[Living a postiively awakened path of life.]

When it comes to selecting a spiritual teacher, we all have choices. There are those avatars who are safe, consoling and guide you with a kind, gentle hand. They stroke your ego and make you feel good. Then you may walk around saying, “Look at me being spiritual.” Then there are the rude, tough, nasty down and dirty dust all over them, bad boys and girls of Awakening. They scare the “Hell” out of you and disturb you. They make you really think and in the end do an ego-ectomy on you. However, it is those outlaw types who really get in your face and open your self to who you really are -- most importantly, who it is you really want to be.

        When we teach, the “we” being, myself, my form being one part of me, and my higher-self being the other -- when we teach, we are a bit stern, and a bit of gentle. The gentleness is to get you to relax so the door to Awakening can be opened and information be allowed to enter. We maintain that there is no road to happiness; happiness is the road. We maintain further that there is no path to enlightenment; enlightenment is the path. One does not “learn” to become enlightened. One simply lives the Awakened moment in the “now.” We are all on the “Path.” It is where individuals are personally on this glorious journey that places them in different positions on this “Path.” The sternness manifests itself in matters of teaching self-discipline. Self-discipline is not always a tasty meal to eat, but it is a meal that must be eaten if one is to maintain the strength to travel the “Path.”

Living well, is a matter of learning many small lessons. One of the most trying and difficult of these when Awakening concerns the judgments we make about others we may meet along the Path. Almost all such judgments are wonderful opportunities for learning, if we only recognize them as lessons. At the meat counter in the super market where we shop, we got behind an elderly gentleman, recently, a man in his late eighties. He was blocking our way as he spent an unusual amount of time selecting his chicken, longer than one might have thought reasonable. We might have become irritated with him and made some rude comment to display to him our exasperation as we thought to ourselves, “Why doesn’t he just get on with it?” We did not do so. Instead, we went to the other end of the meat counter, picked out a nice, range free buffalo steak, then went back to select our chicken once he had finished. We only needed a few things so a cart wasn’t necessary so we used a hand basket, instead. We completed our shopping; and, not only was the hand basket over flowing, we were also forced to carry three other items in our hands. The now heavy basket was biting into our arm. In the only open check out line, we found ourselves behind the same elderly gentleman who continued to move at a snail’s pace. “We might have tought, “Oh bother! Here we are again having to wait!” No. We waited and had the opportunity to read the lead paragraphs of three interesting articles from one of the magazines for sale at the counter. Once we cleared the store and were driving towards the out ramp onto one of the two major highways that straddled the store, we got behind a person trying to make an illegal left hand turn from the right hand lane. It was the 4PM rush hour. It presented no insolvable problem. We backed up, and drove down to the other exit. The same elderly gentleman, now driving a new Buick beat us to the exit by a tick. He was also turning left from the right lane. But he surprised us. He floored it and left rubber burning as he merged into traffic.

        People are here to teach us lessons. Our need is patience. We have a strong desire to get everything done yesterday. Too often impatience seems all pervasive, but it is the all pervasiveness of it that we should welcome for the many opportunities it provides us to learn important lessons of life.

        Was it not Socrates who advised us that when the student was ready, the teacher would appear? People come into our lives, often as teachers, to help us along our “Path.” There is the irritater, the soother, the giggler, the iconoclast, friends. There are those who make us feel good and those who make us feel bad. But they are all teachers, and they have but one message: none of them can affect us in any but a positive way. The good opinion of other people is meaningless. It is what you think of yourself that matters. Sometime in the 1940s a satirist for the Chicago Times wrote an article that went something like this the following: “ I am writing this article to all of you out there who might choose to write to me concerning your opinion of me or what I might write. Once I receive your letter this is what I shall do. I am now sitting in the smallest room in my house. At this moment I hold your letter before me. In just a few more moments it shall be behind me.”

        When The Buddha was a young man, he was called Siddhartha. He would often walk from village to village learning from the people and teaching. His followers would walk behind him to watch, to listen and to learn. There were times when villagers would challenge Siddhartha, call him names, spit at him and sometimes even throw sticks or stones at him, screaming vulgarities in an effort to shake his composure or, better yet, to make him angry. They could not shake his serenity. When his followers asked him, “Siddhartha, how can you accept this abuse day after day and do nothing?” Siddhartha would look at them with his usual compassion and grace then say, “If I do not accept the gift. To whom, does it belong?” Ah, yes, even then. The good opinion of other people was taught to be ignored.

        AWAKEN. So much of Awakening is common sense. To BE in an Awakened state is to be open minded, to BE, living a positive life, not thinking positive but living positive. To BE Awakened is to show gratitude for all things. To BE Awakened is to accept your responsibility to humanity. To BE Awakened is to accept responsibility for this planet. Ask yourself: Am I a Being having a Human experience, or am I a Spirit having a Being experience? Once you cross the threshold of this door you cannot go back.

Dennis Alexander is a Mayan, Usui, Karuna, Shamballa Reiki Master, a Reverend, Shaman, Quantum-Touch Instructor & BRT Certified. An award winning, TV, Producer/Director & Founder of the Sentient Temple, 727-323-2793.