Good Enough

Striving for excellence is all well and good, but the fact remains, most days we’re lucky just to make it through without burning down the house. Somehow in our culture the expectation has taken shape that every experience must be a peak experience, every moment an amazing moment, and every effort a stroke of genius. That’s a lot of pressure. Believe it or not, it might be time to lower our expectations. Maybe it’s time to get reacquainted with good enough.

The shadow side of every motivational speech is the implication that who you are right now isn’t good enough. Maybe that’s the wrong message. Do more? We’re already the busiest generation, scrambling like crazy people, multitasking, running on caffeine and nerves. When do we get to rest? When is it OK to simply enjoy the fruits of our labor? When is good enough good enough?

I’ve been thinking about my dad a lot lately, and how different his life was from mine. I race from one obligation to the next. His hours and days were filled with a kind of reverence, illuminated by a slow motion glow brought on by letting things take their sweet time.

When he died last year at the age of 90 we found an old diary he’d kept for the year 1963. It was a simple journal filled with brief entries chronicling each day’s events. Our family had just moved from New Jersey to Ventura, California, a quiet town on the beach just south of Santa Barbara. He was picking up shift work as a printer typesetting at the Ventura Star-Free Press. Like a lot of families back in those days, our family had only one car and after work he’d often walk down to the beach for a stroll along the sand or even a swim if the weather was warm. Then my mom and I would come meet him, I was only 4 at the time, and we’d all swim or walk on the beach. As the sun set we’d amble on home for dinner and a quiet evening. Maybe the neighbors or some of my parent’s friends would come by for a visit, or we’d watch some TV, one of the three channels. My dad seemed content in the knowledge that he was a father, a husband, a worker, a thinker, a homeowner, and the simple of act of being alive was enough. There was no ambitious scheme to be more, do more, own more, or in any other way stand out from the ordinary. Ordinary was good enough.

Of course I realize I’m romanticizing his life – he was subject to the same pain, disillusionment, and endless hunger that any man or woman feels, but none of that worked its way into his diary. But I do remember as a boy often wondering where does he go when he’d just sit in a chair and close his eyes after a long, hot day of working in the yard. My dad had a rich interior life, and that’s another thing that’s increasingly difficult to maintain in our modern, busy world of hyper-connectivity. Being quiet and being alone are increasingly rare and precious jewels buried under the clutter of our busyness.

When my dad was at work he was at work, and when he was off, he was off. That’s something I don’t have. Because of the nature of my work, I’m never off. As a professor and department chair I’m immersed in the life of my college in many ways, and I’m a mentor to 180 students. Not to mention the tens of thousands of former students who I bump into everywhere I go. They message me through Facebook at all hours of the day and night and ask all sorts of questions, and I love staying in touch, but it’s challenging. And in my work as a singer songwriter, public speaker, and writer I am constantly in self-promotion mode pitching shows, talks, my blog, and my upcoming album. I use Facebook and Twitter to build my brand and strengthen my platform. I wake up at three a.m. and ponder a web design decision or a media contact I should make. I run lyrics in my head or think through guitar solos. In my mind’s eye I peruse the photographic styles of noted local photographers and deliberate about who to use for my next photo shoot.

It may be hard to believe, but I’m really not complaining – I chose this life and I eagerly seek the next opportunity to expand my reach. I love singing, playing, recording, performing, speaking, writing, teaching, and being a part of a vibrant and thriving community of fellow artists, speakers, thinkers, and teachers.

In this crazy life many of us live, we have to work hard to make our own sabbaticals, our own Sabbaths, our own days off, our own vacations. If you don’t schedule down time you’ll go crazy, because there is always a deadline, there is always a long list of urgent emails, voice mails, texts, Tweets, and Facebook messages to respond to. If you aren’t careful, your entire life becomes one long to do list, and all human interactions are reduced to increasingly insistent demands for your time. Total strangers message me on Facebook and say things like, “Hey, I love your work, we should really hang out. I play too. We should jam and write a song together.” While I’m touched that I seem that approachable, and that people feel connected enough to reach out, I can’t help but laugh. Dude, I don’t even have time to hang with my best friends, how on earth can I carve out a minute let alone an afternoon for a jam session with an absolute stranger?

