THE NAME I call myself I have concocted from within myself. My name is not only the given name which came with my birth and by which I am registered in the social, civic and legal documents of life, my name reveals my character.
       We often say of a person, he is a character. We say that with love and delight, or with derision. When we say it with delight we are finding joy in that person and his antics, this is how we would all like to see life, to see humanity, to see all experiences. This is how we can see life when we are pure in heart and mind.
       To be pure in heart and mind requires an innocence and gentleness which can be developed. Wonderfully, some are born with this generous acceptance and inner recognition of the world being good and very good. Our tendency is to think that only those people are so gifted and blessed, having arrived on Earth with such a noble and consecrated consciousness.
We go to school to study and attain mastership on various levels of achievement. We are honored with academic and nonacademic degrees through which we can tell the world "how great I am" and the world accepts this and EXPECTS us to perform on these advanced levels.
       Sometimes we do not want the world to know "how good we are" or as "how great I am" because then we must live up to that greatness, that genius, that excellence we are supposed to have learned and developed during our educational pursuits.
       This is well and good. Many do not want the world to know that they are trained in mathematics or science because then they will be called to show their expertise. When a medical doctor goes to a party and the call goes out "is there a doctor in the house" he or she feels their private time is being invaded and they are unable to "be themselves and have fun" as everyone else is doing because they are called to the tedious task to use their knowledge as a medical practitioner. This is true not only of an MD but of a financial counselor, a cook, a psychologist or psychiatrist, a policeman or an author. All are expected to be who they are even while they are pretending to be ordinary human beings without a special calling.
We all choose our training in life because we want to practice it. We all choose experiences in life because they delight us. We all become practitioners of a given profession or art because that is where we are most keen and skilled. Then why do we pretend that we are not who we have trained ourselves to be?
       I was performing a baptism-christening for my grand niece. After the event during the celebration party I was drinking a beer. One of the relatives present who newly married into the family, with great surprise, turned to me and said, "You are a minister!" Meaning that a minister did not drink beer.
When we wear the mantle of our profession we must live up to what we believe we are and not what society expects of us. Of course, if we do not live up to what society expects of us we will be ostracized and made unwelcome unless we say we are unfrocked, no longer a minister. However, no one can ever be "unfrocked" because we are our training. We will always be a minister. We will always be a psychologist. We will always be a mother even if our children grow out of the nest or even die. We are always a mother.
       For convenience some of us would like to walk away from the titles we have accepted from life. We would like to ignore the roles we have chosen for ourselves and tell the world that even though we are highly skilled, highly honored and highly called, we can, in an instant, deny that calling and pretend we are something else.
       This is not to say that we can also be something else. For surely we can be anything we choose to be. However, we can never discard the gifts we previously amassed in living. Truly we should not want to throw away the blessings of the past, even if these blessings would have people say of us, "But you are a minister . . . you are a priest . . . you are a mother . . . you are a teacher . . . you are a man . . . you are a 'great person' you cannot do something which is ungreat!"
       The truth is we are always all that we are. We are always the sum total of the experiences we have had to this moment in our lives and we are more-we are the experiences standing before us that have not yet happened.
       We never want to discard the laurels and skills and information heaped upon us by our successes-and failures-of the past. We wear each one with integrity and dignity, with honor and delight. For the moment at least, this is who we are. We can always play another role. We can always add new achievements to our life and live under their aegis, but never can we forget the past, never can we be relieved of who and what we are.
       We are always the allness of our beingness. We are the allness of experiences that lie unrevealed within our deepest reaches of consciousness as well as those already revealed.
       Hence, be yourself and have fun and you will get the most out of life.
The name we call ourselves is the present role we are playing. It is our delight at all times to joy in it. Accept the being you are and let it be the frosting on your cake. Oh so delicious, oh so good!

