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Non-Duality and Presence: Guidelines for Increasing Awareness

Spirituality

Lauren

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September 5, 2015

Non-Duality and Presence: Guidelines for Increasing Awareness

“The gap is your connection to the field of pure potentiality. It is that state of pure awareness, that silent space between thoughts, that inner stillness that connects you to (your) true power.” ~ Deepak Chopra

Give Up. Let Go. Repent. Stop fighting. Just Be.

There are many teachings; religious or otherwise that we may have some connection with in our lives for the simple reason that – at some time or another – we have had a charged experience in relation to that set of teachings. In relation to them, we have had an ‘aha!’ moment where our perception finally melted and we experienced true being.

Sogyal Rinpoche calls it the true nature of mind, Eckhart Tolle the ‘Now’. In a new teaching (to me anyway) the notion of non-duality can help us, in a few simple steps, to remember that perfection is an illusion, and that we are simply ‘reality’ experiencing or exploring itself.

As Eckhart Tolle says in his short autobiography in the Power of Now, the first trickles or gaps in his perception, were when he thought a thought along the lines of, ‘I just can’t live with myself any longer.’

The idea that there is a separate ‘I’ to ‘my-self’ brings about the realization that we live within this world of separation, and that actually, we are not separate from our experience at all.

This is why meditation or being in the moment is the only way to practice this universal and persistently present truth; now, and only now, I am watching a bee hover over some flowers while I hear the children playing in the park and have the scent of lavender in my nostrils.

The sensation of sadness is rising in me (for some conscious or unconscious reason in association to that experience), and I will enjoy it. Not suppress it with distraction, or food, or reason with myself (telling oneself that you feel sad because…. Something to do with your history that tantamount to theories you have come up with about yourself… basically, the ego.) But enjoy it. Let it peak and pass over me.

As with Buddhism, grasping or becoming attached to any desire, projected goal or vision of yourself, suppressing these emotions distract us from the now and divert the point of being.

For existence to experience and explore itself, it needs to not struggle against that experience, but let it flow through it. Accepting this moment for what it is usually brings with it a sense of pure joy, or at least an enjoyment of whatever pleasant (or unpleasant!) sensation you are experiencing.

Acceptance of the present moment both compliments the law of attraction, for it means that to not have goals we may feel lost and floating, and unable to ‘achieve’ the life we are trying to ‘achieve’.

However, whilst being in this state of presence, all sorts of positive and effortless luck and good fortune will be attracted to us. We become like children; innocently exploring our reality yet still being drawn to those lessons and specific experiences we are wanting to experience in this lifetime.

Not only that, but another paradoxical realization being present brings about is that, though we let go of the memories that attach our egos so rootedly to the past therefore dissolving time and bringing truth to Einstein’s theory of bending time.

We also may ‘access the Akashic records’, if such a thing exists, and are able to draw from all of our past lives, and those present, past and future ones of everyone in existence in order to add to our experience of the now.

If time is an illusion, and the void really exists, we have only to come into the moment in order to realize the ‘pure potentiality’ (a Deepak Chopra phrase I do believe) of that void. ‘No’-thingness is exactly the same as ‘some’-thing, and yet, to desire ‘some’-thing we need to first accept ‘no’-thing.

In this way then, truisms that depend on the simplified and limited uses of language like ‘we are One’, actually become true! Just think, (excuse the cliché) if everything is existence experiencing and exploring itself, then we are everything in existence.

This video with James Eaton includes everything covered in the article and offers a good quick exercise which enables us to experience this truth. If we close our eyes and explore, first what is inside our head, behind our eyes, in our chests, then down to our left foot – then we can experiment to see where we end and everything else begins.

The more we explore and experiment, we may discover that we never really end, or at least go on for a few feet more than we imagined we did. Rather than becoming the watcher, and trying to be ‘higher’ or more than our own experience, in non-duality we are our experience, just experiencing it with awareness.

