Recently, two of my business peers suicided in the same week.

My main source of income comes through Internet Marketing and specifically helping my brother and his wife with their real estate business in San Ramon, CA. It was a sad day when I heard that a friend and real estate colleague who I admired and liked had committed suicide. It took me aback as he always seemed so positive and he did so much to help others. According to friends, he had a history of depression and had recently broken up with a woman he was madly in love with. He went to his storage shed and put a gun to his head.

A few days later, I heard that another Realtor and colleague had also committed suicide. It seems his financial challenges brought him to a point of despair and hopelessness that led to suicide.

These aren’t my first intersections with suicide or death. In my family, suicide has always been frowned upon and carried a stigma of cowardice and personal deficiency.  I think my father contributed most to this attitude, which isn’t surprising being the military man he was – heavy on judgment and short on compassion and empathy.

As I reflected on the loss of these two friends, the lives and circumstances they left, and the shock felt in the local communities, I recalled the times I had felt so despondent and hopeless that thoughts of suicide entered my brain. As a teen, I think I had more than a few thoughts of suicide as I went through periods of inadequacy and feeling like nobody gave a damn about me and that my presence would not be missed. Those moments of angst were imbued with a distorted sense of martyrdom.

As an adult, I once followed a stream of suicidal thought into a very dark place. It was that exploration that helped me to see the value of deep psychological and emotional exploration. That inquiry has served me well as I have encountered other times when depression, emptiness and hopelessness seemed all-consuming.

What I notice with these two recent suicides is loss, sadness, love and appreciation for two very different, but the same, friends. I notice that my everyday separating boundaries become porous and the experience is more we than me and them. I am blessed to recognize no sense of judgment from my past conditioning.

There’s a lot of sweetness and appreciation for us all.

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• Humility: the state of being humble
• Humble Origin: 1200–50; Middle English  ( h ) umble  < Old French  < Latin humilis  lowly, insignificant, on the ground. See humus
• Humus: < Latin:  earth, ground; akin to Greek chamaí  on the ground

Soul without Shame posted a quote on Facebook today about Self-Evaluation vs. Self-judgment. This got me to thinking about humility. My friend, Greg, tells me that humility is the objective assessment of one’s strengths and weaknesses. I hear this as a clear objective look at oneself or one’s situation… and I always include motivation to know more, to see more clearly.

We need to acknowledge our humility, which is not just being good and spiritual. Humility means to objectively see that you do not know, not to think that something is wrong with you because you cannot know. Nobody can know. You cannot know the mystery. The only thing you can know about the mystery is that it is unknowable and untouchable. You see it, you perceive it, but you do not know what it is. The moment you try to penetrate it, you forget you are trying to penetrate it. – A. H. Almaas – Diamond Heart 4: Indestructible Innocence

Taking note of the above, we could say that humility involves being on the ground, grounded. We could be aware of the vastness and magnitude of reality in relation to our limited perspective. We could see what we see – and want to know more, have more revealed to us, to get more intimate with ourselves, to be more in harmony with life or the divine. We might feel blessed or the presence of grace to have insight, frustration, confusion or even feeling lost.

Humility might include an understanding or intimation that we cannot “do,” an objective hopelessness that what we might feel is needed to satisfy or complete is beyond our capacity to do or even know what is needed next. So, humility, seeing things clearly, can include a profound vulnerability. We might be scared or full of wonder.

Just pondering humility…

Words can Kill

The world comes knocking
at the wise man’s door
like all good guests
laying problems at his feet
quietly, he feeds them
as gluttonous appetites
ravage the evening’s meal
bloated with their own assumptions
they raucously depart
hidden in the corner
a hungry servant
died on table scraps

Thought I would try a little poetry by Rumi (Coleman Barks – Like This) with images.

Did you get a chance to watch Thrive? If not, I recommend it. Did you watch Cancer: The Forbidden Cures?

It seems almost everyone is upset with the way things are being done and run these days – BIG Governement, BIG Business, BIG Pharma, BIG Banking, BIG Agra… There’s a lot of stress, energy and vocals, but very little effective action, it seems.

The Occupy Wall Street movement seems, to me, like a dismal failure. Why? My observation is that ranting and raving and getting attention is usually not very effective. It works for hungry 2-year-olds or even a 5-year-old with a cut or a bump, but that’s usually because someone who really cares is within hearing distance.

The reason that movements like Occupy Wall Street and others fail is what? – no one cares? the system is too entrenched? the BIGs are in control?

The Occupy Wall Street movements seemed to quickly devolve from a noble quest to just another scene for repressed anger and immaturity to run amok for individual acting out or to be co-opted by more focused anti-social elements. I didn’t see anything that I would characterize as effective action.

