like this particular scripture so much is its positive spin on God.  Seeking God (who is bliss Itself) is not something we “should” do and not something we will be punished for not doing.  Rather, if you truly understood the bliss of God you would naturally seek it first, for you would understand that nothing else in life even compares to it.  And, ironically, if we do seek Him first we will not only gain the limitless bliss that He is, but “all else will be added to us.” God’s cherry on top of His ice cream sundae of Love is His unbreakable promise that even our natural desires will eventually be fulfilled if they are temporarily renounced for the infinite joy we have always been seeking.

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“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life.”

                 -Matthew 6: 25-27

Om.  An American religious studies professor (I can’t remember who) recently gave his students an assignment to create their own religion.  The resultant tenets of these religions were as diverse as the students that conceived them, but the professor discovered that there was a common thread all of them shared; each religion, without exception, involved some form of stress reduction.

This wasn’t surprising to me. We live in the most technologically advanced age that has ever existed.  This undeniably has many benefits (duck tape, for instance!) but one of its by products for nearly everyone is stress.  With so many choices it’s hard to know which ones to make.  There is so much to remember: social security numbers, updating your license, credit cards, car maintenance, and, most significantly which one of the 200 breakfast cereals to buy at the store (Unrelated fact: A grown man can still eat Fruity Pebbles and have high levels of self-respect).

And to make matters worse our culture is founded on the unrealistic paradigm of infinite improvement.  People feel constantly stressed because they compare themselves to photo-shopped cultural standards they never seem to meet.  There is always someone richer, better looking, smarter, more creative, and more productive than you.  Our culture constantly tells you what you need to posses to become whole, not that you already are whole in God!

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“We should bend to the great task of reinterpreting all the Christian traditions…and since it is a question of truths which are anchored deep in the soul….the solution of this task must be possible.”

-Carl Jung

Om. I often get asked if I am a Christian, and- as if I were talking about a beloved woman I am in an undefined relationship with– I tend to say, “well…its complicated.”  I was born into a Jewish family and converted unthinkingly to Christianity when I was around 8 years old.  As I grew up I gradually lost all interest in religion until I encountered Zen Buddhism, lived for 6 months at a Zen monastery, and had experiences in meditation that convinced me beyond doubt that an eternal God exists.

These days I believe in the unity of all religions and of a single nameless Source they each symbolically express.  Yet in spite of this I have pictures of Jesus in my car and next to my bed.  I read and love the Bible perhaps more than any other book, frequently attend churches, often dream in Christian symbolism, and sometimes refer to God as Jesus when I pray.  My friends can all attest to the fact that I annoyingly quote the New Testament all the time. So am I a Christian?  Like I said, its complicated! But after much reflection I now say yes, but not exclusively. Christianity particularly moves me, but as a son of the One True God I may equally be considered a Muslim, a Hindu, or a Jew.

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Introduction

Om.  It seems that many people these days feel that the discoveries of modern science have somehow “disproven” the existence of God and branded the path to God as an infantile superstition.  These arguments typically are, in my opinion, based on the view that religion is identical with the monotheistic traditions that currently dominate the spiritual terrain of the Earth.  In these traditions (popularized Christianity, for instance) God is something separate from the physical universe that can be approached by faith but not experienced directly, created the world in 7 days without evolution 6000 years ago, is often portrayed as male, and created human beings separate from animals.

These descriptions of God are unarguably antithetical to the recent scientific discoveries of evolution and the cosmic age of the universe.  It is now clearly known that humans slowly evolved from less complex animals, that the Earth is billions of years old, and that beyond the clouds no “heaven” exists where the righteous go after the death of the body.

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