The more we can practice this realization, we might also transcend this idea (that proliferates itself in the spiritual community as well as supposedly lower states of consciousness such as earthly politics and gossip columns), that as different expressions of the same existence wanting to experience itself, we are neither higher or lower than anything else.

Transcending this hard-to-shift idea that we are evolving or moving up in a linear fashion towards enlightenment, and that therefore some are closer to it than others, can be dissolved and rewritten that we are circling inwards until we will be left with nothingness.

Perhaps we are ‘dissolving’ as we speak. Even the image of the spiral can give a sense of spiritual superiority, (meaning we have, if only for a millisecond, come out of our presence and into a state of grasping), and give us the illusion that we are trying to move towards something external to ourselves.

Be in a non-dualistic state. Use all of your knowledge of being in the now to truly practice it. Dissolve comparison and uncover that state of joy already radiating from within. Release those buried emotions and nurture yourself. Plunge into awareness and see this as the beginning to it all.

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Genius and Grit: Five Reasons why Perseverance Trumps Talent

Gary Z McGee

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September 4, 2015

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Genius and Grit: Five Reasons why Perseverance Trumps Talent

“Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle.” ~ Jon Acuff

Genius is more about grit than giftedness, more about courage than capacity. Grit sands, sharpens and polishes the gift into the gifted. Courage stretches the dimensions of our capacity into a comfort zone with the potential to subsume the cosmos. Having grit grinds us into something hard-fought for, something earned on an existential level.

Talent is merely handed to us by fate, but true genius is wrestled out of the arms of the gods and torn from the teeth of demons. And that takes grit. That takes tenacity. That takes a resolve that dissolves boundaries into horizons. In the spirit of true grit, here are five reasons why perseverance trumps talent.

1) Talent can be nurtured despite nature

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci

Life is an experiment, and we are all alchemists. Like Christopher Poindexter said, “We are all scientists, trying to make sense of the stars inside us.” The problem is that most of us are not aware of it. We’re desperately trying to make sense of a hyperreal reality while ignoring the underlying roots of a very real reality.

Our alchemy is too much on the surface. Too distracted by false fire and flashy things that are either going too fast for us to catch up, or too loud for us to hear anything. As T.S. Eliot surmised, we are “Distracted from distraction by distraction.”

We too often tell ourselves “What can I do? I don’t have enough talent. I need some training, some education first.” But then we never get around to training or education, forgetting that the best training and education we could ever get is going down inside the roots of things.

It’s getting down deep, below the hyperreal world, below the disconnected reality of the surface and into the interconnected reality of the inner workings of things. And this takes courage. This takes perseverance. This takes grit.

The beauty of life being an experiment is that we can, at any moment, decide to rewrite our story. As the sacred scientists of our own lives, we are free to rewire our hard wiring. We are free to recondition our current condition despite our preconditioning.

When we allow perseverance to trump talent, we’re declaring to the universe, “With enough courage, and grit, I will nurture myself into a talented individual, despite the fact that I was not provided with natural talent.”

2) We don’t have to wait for permission

“Attitude is the difference between ordeal and adventure.” ~ Karl Frei

When we persevere despite talent, life is allowed to be an adventure. Attitude is the thing. Our disposition is paramount. When we allow others to define us –whether cultural, familial, or individual– we are limited to their definitions, and our life becomes an adventure-less grind within the parameters of those definitions.

But when we dare to define ourselves, we break the spell they have over us, and our life becomes adventurous. We shatter the chains. We flatten the box “they” want us to keep thinking inside. We transform their preconditioned boundaries into our own unconditional horizons.

When we persevere despite talent, we are asserting that we don’t need permission to define our own lives. We don’t need permission to become the best version of ourselves possible. We don’t need permission to question authority, to self-educate, and to learn from our own mistakes. This is our life. This is our adventure. And nobody is going to stop us from living it except ourselves.

We get out of our own way by forcing our ego to rise above the superego in order to get back to the roots of the instinctual id. Then we cycle back through again. Our lives become boring and void of adventure as soon as we allow our ego to rot away and grow stagnant within the confines of the superego.

