still here

    So many months ago i left off saying that i would try and define some words in reference to this blog.   Words are really just labels for ideas.  We all have a general idea what they mean but some can be a little vague.  I was in my mid thirties when finally realized that the word "God" was simply a representation of an idea and that idea was different for everybody.  Sure we know who or what god is in general but all the details are different for everybody and that relatively very few others had the same or similar view as me.

       That was a particular eye opener for me and I realized that there were many other words like this.  An easy one is the word "normal" now what is that really?  So I want to talk about things like who we are or what we believe it is very important to define some terms so that we are communicating from a common point of reference.  You don't necessarily have to agree with mine or somebody else's definitions but it gives a good base for discussion.

     One of the words that i feel is nessesary to define is the word "me" or "ourselves"

     From my point of view I think that contained in ourselves are 2 distinct enities.  There is the ego self and the other observer part of us. The ego is the action part the controling part.  The ego is a part of us that worries about its image, its needs and so forth.  The observer part is the silent parent to the ego and seems to be preoccupied with more profund things.  It definately never worries about what car you have or what your hair looks like.  It is this part that I think really has a connection to our source of intelligent awareness.  And being so can be our guide to our real purpose for existing and can help find the answers for many unasked questions.

     It seems for many of us we doubt or even don't recognise this part of us.   If we doubt its existance there is no way we can begin to explore or even understand its potential.  Our egos are in charge 24-7.  For a long time i thought that is who I was and the world was like that end of story.

     I was living my ego.  It was in charge of most of my decisions and wants.  I was normally reacting to the world, living the dream so to speak.  The problem was that I wasn't very happy and of course my ideas for dealing with my unhappieness all came from the same place that made me unhappy.  Needless to say the results were less than optimal.

     As the result of many things I was finally convinced of this other part of me and its power to change all of my unhappiness.  I came to recognize that this silent observing part of me was the real me and that my ego was sort of like a costume.  But it is a living costume that wants to go on controlling the show at any costs.  It has immense resources at it's disposal for keeping itself alive.  Its a lot like a psycological virus.

     I was shown the staring point to do battle with this costume.  To start to take it off.  the only way that I was able to do so was to break it.  I had to take away its power over the real me.  You must remember that at that time I thought it was me.  I thought I was my costume.  Its biggest and most powerfull ally was fear.  It could convince me a thousand different ways of the terrors that awaited me if I didn't without question follow its lead.  That fear it created had stopped me from exploring my dreams and potential for a long long time.  yes my ego was far far smarter than me for a long time.  It was able to convince me that it was me. 

     It turns out that the real me, the silent part had power too, more even than the current director of my life.  It had what I believed to be a direct connection to it's (my) source.   When I was able for even the smallest amounts of time listen to that silent voice and follow it's council my feelings about myself and my place in life improved, not just a little bit but a lot.

     There seemed to one small problem.  The thing that my ego feared the most even more than my physical death was for me to listen to that small voice in me,the one that had that connection.  My ego had and still has an infinite number of ways to block my efforts and create so much noise and chaos that i just couldn't hear the little voice any more.

That what this blog is about, it is a staring point for quieting down the noise and clearing away the chaos of my ego's needs and wants so i can find the real me.

so getting back to where i started i hope that this helps to clarify my point of view for who i am.  This will be the referance point from where i write and express my ideas.  When I say me I am normally referring to the silent intelligent part and not my ego, but not all the time.  I'm sure that this will become confusing later on but know that you will all figure it out.


now the fun begins

why the canadian guru

i have been asked why i chose the name "the canadian guru". 

its my way of thinking from the end.  that is something that i am sort of practicing more and more.  you know the "fake it until you make it" thing.  someone once told me that i have the capacity to love the whole world.  at the time i was in a really good place and believed in my potential.  somehow that started to slip away from me so i am using all the tools at my disposal to rediscover that potential in me. 

so the reason that i started this blog and called myself the canadian guru is so that everything is in place when i make it and reach my goal to truly love the whole world.

live from the end and the end is where you will live.

namesté

shoot the editor

right here and now i am going to apologize profusely for my editor (by the way i just fired him).

don't worry it was easy to find another, he was just one brain cell over and he promises to read the new posts before posting them. 

thank god for evolution.

p.s. please don't show the other posts to my old grammar teacher she will develop a complex

la prochaine,  robert

a stranger in a strange land

well back again. i think that it must be some sort of record for me, 3 times in one week i must be sick or something.
but honestly speaking i want to get back what i was writing about the other day. i want to focus on my idealistic ideas of "living spiritually" or even what may be called "living with sanity".  part of this is the, are you ready for it...   acceptance of the way the world is. 
i have noticed recently that i have been feeling like the morality police and have been expecting every one i come in contact with to have the same or similar value systems as me.  (i have rights don't you know).  so recently when i have been stomping around the world (mainly paris), i have been having new levels of frustration unknown to me.  people don't drive like me, people don't give of themselves like me, people aren't generous like me, people aren't thoughtful like me, after all i'm almost a saint don't you know. 