I used to continually freak out at how busy I was. Now I see it differently. Keeping a gratitude journal for the last two years changed that. Now I see my work, all of it, as an opportunity for service. I am so deeply honored and blessed that the art I make, whether in song, prose, or oratory, is welcomed warmly in certain circles, and that the encouragement I receive from audiences and readers is profoundly nourishing. Like my father, I just want to know that I’m useful, that I fit somewhere, and that my passions have a place in this world. I think of him often, his quietude, his gentle nature, his steadfast commitment to his wife and his sons and to the proposition that life is beautiful and to be relished and enjoyed. There is no later. There is only now. If it’s a beautiful day at the beach, then you go to the beach.

Wealth is wanting what you have. Success is well-being. Happiness is a decision. Joy is a natural by-product of a virtuous life. These are not secrets, they are ancient insights taught in every spiritual and philosophical tradition. And they are born out in every life lived with integrity, honesty, vigor, and willingness. Life is only a problem if you try and figure it out. If you just live it, it flows pretty well.

Finding a place where your passion meets the needs of the world is the soul work of every man and woman. For my dad it was printing. He plied his craft setting type and playing an integral role in the publication of the news, making our Founder’s ideals of a free press a concrete reality. He knew that language and print media were essential to the human project and he humbly took his place on the mechanical side of the process. And he took it seriously. But when the type was set, he turned it over to the boys on the printing presses, punched the clock and walked down to the beach. He was free. I still see my father swimming in the ocean at the end of a long day, happy, in love, grateful, and reverent. And it was good enough.

When Me is Three

[A version of this article was first published in my "A to Zen" column in the March/April 2014 issue of Unity Magazine and is reprinted here with permission.] 

            What is the most important relationship in our life? Is it the one we have with our spouses or life partners? Our parents? Our children? Our friends?

None of the above.

The most important relationship is the one we have with ourselves because that is the ground out of which all the others grow. Who you are and how you navigate the terrain of your inner life affects everyone and everything around you.

In ancient Athens Socrates was fond of repeating the motto chiseled into the marble at the Oracle at Delphi – “Know Thyself.” For Socrates self-knowledge meant far more than simply knowing your place or playing your role well. It meant digging deep, questioning everything, and seeing what remained after every pretense was turned to ash in the blazing light of reason. Journeying through the abyss of the unconscious is no walk in the park – it takes tremendous vision and willingness – the vision to penetrate the smoke of denial and the willingness to let go of everything false. When the goal is authenticity, no price is too high.

But what is this self that we are supposed to get to know?

In Vedanta philosophy – the ancient wisdom of the Vedas, Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita – a subtle and sophisticated philosophy of self emerges. We, like everything else in the universe, are said to be woven from three strands or gunas – tamas, rajas, and sattva. Tamas is the quality of unconsciousness, ignorance, darkness and inertia. Rajas is the quality of undirected energy, manic self-centeredness, and restless anxiety. Sattva is the quality of illumination, stillness, and inner-wisdom. All three gunas are ever present within us, but one is always eclipsing the other two.

When tamas is dominant we are lethargic, deceitful, and lost in delusion. We take pleasure in vulgarity and intoxication and have no regard for the well-being of ourselves or others. We procrastinate and waste time. Covetousness and envy cloud our minds. Tamasic consciousness is hell on earth.

When rajas dominates, we swell full of ambition and self-seeking, working hard for outer rewards and recognition. Greed, rather than the good, motivates us. Fear and competition drives us like a lash. We view others either as rivals or as means to an end. Even when we attain our goals, satisfaction eludes us because there is always someone who has more. Rajasic consciousness is busy-mind incarnate.

When sattva dominates, we work with the greater good in mind. We move out of thoughts of I, me, and mine and awaken into unity consciousness, realizing our underlying oneness. A genuine sweetness wells up through the cracks of our ordinary lives. Healing and serenity replace dissatisfaction and craving. We finally realize that we are and have forever been in the Kingdom of Heaven. Sattvic consciousness is self-illuminating enlightenment.

The tamasic person suffers continually, yet is too sick to do anything about it. The rajasic person stays stuck in the illusion of separateness, beset by endless longing and fear. The sattvic person realizes their inner divinity and experiences fully the blissful nature of this now moment.