Our lives become adventurous and exciting again when we use our ego to transcend the superego and then use it as a tool to navigate the id. As long as we can maintain the process of this sacred individuation, this self-actualization and self-overcoming, while never reducing ourselves to asking for permission, then our genius will not be denied its fullest potential.

3) Making our own path is so much fun

“If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.” ~ Joseph Campbell

When we allow ourselves to persevere, we liberate our inner genius. And when our inner genius is liberated, we are free to be as creative as we can be. Through such creativity the clearing of unique paths becomes manifest.

We dare ourselves to go “off road.” We clear brambles, boulders, and all forms of obstacles, and with enough perseverance, with enough grit, our own path begins to reveal itself.

Like the Zen Proverb says, “The obstacle is the path.” The “road most traveled” eventually becomes the road we sometimes travel, because we are too busy clearing paths of our own. We are too busy having fun, playing in the wild places, making the unfamiliar familiar, to the point that our comfort zones begin to subsume all paths.

If, as Brian Sutton-Smith said, “The opposite of play isn’t work; it’s depression” then it behooves us to become playful workers and working players –similar to what James P. Carse referred to as an Infinite Player.

Let’s make “work hard, play harder” our modus operandi as opposed to just “work hard for work’s sake.” Nine-to-five daily grinds be damned! When we can bring sacred play to our work and sacred work to our play, then all paths open up; as the Walls of Self-seriousness and the Veils of Ignominy are lifted, all paths become interdependently interconnected, and our perseverance becomes the talent of our genius.

4) Quantity begets quality

“Our role in existence must be played in uncertainty of its meaning… as an adventure of decision on the edge of freedom and necessity.” ~ Eric Voegelin

Quantity should be primary and quality secondary. It seems like the opposite should be the case, but it’s not. The richness of our lives shrink or expand in proportion to our ability to make quantity primary and quality secondary. This is because if we focus too much on having talent, then our creativity is stifled by thoughts of perfection.

If we can focus more on perseverance, grit, and courage, then we can learn and grow from our mistakes; instead of dwelling on potential mistakes, and then never even getting around to making the vital mistakes we need to make in order to grow.

This way we learn more about life and about craft, and we worry less about being perfect. In short, we slowly, systematically, and courageously become a genius, despite “talent” and in spite of perfection.

Quality will eventually come from quantity. It matters not if we ever become the likes of a Shakespeare or an Einstein or a Picasso. What matters is becoming the best possible version of ourselves.

Just “showing up” every day and playing through the work and working through the play will sharpen our character, hone our spirit, and make us more adaptable to change. And it is precisely from this adaptability where our quality and talent become manifest.

But we must constantly remind ourselves to let go of the ideal of perfection. Let go of the idea of being more talented. Let go of the idea of creating art with higher quality. We must free ourselves to make mistakes, so that we may learn from them.

We must free ourselves to fall flat on our face, so that we may learn how to get back up again and again. And this takes quantity. This takes practice. This takes perseverance, courage and grit. We must bravely and patiently persevere. Quality will come.

5) Carving our own niche carves us

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” ~ Samuel Beckett

When we finally realize that we are nothing more than a story we’ve been telling ourselves, then we see why it behooves us to improve upon our story and make it as interesting as possible. This is the epitome of grit and genius, and why perseverance is key.

There’s nothing wrong with allowing others to guide our story, but it must be our own writing, otherwise we are merely a character in someone else’s story rather than the hero of our own.

Being the hero of our own story is carving our own niche. It’s repetitively and self-competitively persevering through the creation of our own path through the “uncertain wood” of the cultural milieu.

It’s practicing every day. It’s failing every day. Then practicing even more, so we can fail even better. Like Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Make your niche your habit. Then practice, fail, and repeat. Only do it better.

If, as Kurt Vonnegut said, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be,” then it behooves us to pretend to be amazing at what we love to do, while, at the same time, letting go of the idea of being amazing – a kind of mindful no-mind, or attached detachment to becoming better.