Imagine that every person that attended a Occupy Wall Street protest, or every person that found themselves on the wrong side of the mortgage melt-down, or every person that has been hurt by the economic down turn did something simple like take their money out of the Big 3 banks that are controlled by three large and powerful families and started using a local credit union or community bank. Imagine if everyone of those people help convince 5 other people to do the same.

In detective shows and novels they say – follow the money. Hit them where it hurts is another well-known phrase. Some make the case that our individual accounts are just peanuts to the big banks, so take the peanuts away. Doing something other than just bitching and complaining is a step.

Many feel cynical and fatalistic about changing the political system with its current entrenched emphasis on “political divide.” Voting for or against a particular Presidential candidate does seem very effective. Should we Throw Them All Out? Probably, it seems it may be the only way to get the message across that our representatives are elected to serve the country and not themselves… Did you see the 60 Minutes segment?

Here again, we probably need to first deal in peanuts and then work our way up. Local community and state governments as well as Congress.

The challenge is that it takes effort and commitment for the long haul, because change will not happen over night. Many of us are challenged in those areas. We want it now and thought it doesn’t change, we manage to eke out a little emotional discharge by sounding off or acting out in ways that support the positions of the “powers that be.”

I have or am in the process of closing down all my known ties with the big 3 banks. Chase Bank keeps sending me offers, telling how they want to serve my needs. This in spite of the fact that two years ago they, canceled to credit accounts because I wasn’t their type of customer. A recent incident with Chase Bank helped to reinforce my stance.

The reason I took the time to write this post is that I have several friends dying from cancer and it seemed too obvious that the way the AMA and Big Pharma are in business to keep cancer treatment alive and well as opposed to actually finding a cure is the same as the way the financial mess is being handled to support Big Banks at the expense of the consumer.

My money and my vote is moving away from BIG…

The normal course of life is like this: A wart grows on your nose and becomes so big that you finally can’t hide it from yourself or others. So you pretend to be someone else. And people, for one reason or another, quit mentioning the wart. Of course, you can’t mention their crossed-eyes, crooked teeth, ugly toes, and etc.

We do not see the world for what it is, nor do we really see each other.

The enneagram of personality types offers us a two-edged sword. One edge can help us cut through some of the veils that obscure reality. The other edge can cut us to the quick and unfortunately this is the edge we most often use.

The deepest wound in the soul is separation from True Nature. The deepest wound in our psychological self is the narcissistic wound, the wound of not being seen for who we really are. The narcissistic wound is a universal phenomenon  – we have an ego, we have this wound.

It usually doesn’t take a great deal of self-exploration to discover the trail leading to this place of excruciating pain. Many people are already familiar with the experience of not feeling seen, or heard, or considered. Picking up this thread and following it to its point of origin, now there is something radical.

This is a place of deep raw suffering. A wound as old as us, but as painfully fresh and alive in its affect as it was for the child who was seen as a body, an intrusion, a burden, a blessing, or even as a set of hopes and dreams by parents or early care givers. The greatest need for the soul in this world is not love, but acceptance. Even the most well-intentioned parents want their children to become something other than what they are – you know – change into something great, i.e., smart, wonderful, the President, Bill Gates, or whatever. Unfortunately for the soul, what the parents are relating to is a set of images, hopes and beliefs – an ego structure (self-image) they are helping the child to create. It can’t be otherwise, as they know themselves this way.

I can remember the juice in discovering the enneagram. When we “get it”, when we finally see the fixations functioning, we can’t help but get “cranked-up” about it. Hell, I’m still cranked-up about it, though my orientation toward it and understanding of it has changed.

I remember being at Esalen attending one of Helen Palmer’s 5-day panel workshops. In the afternoon session the two’s had everyone in their laps and that evening the four’s had everyone as far back as their fannies could scoot. It was the five panel that raised the hair on the back of my neck.

My fixation (8) is connected to five, so I’ve spent a fair amount of time there. I thought I had some understanding of the five mind and the way their attention works, but about half way through the presentation, I realized these folks were from another planet! Their minds didn’t work like mine at all.

All the times I had told people, “I hear you”, “I understand where you’re coming from”, “I know what you mean”, and etc., suddenly seemed to be just so much vapor. I had been living my life under the assumption that all of us were basically using the same processing machine. Nobody had informed me that there was Windows, Mac OS, Android and six other operating systems out there.

Of course, when we get all fired-up like this, it’s, “Oh, you’re an eight”, “I’m in my seven wing right now”, and etc. A “two” once told me she drives in eight. Which I guess justified her actions of being an obnoxious, aggressive driver (I know, I was in the car with her when she stated this!).

This kind of talk is understandable and normal for a while, but I know people who have studied (I mean really studied) the enneagram for years and they still talk like this. It’s like some of my old doper friends from 35 years ago. They’re still holding the same stoned conversation as the day I walked out of the room.