I have finally understood that my nonacceptance has created all most of my frustration.  i know, i know you would think that i wouldn't take 4 years of constant war against the world with no results what so ever to finally admit defeat.  don't judge me too harshly i just met someone the other day who is if you can believe it is much more stubborn than me.  and that my friends is something to see.  so i have to believe that we all have stubbornness in us in different degrees.  i don't advise to go down kicking and scratching like i did. try the easier graceful route its much less painfull.  now here's a new idea:  people, places and things.  we have no control over people, places and things.  shit i have barely any control over myself let alone all that other stuff.  why do i keep forgetting that?  this people, places and things very good wisdom there i wish i could say that i invented it but no it came from much wiser people than myself.

it is worth investigating more though.  if oi could apply that thought i'm sure that i would stop my personal war against parisians.  one against 3 or 4 million aren't really good odds, how is it possible that i seem to forget that.

thank goodness i have epiphanies from time to time.  i recently had one of those and just in time too.
it came to me that living in paris was an excellent way to learn acceptance (that word again, it seems that i can't get away from it).  i have learned to use my level of frustration and acceptance as a way to measure my level of sanity or spiritual life. a barometer of sorts.

so how does it all work?  i really don't have the answers but i think that i an circling around the edges of the answers.  when i think about it i really have no right to inflict my my will on others. there is no way i can reasonably justify doing so. the problem is that i forget that in the heat of battle. actually it gets even worse when i think that there is no need for the battles in the first place. so this leads me to the place where i have to ask myself why i have battles in the first place.

people are different than me. people are different that you.  people are different its that simple.  i have to accept that what works for me doesn't work for some one else.  we all have different conditioning.  i have to start changing how i look (i thing judge is a better term here) at things.  i have to rid of my ideas of better or worse. i have to concentrate on just different people and their ideas are just different thats all.  i have a choice of who i have around me.  i don't have to use my brain time worrying about other peoples customs and ideas that are unappealing to me.  someone please tell me how to remember this every moment of every day that would be a great help. 

this is supposed to be a give and take thing anyways.

not being a proffessional writer i went an got myself lost again.  where was i?

people, places and things. i am not the director of our little film called life.  i am starting to realize that i am not really the director of my life.  you know how a marriage works?  the wife lets the man think that he is in charge.  secure in his little illusion of control all is well.  but all us men know that if our wives are miserable we are miserable so who is really in charge?  my relation with my source or creator is just like that. so i am not really in charge of my life and and definitely not in charge of the lives and believes of others. i am not in charge of the system do you have any idea of how big that really is?  talk about wasted energy.  i'm getting older now and am trying to use my energy in places where i get results battles that i can win and that really boils down to fighting my own demons and less desirable characteristics those are the places where i can get results for my efforts. why didn't anybody tell me this in school?  think of all the constructive things i could of done with all that wasted energy.

so for a recap of "sanity" or "living spiritually" so far

1) live without fear and trust in your creator.  the more trust you have the less fear you will live with.

2) people, places and things.  stop the war stop the battles you just can't win, remember the 3 million to one odds, not good. put your energy where you think you will get results, think value for you money.

i'm going to leave off here and next time i will explore the idea of finding my place in the world and mybe define those few other terms like "ourselves" and " higher power",  "grand architect",  "source" or "creator"

So next time,  robert

no title just good advice

the idea is to move through life with the least amount of problems as possible.
that's free so i won't charge you 50 bucks

back in the saddle again

well i'm back again, i really have been struggling with life lately and have been anything but spiritual. i am hoping that by writing about my thoughts about it that it may come back to me.  i am really of the belief that we are spiritual creatures and some how we unconsciously block our connection to or source.

i have to reflect on the following: We started to believe that what we thought was missing from our lives could be found in or through us.  or as an other world renown organization says : Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.  i was actually asked to explain this statement but to do that i had to make sure that we were talking about the same things.  so i wanted to define "ourselves" and "sanity"  before i got even close to explaining the idea of what i thought was a "power greater than myself", "grand architect", or my "source".

this conversation was exactly what i needed to restart this blog and hopefully stay with it more regularly.