We free up a space where we allow ourselves to “pretend” to be amazing, a sacred place where we are free to be as imperfectly perfect or as perfectly imperfect as we need to be in order to get things done. It’s a space that allows us to get out of our own way so that our inner genius can emerge.

We forge ourselves in the furnace of life until our perseverance sharpens us into a genius, while also letting go of the result of our sharpening by simply allowing the process of our own personal genius to unfold.

But this takes courage despite comfort. It takes grit despite a guarantee. It takes perseverance despite reassurance. It takes letting go in spite of hanging on. It takes setting fire to our comfort zone and hoping against hope that a Phoenix will emerge from the ashes, while being prepared for the worst and able to adapt and overcome if not.

Like Brené Brown said, “You can have courage or you can have comfort, but you can’t have both.”

Image source:

Edison quote
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Unfolding your own road
Diamond from the rough

5 Ways to Know if the Mind is Your Master or Slave

Nikki Sapp

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September 3, 2015

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5 Ways to Know if the Mind is Your Master or Slave

“Nothing in the world can bother you as much as your own mind, I tell you. In fact, others seem to be bothering you, but it is not others, it is your own mind.” ~ Sri Ravi Shankar

Our mind is probably the most powerful tool that we could ever own. In fact, our entire life is dependent upon our thoughts about it. Whether we have a good life, a mediocre life, or a terrible life is not so much contingent on the actual circumstances of our lives, but in our thoughts pertaining to the circumstances.

For example, two people can be watching the exact same movie, one person can focus on the bad acting of one of the characters and let that ruin the entire movie for them, while the other one is focused on the amazing music soundtrack and appreciates the costumes and set design.

Both people experienced the exact same movie, but only one enjoyed themselves. Such is our lives. And yes, it is true that no two people will have the same experience about the movie, but the principal still works the same.

Our experience of life is based on our perception of it, which is formed from our beliefs, which are based on our thoughts and which ones we give the most energy and attention to. When we never question our belief systems or go inward for self reflection, we can say that we are letting the mind make use of us. Our minds are running amok and dictating our lives without being questioned.

Once we begin to recognize our thought patterns and the reasons behind our behavior we can start making use of our minds. We can determine what thoughts and beliefs to give our energy to and which ones to discard.

So how do we know what we are doing? How exactly can we tell if our minds are making use of us, or we are making use of our minds? Below are five ways to determine if the mind is your master or slave.

5 indicators that your mind is your master or slave:

1) You believe everything it says

“The day you decide that you are more interested in being aware of your thoughts than you are in the thoughts themselves – that is the day you will find your way out.” ~ Michael Singer

News flash: You don’t HAVE to believe everything that the little voice in your head says! In fact, the more you observe your thoughts as just thoughts instead of identifying with them, you give yourself the space to give your energy to thoughts that are actually benefiting you.

When we choose to pay our attention to thoughts based in love, acceptance, positivity, and optimism, our experience of life dramatically changes. Remember, hostile people see a hostile world, while loving people see a loving one.

The more often we choose to focus on loving thoughts, we will notice our outer reality begins to shift in order to reflect our new state of mind.

2) You trust your thoughts more than your feelings

Although it may take some practice, getting in tune with how you FEEL about things vs. solely how you THINK about them is the most beneficial thing a person can do in order to hone in on their intuition.

There is a part of you that already knows what choice to make, that already knows what it truly “wants” to do, and already knows what the next move should be, and this part is NOT your mind.

Your mind is constantly taking a “stance” on something. Yes, no, good, bad, right, wrong… it lives for a black and white scenario. The problem with this is as soon as we think we know what decision we are going to make about something, our mind then starts coming up with logical reasoning against it.

So it talks us into one choice, and as soon as we think we are at peace with that choice, it starts talking us out of it. And you can imagine how the insanity ensues. However, our feelings (the way we feel in our heart center) does not and can not lie.