The good news is that each of us has the capacity to shift into sattvic consciousness. The spiritual practices of the world’s wisdom traditions offer ample support. Study, pray, meditate, love, create, devote, serve – there are many paths to the summit.

Simply put, sattvic consciousness is our inner light. Others call it Christ-consciousness, Buddha-nature, Atman, or our unseverable connection to the Source. It is not something we attain, nor is it the fruit of our spiritual discipline – it is what we already are and have always been. We have only to awaken to it. In fact, it is our tamasic lethargy and our rajasic busy-mind that cloaks this divine reality within us. When we feel the compulsive, addictive, and self-destructive energy of tamas, when we feel the manic, racing, fearful, self-obsession of rajas, we  have only to shift our attention to the sattvic inner light that shines behind the fog of tamas and rajas. It may not be as difficult as we think it is. Turning enlightenment into an arduous ordeal is a favorite game of the rajasic mind.  What if we allow it to be easy? What if we take Jesus at his word when he says, “My yoke is easy, my burden light.”

Now self-knowledge takes on a whole new meaning. When Socrates says, “Know thyself,” he means come into alignment with your higher self, the part of you closest to the divine and therefore most real. In Buddhist enlightenment, it is the sattvic consciousness that finally lifts us out of the haze of tamas and rajas, illuminating the whole world. “Be lamps unto yourselves,” said the Buddha, and when you realize your inner light, “don’t hide it under a bushel basket,” added Jesus. Coming into right relationship with whom and what we really are is our greatest gift to ourselves, to our loved ones, and to the whole world.

Rock Star

Rock and roll’s been around for a long time. For young people, it’s the music of their grandparents. Yet its eternal coolness remains intact. The rock and roll sensibility keeps rearing its head in every new wave of music. Fashion and hair styles change. Aesthetic tastes evolve. But, as Huey Lewis sang, “the heart of rock and roll is still beating.”

The perennial allure of rock and roll speaks to its deeper nature. “Rock and roll” is no mere genre descriptor – it’s a whole attitude, a mode of consciousness, a way of life.

Mommies everywhere extol their toddlers with the accolade “you rock” for the triumphant accomplishment of not pooping in their pants. Nine year olds who bring home an A on their math test are crowned “rock stars.”  Sixteen year olds on their first job who successfully change out the oil in the deep fryer are praised by their bosses with a “rock on man, rock on.” On a literal level, continence, math skill, and proficiency in deep fryer maintenance seem utterly unrelated to the mesmerizing, hip-shaking shamanism of Jim Morrison, yet there it is. It makes sense. There’s something about rock and roll and rock stars that has come to stand for any human achievement involving risk, courage, and accomplishment. So what are we really saying when we call someone a rock star?

A rock star personifies courage. They are willing to risk everything to step out on stage and lead a hungry crowd on a Dionysian journey through the bowels of their own longing. A rock star has to overcome the natural proclivity of any artist for isolation. They don’t play it safe. They leap into the breach risking rejection, failure, or worse – the yawning chasm of their own irrelevance and ineffectiveness. They put themselves to the test and live with the consequences. Will their art move people, or move them toward the door?

A rock star is reckless. They engage in high risk backstage behaviors, they play dangerously loud, they jump off of scaffolds to crowd surf and act like they’re immortal. Some of them die young. They don’t seem terribly interested in longevity or prudence. Instead, what’s important is this moment, this experience, this feeling. Sure, it may not be smart. But we live vicariously through our rock stars and secretly revel in their revelry. They have the audacity to believe that no matter what, they’re going to be o.k.

A rock star is audacious, impudent even. In other words, they’re not terribly interested in respecting or conforming to your narrow definition of propriety. Their very existence is an affront to the polite sensibilities of the careful people in their Dockers and minivans. Rock stars cuss, spit, wear jeans to formal soirees and drink too much. Their hair is a mess. They have sex whenever, wherever, and with whomever they please. Like trickster gods they are hell bent on shattering every cultural norm and giving voice to every impulse on the human spectrum, licit and illicit. We disapprove of their excess just as we thrill at their abandon. In their freedom we feel our own limitlessness.