So i would like to start with the easiest and describe  what "sanity" or "living spirituallity" is for me.

at first glance i thought that that was a going to be difficult to explain but now that i am writing it has become actually much simpler than i thought.   Living spiritually is living with out fear and having absolute acceptance of me,  my place in the world and the way the world is.  now i understand that this is a very idealistic definition so i will explore it a little more in depth.

First of all living with out fear is more about having faith that all will be alright.  in a way fear doesn't exist it is merely the absence of a feeling of well being an that all is happening for a reason or as it should.  the relationship of fear and faith is very similar to light and darkness.  Does darkness really exist or is it really just the absence of light?  if i felt that my source was looking after me all the time, always wanting the best for me what would there be to be afraid of?  If i could believe that every negative circumstance that arrived in my life was an opportunity to grow, make me stronger or something to learn from wouldn't that be great!

It is really hard for me to believe that i am here to be miserable (though i have been miserable for some time now).  would you have children  and want them to be miserable or have a hard life?  no of course not.  we want them to have good lives, in fact great lives better and easier than our own.  we try to guide then as gently as possible in a direction that will bring them that type of life and at times we can watch helplessly as  our children make choices that brings less than desirable results.

so if i could believe at every moment that there is good waiting for me  i certainly would have less fear.  unfortunately i continue to make choices that i have to learn from.

Believing in the best of other people is also a tool i can use to live without fear.  i have to believe that most people are doing there very best with the tools they have to live by.  Like me when they make choices based on fear i normally don't like the results.  the trick is to find it in me to accept (and that is the magic word) that other people are like me and are not perfect in how they do things and make choices. normally we are all trying to protect our best interests and that includes our fragile egos and our place in the world.  Imagine the difference if someone else was doing that for us kind of like a life manager so to speak.  think of how we would react if we thought all that stuff was taken care of by a professional and we could make decisions based on something else.  maybe kindness or a genuine interest in the person in front of us because we knew that our own interests were being professionally managed.

that professional manager could really help with the fear business.  I do have a couple of ideas on where to find someone like that but more on that later.

i almost forgot what topic i am on here oh yes living spiritually.

Self acceptance it i find that to be much more difficult to have or do than living without fear.

for me acceptance of my good qualities is almost more difficult than acceptance of my less desirable qualities.  i have been trying for along time now to look at my personal characteristics an qualities and accept (there's that word again) that they exist and try and understand why they are there and how they serve or protect me.

i was conditioned to believe that if i liked something in me or that if i had a special talent and i embraced or talked about it it was like bragging and was a vanity. I was taught directly or indirectly that if i was proud of these things in me i would make other people feel bad. i am slowly learinng that perhaps that is not the case and that i should in fact be proud of these qualities after all these are things that are inherent in me like being tall of having blue eyes.  in fact i believe that all of us have an exceptional talent. there talents exist in all of us though often they are suppressed or unexplored.  we should be proud of our gifts and ask ourselves how we can be of service to others with these talents.  i am beginning to understand that that is why we have them.  if you have a great singing voice it is much more fulfilling for others to enjoy that voice than to just sing in the shower.  it is deeply joyful for you and the people that hear you.

when we begin to embrace our gifts in front of others of course we will be judged and called all sorts of things like arrogant, show off and such.  just remember that most likely it will be coming from people with the same conditioning that i had or from people that haven't found their particular talent yet.  it is important to remain proud of your talent and to remind your critics that they to have talents equally great or greater than yours and they only need the courage to search themselves and override there conditioning.  tell them to share their gifts with the world.

As for my less desirable qualities i have to embrace them equally as my desirable ones.  it is by ignoring there qualities that they have a hold on me. I also have the choice to show these qualities to the world.  if i can say to myself that i am being childish right now and accept (shit is it that word again?) that i am in fact at times childish maybe i have more of a chance of not being on autopilot with that characteristic and i can ask myself why that is showing itself now and in this particular instance.  it is a reaction to what.  what is it based on.  normally, i say normally because i am so far from perfect with this, i can find that some sort of fear is causing this reaction.  do you see how all this is connected?

sometimes my less desirable reactions serve me but not often.  for instance sometimes a reaction of anger can let someone know that they have crossed one of my internal boundaries or a fear can stop me from taking too big a risk.  it is my hope that one day i never need these qualities but i am not there yet nor do i understand completely why they exist and getting rid of something when you don't completely understand why it exists doesn't necessarily strike me as intelligent.

in an effort to leave something for an other day i will finish this off later but before i go i wanted to speak to you about superman.

do you know how superman is different from all the other super heros?

he was born superman, he is superman and clark kent is his disguise.  he has to hide his greatness to fit in.

a week with yoda

don't you sometimes wish that you could have a week with yoda?