I wanted to believe that this might be the only blog in town this week not about Osama or Obama. That I wouldn’t write a tome about “to kill a killer” or “to gloat or not to gloat.” Yet, in the end, it’s all really about the meaning of life, anyway. I’m talking about BIG stuff, here. I’m talking about THE POINT.

What’s the point?

And I’m not coming from that nihilistic, black nail polish kind of place. I’m coming from that stare into the mirror and sigh sort of place.

It seems like back “in the really old days” people had basic survival to contend with more than anything. Hunt, gather, and/ or grow food and do ones best to protect the family from marauders and generally bad people. Also likely was the added concern with the fate of one’s body, mind and spirit in the assumed or hotly debated afterlife.

Today, we’re still concerned with the procurement of food ( I mean, who doesn’t like a cold Coca Cola) and self-protection (could I ever build a wall high enough), however these basic needs are often overshadowed by the pursuit of new technology (patiently, peacefully waiting for the IPhone 5), preparing for retirement (what does that really mean in this day and age) and where and when we will take our next vacation (when did we need a fancy term for staying home instead of going somewhere else).

Back in the day when folks were primarily concerned with the survival of self and soul, do you think they felt an overarching sense of meaning in their lives? Do you think they felt connected to the rest of the planet; a kinship with other humans? Even without CNN? Makes me wonder…

When faced with my survival, is there really significant emotional and physical space to worry about the existential nature of meaning and purpose?

Today there are surely billions of people who are still concerned with their souls in the afterlife and who derive a sense of meaning from their respective religions or beliefs. Yet, I am unsure as to whether there is a unifying, universally coherent, common purpose for us all; something that draws us all together. Was the notion of the Tower of Babel (one of my favorite parables) merely about language or was there a deeper, existential notion of DIFFERENCE?

One would think the condition of our environment would have accomplished a unification for our species long ago yet the fact that the nations of the world can’t seem to work together to solve global warming is an indication of our state of affairs. We still remain scattered across the earth doing our own thing. Some countries still consider global warming an Other issue as a matter of public policy.

Then there is, of course, the issue of doctrine, dogma and subjective truth. The marauders attacking my village thousands of years ago believed they were justified in attacking my village even though I strongly disagreed. I mean, I REALLY disagreed with the essential premise of their approach to life.

Many of us today are in favor of free speech and democratic process until someone threatens us for real. When marauders come rolling through my sense of peace and calm, I want to stop them by any means necessary because I’m still basically a human being who doesn’t care about you until you make changing me and altering my agenda, your agenda. Then we have a problem, man.

The notion of that primordial tower was for all the nations of the earth to band together for a common end and build a structure so amazing that we could reach God, thus becoming Gods. However, that scoundrel God “confounded the language of all the Earth.” (Genesis 11:5-8) and set us back a ways. Now look at us.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
~ Albert Einstein

I knew a man once who was obsessed with ZERO. You name it, he was all over the zero aspect of it. From numerology to astrology to tax returns, he was very interested in the number zero. Yet, it was clearly more about the idea, the depth of zero that fried his shrimp.

Negative space, for example. The white line that is about to follow this line full of black typed words with, well, with incredibly meaningful ideas, right…? Yet, if you breathe into my intention, my personality, spirit, psychology, etc. there is a whole world about me that you may have access to beyond the words I choose to share. There is oftentimes so much value in grasping the “meta-communication” that is being imparted in the negative space between our words.

The paradox of the Tarot’s arguably most mysterious character, the Fool, is the lucky recipient of a Zero at the top of its card. The notion being that the Fool has no value at all, or perhaps the wise fool has more value in not being connected to a specific value. There is no beginning or end to its value. Even still, it is the Fool and her journey that embarks on the entire meaning of the Tarot’s Major Arcana and perhaps, the journey to understand the meaning of life.

Martin Buber ( 20th century German philosopher ) taught about the power of the I-Thou relationship. The space between two unique, empowered and conscious beings, he suggested, is exactly the most magical, creative space that exists in the universe. In fact, God/Creation/Invention/Healing exists in that “zero” space between two people who mutually encounter one another without expectation or projection. As Neo says, “Whoa.”

In the beginning, before there was the word and all that, there was NOTHING. ZERO. NADA.