Pot Of Gold At End Of The Rainbow

       IS THERE REALLY a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? The rainbow is so beautiful and so compelling to watch and to wonder about. In its mystical way it would most certainly seem that there was something very special at the end of the rainbow-but what could it be!
       The Absolute Monastery is a very intensive training school for people who want to walk their spiritual path. For people who are willing to set aside their old habits which have limited them and be nonjudgmental, nonpossessed, untouched and selfdisciplined to the highest degree.
       This is not an easy path. We are so accustomed to having our own way and feeling sorry for ourselves. We are so used to judging ourselves and others. We are possessed by our selves first, then by all of the paraphernalia which we have accumulated-and most important of all we lack selfdiscipline over our thought.
       Learning to achieve mastership in these areas is demanding. It is not for the feint of heart. It is for one who knows that, while life is a ball and the music and dancing and playing are lots of fun, they are hardly lasting, rewarding only in a temporary way.
       From childhood we have always wanted to fly without mechanics. We have always wanted to manifest-bring forth-out of our thought things, concepts and masterpieces which we and our world could enjoy. We have never been satisfied with the slow process of evolution or of scientific advancement, regardless how exponentially magnificent it has been over the recent years. There is more to life than the plodding manner in which progress has been shown to us.
       How then do we move into the land of the rainbow, how do we capitalize on the unlimited pot of gold awaiting there for us, and really, is there a pot of gold there at all!
       This we may never know.
       What we do know is that within each of us is magic we have never expressed. In each of us is what we are searching for.
       Many come to the Absolute Monastery thinking being a monk and living an austere life following the directions given to them, miracles will instantly take place. Sometimes they do! Most of the time so much garbage is in our trash basket that it takes a moment or two to empty it. During the process of emptying the trash from our consciousness we sometimes run out of patience and jump on the first train out of town for some other place wherein we might have a master or miracle worker take over our quest for being master of ourselves.
       Great philosophers continually say: Man know yourself! and it is done to you as you consistently think about it. By my unrelenting thinking I set in motion miracles for myself. By my onepointed way of looking at my choices for myself I am nonstop, I am persistent, I am unceasing, I am constant, I am prolonged, I am perpetual, I am unbroken, I am uninterrupted, I am never-ending, I am endless, I am repeatedly thinking about who and what I am and where I am going and questioning what is my reality.
       Hence, I achieve my choices for myself.
       I do not run hither and yon, I do not look outside myself for the great light that burns so brightly within me. I do not place myself in a situation where I am dissuaded from listening within. I do not become a toy of my human nature, my human body, my senses, my desires and lusts, I am master of myself, my thought, my body, my world and my life. I will not give that pleasure, that privilege, that honor away.
       To me, these treasures are the pot of gold. The gold is selfdiscipline, nonposses- sion, nonjudgmentalism, untouchability! These are the bright glistening flecks, chunks, priceless gifts I find at the end of my rainbow within myself. These are the blessings my rainbow leads to me and I rush there with all my heart, all my soul and all my being.
       . . . and you know, I do believe I have found it!

God Meant It For Good

       SHOCKS COME INTO our life now and then and we wonder why, we wonder why when we have done our best to live according to principle, we have done our best to be honorable and live with integrity, why me oh lord!
Smile, never fear, I tell myself. The shock may have been given for evil, but God meant it for good.
       Recently some unhappy news came into our awareness. We thought it was unkind and unnecessary. And it quite likely is all of that. However, what may be done out of spite, if it is not taken that way turns out to be a blessing with its disguise torn from it.
       In the past months I have received loving letters from people all over the country delighting in what we are doing here in the Absolute Monastery. These letters come from people whom we have not thought about for years. These people are people who have no close attachment to us, but they hold us lovingly in their hearts.
       If the unhappy news had not taken place we would never have heard from these joyous hearts.
       The unhappy news has passed as it always does. It returned to the nothingness out of which it was created; however, the blessings which were born of the event will roll on in perpetuity bringing blessings in their marvelous wake inundating us with love, peace, honor, integrity, goodness, friendship and wealth beyond measure.
       Whenever a problem comes into our life we can just say to ourselves: . . . and God meant it for good!