Job Opening: Contemporary Mystic

How does a modern mystic find a job? Pondering the unfathomable can be a wonderful avocation but how can it possibly pay the bills? My financial advisor tells me that I need 100K a year if I am ever to retire. Here I sit, the days ticking away spent wondering, "what am I supposed to be doing and how do I look for something that I can't even identify? Why am I so terrifed of asking for help? What if I can't find anything? Where do I go from here? " The whole project begins to sound like my deepest hopes and desires welling up from wherever I stashed them when I was "happily" gainfully employed. Well if that isn't a definition of the spiritual quest, I don't know what is!

It struck me that the only way to negotiate this job search is to realize that it is no different from my Buddhist practice. It is my practice. With my thinking out of alignment, there is nothing but an endless circle of fear, strugle, disappointment and indecision. But all struggle is futile. All effort is wasted. The past no longer exists. The future does not yet exist. The only logical conclusion is that at this moment I am doing what I ought to be doing and that tomorrow I will also be doing what I ought to be doing. This is the ultimate face-off with FEAR. Some folks have to travel to the jungles of India or Shri Lanka to face their fears. Mine happen to live in the suburban western United States. Whatever takes us to that moment of breaking out into a cold sweat--whether the pile of unpaid bills on my desk or nausea I feel when imagining my first job interview-- that's the path. To sit here with the fear and realize that it is unsubstantial--that is the Ah Ha! To look at my fear and to resist justifying it, encouraging it, expressing it, getting attention for it, that is renunciation of negtaive thinking. If my hunch is correct, realizing my fear as emptiness is not only the path to Enlightenment, it is also the swift and direct path to my next employment opportunity!

fantasy

What is the difference between fantasy and visualization? Tonight I'd swear they are one and the same. I read about an elaborate Buddhist tantric visualization and the doubts began to arise: "I could never visualize in such detail!" And yet later as I relaxed and let my mind wander I began fantasizing my partner as Vajrasattva and I as his consort. I imagined a bliss so intense that neither of our personalities remained--only the pure light of awareness, wisdom and compassion perfectly aligned. Before I knew it I had a full-blown visualization in progress. All my years of wearing rose-colored glasses has prepared me to follow a new and promising path and it is happening effortlessly. I have all the tools that I need--others call them "character defects." Why not reframe my violent childhood and ackowledge that the fantasy life that protected me and allowed me to survive with my self-esteem intact also provided me with the perfect training ground. Fantasize my way to enlightment? Why not?

Day One

Uh Oh. How 'd this happen, on line writing. New. Never had an audience before except patient friends. I'll find out if I have anything worthwhile to say or whether it's just more BLAH BLAH BLAH!