A rock star sacrifices themselves for the greater good. Like a hero in a classic myth, the rock star leaps into the abyss to wrestle with the demon. By their willingness to face their own death, we are all resurrected. On the surface, a rock star may seem the very portrait of self-obsession. But it’s all part of the act. They are playing a role. And in their play-acting, they model for us the quality of selfless service. Like any hero, they leave the known world with its well-defined boundaries and its value system rooted in safety and security, trading all this for the madness of the unknown. From the safety of our bounded universe we watch them careen into chaos, hungry for the catharsis their self-sacrifice will bring. Perhaps this is what we love most about our rock stars – their willingness to fully inhabit a role. In our work we too long to go big, to surrender to the fullest measure our responsibilities and tasks require of us. Yet we stay stuck in a careful utilitarian calculation of means and ends. Once, just once, we’d love to say what we really want to say, do what we really want to do, not out of self-interest but in the service of our larger role. We want to fight for what’s right and risk it all for the fullest realization of our aims. But instead we say yes ma’am, yes sir, and crank the Led Zepplin in our cars on the long commute home. It’s been a long time since we rock and rolled indeed.

A rock star is self-confident. They ask a lot of themselves, and they deliver. Through years of experience they come to learn an important fact about themselves – they know what to do and they know how to do it. They have what it takes. Self-confidence of this nature doesn’t have to brag or draw attention to itself – it’s evident in the work. There’s nothing to prove and no need to compete. A certain ease exudes from their every pore. An eerie calm fills the room when they walk in. Call it fearlessness, call it mastery, call it whatever you want. But it can’t be bought and it can’t be faked. You either have it or you don’t. The only way to get it is to earn it, then own it.

A rock star is focused. This isn’t always their most apparent feature. But beneath their Dionysian excess is a highly organized Apollonian process. To be a successful rock star you have to master marketing, business management, organizational dynamics, technology, logistics, and financial planning. Not to mention an unwavering work ethic. The work always comes first, often to the detriment of relationships, family, even one’s own well-being. Pushing through their own laziness the rock star does whatever it takes to achieve their aims.

A rock star is playful. Although they may be hard working business professionals, for them the line between work and play dissolved a long time ago. They are willing to laugh, especially at themselves, at a moment’s notice. This is all just one big stupid game, and they know it. They know they’re not in charge, and that luck and chance played an enormous role in their journey to the top. They keep themselves and everyone around them energized by slipping into playful silliness and light-hearted frivolity as often as possible. If you’re not having fun, something is very, very wrong.

But what’s perhaps most inspiring about rock stars, and the main reason we use the appellation “rock star” as our highest compliment, is their mysterious ability to integrate all of these disparate qualities into a unified whole. By bridging the dichotomies of intellect and intuition, focus and abandon, calculation and risk, assertion and surrender, wisdom and foolishness, mastery and immaturity, they perfectly champion and embody the qualities of art itself. They use their bodies, minds, and souls to channel our deepest, most unconscious dreams and bring them to the stage. In an opera both sublime and grotesque they turn the mysteries of the soul into public performance and mold our gravest fears and greatest hopes into transformative theater that washes over our senses, emboldens our hearts, ennobles our aspirations, and calls us to our highest purpose. To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, each of us is the rock star of our own lives, and we have our rock stars to thank for breaking us open to that immutable truth.

The Circling

Every morning we awaken from a long bout of unconsciousness. We blink, stretch, yawn, and slide out of bed. Our feet hit the floor and we start walking in a big, wide circle.  Tonight we’ll be back in this room, crawling into bed and slipping down into the same womb of unconsciousness from which we were born just a few hours ago. Everything is a circle, every day a rebirth. We orbit our lives like the earth around the sun.

 On a circle, it’s impossible to mark one point as the beginning and another as the end. Words like beginning and end have no fixed meaning. On the wheel of time there is only this one eternally present moment. Concepts like past and future are little more than helpful constructs. They have no more reality than a dream. Like dreams, past and future exist only in the privacy and isolation of our own consciousness. The still-point at the hub of the wheel knows nothing of the constant turning at the rim.