“Bereishit bara elohim et hashamayim ve’et ha’aretz veha’aretz haiyta tohu va vohu ve’choshech al p’ney tehom” – which means – “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

Tohu va’vohu. Unformed and Void. Nothingness was the earth. Yet, from that nothingness emerges everything! That’s a pretty powerful pile of zero.

Beautiful, isn’t it?

“Religion is [can be] a defense against the experience of God.” C. G. Jung

A dear friend invited me this week-end to participate in a special brunch to celebrate Bright Week. Bright Week, or “Renewal Week,” is a tradition observed by many Eastern Orthodox Christians to commemorate the seven days following the resurrection of Christ. The entire week is considered to be one really long day, with each day being labeled “Bright,” such as Bright Monday, Bright Tuesday, etc.

I like the concept of bright days.

Brunch was initiated with several prayers, chants and even a didgeridoo performance. Attention was offered to intention, not dogma or liturgical correctness. It was beautiful and I felt honored to be included.

As I sat and enjoyed the mindful discussion and dialogue that guests engaged in throughout the afternoon, one thought persistently pierced my awareness:

At what point does religion serve as a springboard for a person to plunge into their own unique experience of the Transcendent and likewise, where is the point at which religion serves as a distraction from that personal encounter?

As a former practitioner of an orthodox religion I know for myself the experience of maintaining the dogma, rituals and rules was a very important practice. For one thing, I learned a great deal about myself and how I resist rules! However, I also learned how much easier life can be once one consciously follows a set of rules and the magical space it can create for spontaneous spiritual experiences to occur at the interface between the unconscious and transcendent realms.

I found that adhering to specific, organized, physical parameters seemed to create a greater platform for metaphysical moments.

That’s a bright thought in my good book.

I’m sorry.

I say this tiny little phrase all the time. Sometimes out loud, oftentimes in my own head.

I’m sorry.

I have heard it repeated to me throughout my life. Sometimes out loud, oftentimes implied through remorseful eyes or pursed lips.

What does it mean, really? Do I mean it when I say it? What could it mean to truly be sorry?

In many languages, “sorry” is equivalently translated as “excuse me.” Yes, oftentimes the way I mean “I’m sorry” is akin to bumping into you at Starbucks and accidentally spilling your coffee. There may be a stain but it’s not life or death, so get over it.

I consider the prevalence of “I’m sorry” in our whack-a-doodle culture. Everyone from priests to politicians, professional sports figures to movie stars, all seem to find their way in front of a camera to utter the requisite mea culpa. Back in the day, folks even used to throw in a “maxima” between mea and culpa, offering “my most grievous fault.”

However, who really means it anymore? And why do we seem to expect public figures to go on global TV and utter those empty words as part of some inane PR process required to return to box office or golf course power? Who are you really saying those words to? Me? You?

A spiritual teacher once told me “everyone will hurt you at some point, so you might as well get used to it.” Well, then. That’s not a fun concept, is it?

Yet, the truism has seemingly had some legs in my life. Sometimes they have been little hurts, other times they have been some culpae maximus… Oftentimes, however, they are accompanied with “I’m sorry.”

If it is a simple fact of life that we will inevitably step on grass and bugs, even killing them, what does it mean to be “sorry?” If I choose to do something hurtful, malicious, even premeditated, what does it mean to be sorry?

Excuse me.

One of my favorite places in Israel was the “Crusader Building” at Mt. Zion in Jerusalem. This was a spot I’d go most days in order to meditate. It remains one of my most favorite spots in the world. The Crusader Building is a building with three levels just outside the stone wall of the ancient city surrounding the Temple. At the basement exists a shrine for Jews where hundreds each day come to pray at King David’s tomb, chanting psalms and singing their hearts out. At the center of the building, thousands of Christian tourists pour out of tour buses to enter the room of the Last Supper. There is no long wooden table or scraps of bread and wine to be found, just a big, empty room where some believe Jesus shared his last meal, a Passover seder, with his nearest and dearest. Upstairs, beneath a great dome exists a mosque where the Turks erected a place of prayer when they took over the city several hundred years ago.

While no one ever really knows where anything took place two thousand years ago, the fact that at any one moment it is likely to find Jews, Christians and Muslims praying, visiting, and essentially existing in alignment with one another is enough a reason to frequent the place. I liked to come here when I was a young man focused on finding that deep, authentic place of love within myself. Lots of folks believed me to be a loving dude, for sure… I was nice to people, kind to strangers and I smiled a lot. I was a spiritual hippie, of sorts, open to the beliefs and practices of most everyone and moved through life ready to break bread in most anyone’s home.