Another fascinating thing is how many people wear their fixation like an award or accolade while others carry it around like a bad report card. Or, the people who wish they were some other fixation, like that would improve their experience of themselves. Or the mind set that operates like this: “I need to bash this person’s head in so, I’m going to eight. Now, I need to think about what I just did so, I’ll just zip over to five. And now I’m really depressed so, I must be in four”. I don’t think I am being too harsh or unreal here because I interact with “enneagram people” everyday that embody these behaviors.

Man

Likes to think

He has evolved

Above the animals

With an advanced intelligence

That can choose its destiny

But the ordinary man

Is no more evolved

Than a parrot

Parrots, too,

Only repeat their conditioning

Parrots, too,

Dress wildly to attract attention

And parrots are also known

To associate with pirates

Need I say more?

I don’t run into very many people that are ambivalent about the eight fixation. Many is the time a person has said to me, “Now that I’m not afraid of you…” or “I like eights …” For many years these types of comments cut me to the quick as I was working on the narcissistic wound and it was so manifested that if I touched a single chest hair, my whole body went into convulsions. Then, for a long time, it just made me very sad that the ground for contact was so limited and so removed from the real.

Recently, I was able to spend some time with a self-identified two that likes me as an eight – likes my energy, likes my forthrightness, likes my “style”. I like this person, too, but we spent a lot of time on that merry-go-round. I kept watching that need to be defined and to see the world through a particular lens and the compulsion driving it.

One day, for a moment, I awoke in the middle of my life to discover I was living in a land ruled by a chattering monkey and a dog chasing its tail. After many years, I was able to recall that thousands of these moments had occurred in the course of my life. A curiosity awakened in me that focused my attention into the freedom and lucidity of that recurring moment. At first, the craziness and insanity of the monkey and dog were highly entertaining, it being such absurd and outrageous activity. Until I realized that their behavior was driven by a state of constant torture. This broke my heart and then, I saw they were me.

It’s impossible to change the compulsion of the fixation from within the identity that is living that fixation. Understanding the enneagram won’t change it either. The only thing that works is us being changed and we can’t do this. We aren’t some thing that needs to be thrown into a personal growth cuisinart. This orientation is still non-acceptance – rejection.

My observation is that all of us eventually suffer a total heartbreak as we realize that most of our well-intentioned work on ourselves is a recreation of early environmental dynamics or some other reaction to parental demands. Of course, I haven’t observed everyone, but so far it has been one hundred percent. The situation is basically hopeless. The personality can’t take us where we really want to be. There is no true fulfillment or contentment realized as a result of its striving and endless activity.

Sooner or later, the chickens have to come home to roost. This is the moment where we allow ourselves to really become aware of the true “state-of-affairs” and the profound price we pay for it every day. To see the effects and feel the affect from the personality’s dominance in our life is a huge devastation to the heart. To experience the wounding from our not being seen is bad enough, but to see the suffering we have inflicted through our unconsciousness is a greater pain. And we do this to ourselves from a much more intimate and immediate place almost every second of our lives.

But, remember, this is a two-edged sword, this enneagram. It can help us to see part of the state-of-affairs. We don’t have to avoid the inevitable. We can actually embrace it. Eventually we must.

There used to be a great demand in me to hold others accountable for much of my sad state-of-affairs. The more I dug into my formative dynamics, the more pissed I was at mom and dad. For a long time I was of the mind that I had to “work” all of this stuff out with them. And, while it is true that some of those demons needed confronting, it is mostly the case that we just need to see the truth in ourselves. Sometimes we do have to directly confront others with some of this. We can’t free ourselves by working in the comfort of our cozy schizoid shells. Sometimes the demon we need to confront is really an agent of beauty or love, but the pain of the loss of the real is often a demon to us.

At some point, I decided to become an experiment in my own life – to take the lab rat out for a spin and see just what was really under the hood.

The best wine

needs the secret ingredient

Those demanding to know

the finished product

don’t add the mystery

Put yourself in a bottle

pull the cork in tightly

Let the dust gather

as the mystery

unlocks the treasure

When time is ripe

life will pull the cork

And you

can taste the wonder

and mystery of you

On & On

And that is where I try to focus my attention when I’m looking at you.

Everywhere I look abundance and every moment gratitude. There is nowhere to go and nothing needed.

One way I see our situation is that creation or the universe is like a tree. Love is the flowers of the tree, and the human being is the final fruit of the tree, the final fruit of creation. The thick nectar of the ripe fruit is gratitude. Gratitude for how things are, gratitude for being vulnerable, gratitude that you can be completely influenceable. Gratitude for being human. – A. H. Almaas

Appreciation floods my soul in recognizing the preciousness of the human experience.