This is why the circle is the most common spiritual symbol on earth –the mandalas of Tibetan Buddhism, the labyrinth on the floor of Chartres Cathedral, Ezekiel’s wheel in the sky, the archetypal hero’s journey, the sand paintings of the Hopi and the Navajo – everywhere we turn human beings express their deepest realizations in circular form. Plato said that the soul is in the form of a circle. Timaeus, Plato’s Pythagorean friend, famously defined God as a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere. Throughout Egyptian, Norse, Mesoamerican, and Asian mythology the circle appears so often that Jung must be right – they can’t all have originated in one place and dispersed – the circle symbol arises of its own accord from the collective unconscious of humankind whenever and wherever they are, a universal symbol or archetype, taking on local flavor, but retaining its deeper, more mystical meaning throughout its myriad and diverse expressions. Time, it seems, is a snake eating its own tail.

So here at the beginning of the year we once again embody all the budding potentiality that January holds, seeding projects, planning conquests, pouring over maps and setting courses for new and bountiful waters. Just as we are reborn every morning, and the moon is reborn every month, so too we celebrate the rebirth of the human project every year. January comes with a distinct feeling of renewal and redemption. On one hand, the calendar does seem rather arbitrary and inconsequential. On the other, it seems deadly serious, this business of starting over. We need it.

Maybe it’s just the way our brains are wired. We discern patterns. We intrinsically assess and sort the raw data of our sense-stream into preconceived categories and columns. Conceptual abstractions like circularity are again and again confirmed in the world around us. Noticing them helps us make order out of chaos. 

We leave home in the morning only to return again in the evening. A song in the key of G wanders all around the scale before returning to G. The hero begins her journey in the known world, is called into the unknown, undergoes essential trials and transformations there and returns to her place of origin strengthened, wiser, and far more willing and able to serve. Ocean water evaporates into the atmosphere, forms into clouds, rains down on the mountains, and gathers into streams that pour into rivers that return to the sea. The hummingbird returns to the nest where she was born to lay her own tiny clutch of eggs.

Knowing this makes us ready for the inevitably cyclical nature of our own lives. We are born toothless, hairless, incompetent, and incontinent. If we live long enough we return to those same hapless conditions. In the beginning and at the end of our lives we are utterly dependant on others – only in the middle are we strong enough to care for ourselves. And if we’re particularly skillful, we can even care for others.

Since the entire universe, from the spiraling of galaxies to the whirling of electrons, is organized into circles, it seems like a good idea to move through our own lives with the same sense of shape and direction.  Straight-edged linear thinking and simplistic expectations are far less effective than allowing the naturally cyclical patterns to carry us over and around obstacles. There will be days when you are not at your best. Wait. You’ll come around. There will be days when you are shockingly creative and productive. Don’t resent all the other days for not being like this one. Begin to notice the waxing and waning, dawning and dusking, rising and falling nature of all your energies and attitudes, and allow them to move unhindered.

In the longer cycles of our lives, learn to honor the natural energies of the season. There is a virtue for every hour and a natural graciousness for every age – in our youth, humility; in our adulthood, responsibility; in our middle age; contemplation; in our final years, appreciation.

Artists of every media understand and exploit the circularity of life through the means of symmetry, rhyme, and harmony. Visual artists create cyclical echoes with shape, form, color, light, and shadow. Musicians root deeply into repeating patterns and trust their audience to recognize their own longing in the singer’s sadness. Beyond every heartbreak a healing, beyond every journey a homecoming, beyond every death a resurrection, beyond every betrayal a redemption.  Every performer who has ever stood on a stage has felt in their bones this truth – it is not they alone who create the music in the room. The performer is merely the channel through whose hands, heart, and voice the longing of the audience comes. We are in this together. We are not making the music. The music is making us.

Art is relationship. Martin Buber was right – God or the sacred exists in the space between us when we meet in authentic dialogue. God is indeed a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.

What’s more important, the performer or the audience? It’s a terrible question. All that matters is what happens when they come together, when the circle is unbroken, and the vibrant aliveness of presence emerges through the cracks of our collective imperfection. Aesthetic appreciation is an art form. Put down your phone. Stop talking. Lean in. Let yourself go. Feel yourself lifted into the center of a great circle, a paradise without beginning or end. Let yourself be reborn into the eternal now, a homeland where the soul feels, finally, fully alive. In this way we are each reborn, every moment, again and again.