Peace, calm and relaxation is our natural state of being, and the choices that are in our best interest are those that give us a sense of relaxation in our hearts. When a person gets in touch with their feelings and the way their body feels about a particular circumstance rather than what they think about it, their feelings begin to act as an inner compass that never leads them astray.

3) You haven’t taken the time to question your thought patterns or behaviors

Number one step in the art of self-reflection, personal development, and an overall trying to change for the better: you must question, “Why do I do the things I do?” No problem is ever truly “solved” until a person gets to the root of the issue.

The underlying cause behind all of our behaviors is always due to an unhealed emotion or a limited belief system that is causing us to believe something about life that is out of alignment with the truth of the universe. If we never question ourselves, or get really introspective and begin to investigate the “why” behind our behaviors, rest assured that emotional maturity and evolution will be stagnant.

4) You are constantly looking for a deeper meaning & understanding

So this one is tricky because by nature, the mind is always trying to make sense of everything. It’s an automatic thing that every person’s mind does simply just because the mind must have a “logical” explanation behind everything that happens.

However, we can drive ourselves crazy with this. Especially for those of us who are on a spiritual or psychological journey, our appetites for the underlying meaning behind everything often becomes quite insatiable.

The more “understanding” we have about things the more our mind needs to know who, what, when, where, why and how. But, sometimes we must surrender to the mystery of it all. A huge sigh of relief happens when we become ok with not knowing why something happened, or why it happened the way it did, etc…

In our most authentic honesty with ourselves, when we can admit that we don’t know why something happened, we not only free ourselves from the chains of acquiring more “understanding”, but we free up our energy to focus on more productive pursuits rather than just analyzing something to death.

5) Your deeper meaning is always against yourself

A huge indicator as to whether the mind is your master or slave is making use of us is what types of reasons our mind tells us behind things.

One type of person always blames themselves for everything (and not in an empowering way), such as, “I must have manifested this because I am doing things wrong,” or “I must be attracting negative circumstances and people because I’m still not being positive enough,” or even, ” I must not be wealthy, successful, in love or living my dream life yet because there are still lots of things ‘wrong’ with me that I must work on.”

The other type of person always chooses to see the positive perspective on everything.. meaning, they realize that nothing that happens to them is NOT there to serve their best interest.

They realize that all the “bad” circumstances that anyone goes through are not really “bad” at all, but rather the interesting part of their movie where the main character (themselves) gets faced with a challenge and watches how they overcome adversity once again.

This person sees every failure as an opportunity and every circumstance as a blessing in disguise. If your mind is going to be coming up with deeper meanings and reasons why everything is happening anyway, why not choose to see that everything is always working out in your favor? It is.

The universe doesn’t give us a circumstance that isn’t ultimately evolving us into a better version of our former selves and if we choose to see things this way, life becomes an exciting adventure vs. just one disappointment after another.

Research

How the human mind shapes reality

How Dehydration Affects your Body

Life

Sonali Bansal

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September 2, 2015

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Water is a basic necessity in order to maintain a healthy body and a clear mind. Since the human body is two third water, hydration affects almost all functions of the body – temperature control, cognitive functions, kidney function, physical performance, energy levels, gastrointestinal function, heart function, headache, skin and other chronic diseases.

If we were to ask you, whether you are hydrated right now or not, most of you would not know the correct answer to that. The general tendency to connect physiological thirst with water, is what makes us miscalculate the hydration levels.

But to say how much water one should drink is a difficult thing, as it is a subjective measurement depending upon one’s lifestyle, physical activity level and energy expenditure.

Significance of water in our system

A life giver, water is the main source of transportation for nutrient, enzymes, blood, and all the other minerals in the body for everyday functions. Acting as a binding cement of the cellular membrane, water holds the cells together, and acts as a medium for all neurotransmission.

When we lack water in the body, our cells tend to produce cholesterol to bind them together, leading to multiple other issues. It also lubricates the joints, moistens the tissues, skin, mouth, eyes, etc.