As you may notice, the notion of oneness has quite an impact on your mind; it is a possibility that your mind doesn’t usually conceive of. The idea of it has an impact. Now, imagine what the experience is like. The more the person has an experience of oneness, the more the person will be walking around with a question mark: How can that be? What does that mean? You are eating your food, and you ask, “What am I eating? I am eating myself.” For your mind, it is completely incomprehensible. It takes time for the mind to get used to it, to adjust itself, to realize, “Yeah, I do not really have to think the way I usually think, I do not really have to go about my life the way I usually go about it. Things are not really like that.” The goodness and abundance is in every point and all of existence. It is not here or there. – A. H. Almaas

With my life

Everything’s been drug into the Wide-Open

He’s turned the whole house inside out

Even the walls are for sale

We were going to ask pennies on the dollar

But wanted better bargains

We’re asking for laughter instead

I put out all the images of my friends

Some art collector took the lot

Laughing – all the way to the bank

I gathered all my stories and tales

Hopes, woes and dreams

And rushed them out to the curb

Just in time to catch

An impoverished playwright

He was certain the joke was on us

I ran out of personal items

So I started bringing over

Donations from friends

Thinking I was pulling

A fast one on Him

I can’t contain the mirth

What a rip-roaring snort

When I discovered His face

In all of the Buyers and Sellers

What a riot!

I can’t tell you

Who is laughing loudest!

I remember when I stored  50 or 100 phone numbers between my ears. This was back in the day of the rotary phone. I should have realized that those 12 push buttons of technology from Ma Bell were going to lead me down the path of selective technological dementia – where I have to check a digital device for my name, rank and serial number.

As human beings, we rarely dwell on just how fragile our existence is. We tend to think the sun will rise tomorrow and though Bernie Madoff is in jail, our financial security is no more secure now than it has been at any other time in history. It can all go in the flicker of an eye – everything gone, even more so than the tsunami in Japan.

Likewise, we text, tweet and like as if all of our gadgets will be there for us – should the sun continue to rise.

A strong solar storm in 1859 shorted telegraph wires, causing fires in North America and Europe. If such an electromagnetic storm occurred today, it would take four to ten years to recover electric power lines, according to a report of the National Academy of Science. Given the strong interdependence of every system, the effects could be devastating for the whole of society.  – The Digitally Divided Self

I wonder how many of us would survive if we lost electricity for a decade.

And on another note -

God!

You should hear

Me complain!

About this lack of sleep

You’d never know

I’ve just awakened

From a fifty-year snooze

Every time I try to relax

A new tale from beyond

Enters my head

Going on and on

Like a broken record

Until I let it out

Or, some soft kiss

Steals into my heart

Setting it on wing

This canary’s very nature

Is endless sweet song

There’s no time to rest

The grave is rushing toward us

Like a runaway train

Don’t be struck

Deaf, dumb and dead

Before your time

Choose your death wisely

Crack your heart-seed open

Now

Die in this moment

Singing your birth-song

And you

Into existence

Come join me

In this delicious misery

Lay your head upon

Soft feathered pillows

Awaken

In His lap

God

Wants to hear

You complain too!

Gently, I lower into my self

An elegant lady entering a bath

The pool of being welcomes

A tulip at day’s cool end

The mirror reverses

Awakened lucidity

Boundaries fade

Noon sun burning fog

No longer seeking

I am

In The Digitally Divided Self, Ivo Quartiroli addresses the promise of technology to produce a better world, a bright and radiant future for all. As Ivo points out, there is an endless loop of hope, desire and falling short of the mark. Here are the stages in his “will to produce” self-reinforcing loop:

1. The expectation of a better world
2. The necessity to intervene in the entire world to achieve such goals
3. All actions are carried out impulsively and in a rush
4. The radiant future envisioned never arrives
5. We are back at point 1

This has the same feel and smell to it as the Buddhist Wheel of Samsara. This endless loop can also be viewed through the lens of endless ego activity, looking to the outside for what’s needed to make one happy, content, whole, real, strong, lovable, etc…

The focus of all activity is toward the future. Hope arises – taking us out of the NOW. This initiates the cycle of ego activity that will eventually lead to experiencing the transitory nature of all experiences which leads us back to dissatisfaction and looking to the future for the answer.

The universe
is a kaleidoscope:
now hopelessness, now hope
now Spring, now Fall.
Forget its ups and downs;
do not vex yourself.
The remedy for pain
is the pain itself. – Sarmad

Quit spending
All of your time & attention
Trying to get a life
The one dealing in that coin
Will drive you into bankruptcy
Each moment
You live Now
Is like collecting a penny
From heaven
Spending them
In service
Will bring you wealth
That lasts beyond the grave
And a life
Precious beyond price