Yet, I knew within myself that I felt like a spiritual fraud and worried that one day I might be found out. I felt a disconnect within that troubled me immensely. I felt like I did and said all the right things, however when it came to truly embodying unconditional love in a completely integrated, unconscious way, I felt like I had a lifetime of work to do before I reached that level. Over time I had become friendly with the regular guard who served as security for the Room of the Last Supper. Each afternoon, the room was closed for a couple hours during ” national nap time” in which tourists were not permitted entrance. My friend allowed me to stay in the space by myself for an hour where I could meditate in what felt like one of the only truly silent spots in the Old City. These opportunities seemed to do more for the deep unfolding of my authentic presence than praying at the wall, studying ancient texts or eating healthy food. Breathing mindfully into silence was the gold that filled my pockets to be shared with others well into the future.

On this particular afternoon, I slipped past frustrated tourists who had come too late to be admitted and assumed my usual spot on the floor at the center of the great room. I liked to chant at the start of these meditations as it seemed to create a certain vibration around me into which my silence could rest. I sat in my white raw silk clothes, a colorful hand knitted kipah covered part of my head while large curls of long hair sprung out from all sides of my Jew-fro. As I chanted a favorite mantra taken from one of David’s psalms about faith that I learned from a Sephardic Jew, I rocked back and forth over my crossed legs, gently swaying a little like Stevie Wonder.

I was gone.
Whoosh.
Lost in my chanting, lost in the moment, enraptured by the sound of my heart passing through my lips, the rocking of my body like a boat on the Galilee, gone.

As my consciousness passed through portals and gates, through the pardes (garden) of enlightenment, across marble stairs that resembled the ocean and a gentle breeze that tasted like pomegranate, I began to experience waves of light, bursting through me like flares through my third eye. They seemed to burn my eyelids and crackle out through the back of my head as my breath disappeared and my thoughts ceased. I was surely gone or, perhaps, more present than I had ever been. Was it enlightenment? Nirvana? Transcendence?

As I sailed through time and space, beyond thought and feeling, a familiar sound called me back to the room from where I had launched myself. I began to hear clicks and murmurs, whispers and shuffling and soon, distinct voices. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes to find myself surrounded by dozens of German tourists flashing cameras at me, dumbfounded by my presence, attire and what must have seemed to be very strange behavior. I silently stared at them and said nothing. Was the profound light of my experience nothing more than flash bulbs from tourists’ cameras? How long had they been there? How long had I been “gone?” I stood up and the sea of Germans parted as I walked out the door.

Rabbis are literally translated as teachers. I learned (often the hard way) that I had a tendency to want my teachers to take me all the way rather than point me in the right direction and allow me to figure out the specifics, even if it meant getting lost along the way. I remember being a boy waiting for my dad to come home from work so he could “help” me with my math homework. It was all strategic as he’d be exhausted from a long day and not have the energy to “teach” so he’d simply fill in the answers out of frustration.

I sat in the Southwestern desert initially with the same desire that my teacher would simply fill in the blanks for me. He was not that kind of teacher. He left my ass in the middle of nowhere and knew that I had to struggle through a narrow passage in order to emerge a stronger, more confident young man. He was a spiritual midwife of sorts, like Shifra and Puah, the midwives who secretly saved the first born Hebrew slaves from instant murder, hiding babies or even sending them down the river in basket boats in hope that someone would take pity on them and rescue them from certain death.

Like Rabbi Moses, we all have to find our way to personal growth and enlightenment through a combination of grace, hard work, intention and focus. Like Rabbi Jesus, we all have to move through the world believing that transcendence is our birthright, that we are all children of the Breath of Life and that loving kindness is the bridge between here and there, inside and outside.

So, may you be blessed this holy week with the chutzpah to believe that you are both the leader AND the follower of many. May you trust from deep within your being that YOU are the resurrection and the life; there is no separation between some transcendent being and your essence, there is only the experience of being in this body at this time. And, if these words make you uncomfortable, I invite you to ask yourself what really makes you uncomfortable, the thought that it can’t be true or the thought that it just might be true?