Dr Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, author of the book, ‘Your body’s many cries for water’, in his lecture in Washington, D.C. stated, “My introduction into science and medicine is that water regulates all functions including the function of everything that it dissolves.” He also says, “Proper intake of water, salt and minerals can prevent these illnesses and even reverse the damage already done.”

Signs you are dehydrated

Our body and brain have developed multiple ways to conserve water in the body and also signal us of lack of water by creating a feeling of thirst. Whereas this constant feeling of thirst, is an obvious sign of dehydration, some of the non-obvious signs of dehydration are:

Sweet Cravings:

As complex as a human body can be, reading between the lines can be painful. Sugar cravings are generally due to stress, dehydration or emotional imbalance.

Masqueraded as sweet craving, dehydration might be the cause. Kidneys release glycogens in our body, but due to lack of water, they may not be able to act sufficiently, giving way to sugar craving. So, if you are craving too much sugar, maybe it is time to check your water intake levels.

Headaches:

Headache can be a direct signal to dehydration, because when we lack water supply in the body, our brain gets affected directly resulting in headache. Here’s how: When we drink water, our body uses it to supply oxygen to different parts including the brain. But we lose water in our daily activities and when we do not sufficiently replenish it, our blood vessels dilate and less oxygen is supplied to the brain.

Color of urine:

Color of urine denotes the cleansing level in the body. Lack of cleansing results in collection of toxins in our system, which are gradually discharged by way of urine and stool. Extra yellow or chardonnay color urine signifies toxins in our body, whereas light yellow or transparent urine denotes a clean and healthy body.

Bad Breath:

Bad Breath can be a symptom of chronic dehydration. Buying a good tooth paste or mouth wash or mint is not the solution to countering bad breath.

When we drink enough water, the bacteria in the mouth is washed away and enough saliva is produced. On the contrary lack of water, results in an increase in bacterial growth in the mouth, giving way to bad breath.

Stress and Fatigue:

Chronic fatigue and chronic dehydration are cyclical in nature, one leads to another and the loop goes on. Yet again, when the water level is low in the body, the blood volume drops, and the heart has to pump harder to supply nutrients & oxygen to the body parts.

Also, the muscles which works on fluid levels, are not replenished sufficiently with necessary nutrients and minerals, leading to fatigue.

Apart from these symptoms, some of the other most common symptoms of dehydration are dry skin, irritation in bowel movement, pain in joints, brain fog, immune dysfunction, gastric trouble, dull skin etc.

Your action plan

In the wake of all this information, it is highly likely that most of us are dehydrated. Your action plan needs to be strong for a quick recovery and comeback. Many experts suggest, we should drink before we feel thirsty because the feeling of thirst is the last stage of our body signaling us lack of water.

Weight to water ratio:

Since the water requirement and water intake depends on one’s physical expenditure of energy, it is best to at least drink half of your body weight in ounces. So for instance if you weigh 150 lbs, you should be drinking at least 75 ounces of water. Also, do incorporate your physical activity level to consider your water intake level.

Dan Trink, a fitness expert said, “A good general recommendation for both weight training and endurance athletes (assuming they are fully hydrated before training or the competitive event) is to drink 7 to 10 oz. of fluid every 10 to 20 minutes.”

Slow drinker:

As they say, hold your drink, same goes for water as well. Sitting down while drinking water, sipping slowly and in quick intervals rather chugging down a few together, will help a lot. When you drink slowly, you mix your saliva in the water, which increases digestion, reduces dehydration and speeds up weight loss as well.

Avoid dehydrating drinks:

The non regulatory drinks, alcohol, beverages, etc. are diuretics in nature and dehydrates you. Dr John Mandrola mentions, “Not only is it a diuretic, which promotes fluid loss, but also, caffeine’s stimulant properties increase body temperature — a real negative in the heat.”

Drinking too much caffeine or alcohol would lead to washing of fluids from the body without excretion of toxins. It is better to replace them with water, probiotic fluids, or by adding lemon or frozen fruits in the water.

Beat the stress:

Like we mentioned earlier, stress and dehydration propel each other, so taking proper rest, eating on time, exercising and doing what you like would help you manage the stress levels and in turn manage the water level in the body.

Alkaline it:

Our daily, modern day lifestyle, which requires high sugar, processed food, refined food, high in animal protein, medicines, alcohol etc. makes our body acidic. This affects us hydration level. Try to make it alkaline by consuming raw food like corn, olive, peaches, bell pepper, lettuce, cauliflower, cabbage etc.

Water is referred as an essential nutrient because it is required in amounts that exceed the body’s ability to produce it. Keep a watch on your water intake to lead a healthy and a balanced life.

Reference & Image source

Dehydration
Water benefits
Water and weight loss

Reengineering the Sacred: Five Ways to Hack God

Life

Gary Z McGee

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August 30, 2015

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Reengineering the Sacred: Five Ways to Hack God

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” ~ George Orwell

The above quote is powerful because if you are not the one who is tearing your own mind to pieces and putting it back together again in the shape of your own choosing, then someone else probably is.

It’s fine if you’re okay with who is doing the tearing to pieces – like if it’s Buddha, Jesus, Nietzsche, Gandhi, Thoreau, or even Orwell – as long as you’re the one who is putting it back together again. Stand on the shoulders of giants, but don’t become attached to their shoulder.

Use their shoulders as tools to see further than they did, and then reshape your mind according to the newfound perceptions. Just remember to continue taking the leap into the unknown in order to discover more and more giant’s shoulders to stand on.

This is the trick to reengineering God, whether it’s from the shoulders of giants, or in the fountainheads of experience, or through the intellectual and spiritual boons gleaned by contemplating the cosmos, the trick to hacking God is flexible courage, or courageous flexibility.

Dive in. Tap the source of whatever knowledge there is to be had. Steal it if necessary. Mold it. Ninjaneer it according to your own unique soul-signature. Ripen it. Create fruit with it. Come back and share it with your fellow mortals.

Then let it go and dive back in. The water is warm and waiting for those who have “skill in swimming.” But if that’s not enough for you, here are five more specific ways to hack God.

1) Promethean Audacity

“I would rather be chained to this rock than be the obedient servant of the gods.” ~ Prometheus

You can also call it Dionysian insouciance, or Adam-like defiance. The key is a courageous delving into the unknown in order to discover hidden secrets otherwise unattainable. Obedience to God be damned! When Prometheus insolently stole fire from the gods, he laid the foundation for the evolution of mankind.

The evolution of our species depends upon disobedience. Adam and Eve’s “original sin,” for example, far from corrupting mankind, set him free in order to become fully human. Like Vladimir Nabokov said, “Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.” And it is through such insubordination that God is truly hacked. No matter what form God may take.

The Promethean innovator is an example of divergent thinking, deviating from the ordinary in order to discover the extraordinary. Promethean audacity is becoming “divergent” like Beatrice Prior in Divergent, or becoming “The One” like Neo in The Matrix.

It’s staring “God” in the face, and through your fearless “poker stare” alone, calling his bluff and hacking his mind. Suddenly the tables are turned and you’re holding all the cards, and the royal flush you reveal is the legerdemain of your courage.

God is stumped and trumped, and the money (boon of knowledge) that you win is the fire that you steal. And by god it’s worth it, “punishment” be damned.

2) Buddhist-like Detachment

“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” ~ Linji Yixuan

There is a tremendous freedom in creating our own experience. The creative choices we have are practically infinite. It can be overwhelming, daunting even; what Timothy Leary calls the “vertigo of freedom.” In order not to get engulfed by the sheer magnitude of our freedom we must be able to practice non-attachment.

We must be able to counterintuitively attain no-mind after using mindfulness to get there. And in order not to be overwhelmed by the infinite consequence of enlightenment, we must be able to “kill” the idea that we have achieved it.

This is tantamount to hacking god precisely because we are allowing enlightenment to continue unrestricted by our ego. We are “getting out of our own way” and letting the “process of godding” to continue unhindered by our insufficient definitions.

We are rejecting God as a noun and embracing God as a verb.

3) Christ-like Fearless Forgiveness

“Truth is a truth until you organize it, and then it becomes a lie. I don’t think that Jesus was teaching Christianity, Jesus was teaching kindness, love, forgiveness, and peace. What I tell people is don’t be Christian, be Christ-like. Don’t be Buddhist, be Buddha-like.” ~ Wayne Dyer

One of the most powerful God-hacks is the ability to fearlessly forgive. It begins with being vulnerable enough to forgive ourselves. By embracing the absolute fact that we are fallible and imperfect, and we will make mistakes.

We forgive our unexceptional nature so that we may liberate our exceptional nature. And this takes courage. As Laurence Sterne said, “Only the brave know how to forgive. A coward never forgives; it is not in his nature.”

This takes fearlessness. This takes hacking God, and realizing that the mind with which we hack God, is the same mind with which God hacks us. In so realizing, we go from forgiving ourselves to forgiving the world.

Like Jesus Christ said in the Gospel of Thomas, “If you bring forth the genius within you, it will free you. If you do not bring forth the genius within you, it will destroy you.” And the genius within understands that freedom comes from fearless self-forgiveness.

4) Morpheus-like Imagination

“Everything you can imagine is real.” ~ Pablo Picasso

Morpheus was the Greek God of Dreams. A powerful God-hack is realizing, as Einstein did, how “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” In our dreams, within the deepest recesses of our imagination, we see how more is possible than actual.

The way we actualize the human condition is to expand the boundaries of the mind. Imagination can indeed trump matter. Like Jason Silva said in Shots of Awe, “Having invented the gods, we can turn into them.”

This is the beginning of art and science coming together to create a spiritual reckoning. Imagining God is hijacking God. It is harnessing the powers of the cosmos in spectacular ways in order to improve upon our technologies of ecstasy.

It is drygulching the gods like a spiritual Robin Hood stealing their “immortal gold” and giving it to the “mortal poor.” It’s counting coup on them while they sleep.

It’s pillorying the current knowledge base and injecting imagination through strategic détournement and paradoxical actualization in order to jumpstart our outdated knowledge into updated knowledge into a heightened state of scientific evolution.

5) Nietzschean Self-overcoming

“God is a comedian playing to an audience who is too afraid to laugh.” ~ Voltaire

If there is a God, he-she-it-they is us. If everything is connected and energy can neither be created nor destroyed and if “the eye with which I see God, is the same eye with which God sees me” as Meister Eckhart profoundly said, then God is us and we are God and everything is everything and it is up to us to figure it all out.

The question is: how do we get better at it? How do we recognize and own up to our power, and then how do we become more proficient and more responsible with such power? A powerful answer may be found in the concept of self-overcoming.

There’s a hardened mountain inside us all. Self-overcoming is a chisel. You want to hack God? Hack yourself. Take that chisel and dig deep. Hack away the hardened cultural conditioning. Hack away the reinforced societal brainwashing. Hack away the cynical political encoding. Hack away the dogmatic religious indoctrination. Discover your roots, and then go deeper still.

And when it comes time that you have discovered an “answer” then that is precisely the time you self-overcome. Chisel in your right hand, sword in the other. Tear that answer apart with the question-mark sword of your courage.

Don’t be the person in the audience afraid to laugh at God. Laugh at him-her-it-them, and laugh hard. And then realize that you are laughing at yourself. Indeed, all is well in the throes of self-overcoming because it is also the throes of a human being becoming God through a humor of the most high. How else are you going to translate a paradox, but paradoxically?

Like Allan Watts said, “Life is a matter of oscillation. Life is vibration. The question is: how are you going to interpret that. Is it tremble, tremble, tremble; or is it laugh, laugh, laugh?”