Transcript of Episode

Sometimes you hear something when you’re younger and subconsciously, your mind files it away for later use. We all do it, but why? How do we unconsciously decide that some information might be valuable for us down the road, when we don’t even know where that road might lead? 

          We just don’t know. But we don’t know a lot of things. As Edison once said, “We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.” And he was a genius. Of course, we’ve made some tremendous progress since he said that, so maybe now we do know one millionth of one percent about something.

          Anyway, when I was in about 4th grade one of those little things slipped into the back of my mind. I was in Sunday School and I heard a story that had the Golden Rule in it.  

          By way of a little background, Sunday school was just one part of the rather extensive religious training that I received. It was far deeper than most, and it happened by a complete fluke.

          My family had moved to a suburb of Philadelphia, but we still belonged to our old synagogue, which was about a 20-minute drive away. I was about to enter Hebrew school and my parents wanted a place close to us so they wouldn’t have to deal with the drive all week. The only place that would take me was the Suburban branch of an ultra-orthodox synagogue called Mikveh Israel, which was founded in 1740 and is still the oldest functioning synagogue in the United States.

          On top of being strictly Orthodox, hardly anyone went to the suburban branch and while the rest of my friends were in classes with 20 or more students, for me it would be me, the teacher and maybe two other kids. As you can imagine, it didn’t leave me much wiggle room. They were pretty strict and I really had to learn the stuff. So, I got a fairly major dose of orthodox religion during my younger years.

          Well, on this one particular Sunday, the teacher told the story of this legendary rabbi from about 2,000 years ago named Hillel. He was a widely respected teacher and someone once challenged him to teach him all the deepest tenants of Judaism while he stood on one foot. 

          Hillel simply responded, “Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to you. The rest is commentary.” Speaking of commentary, my teacher had a lot to say about Hillel’s version of the Golden Rule.

          We all know the traditional saying, “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you,” which basically tells us to do good to others. But this one puts a different spin on it and tells us not to do bad to others, which brings up an interesting wrinkle.

          The underlying idea here is that as human beings, we are inherently good on the inside. That’s the essence of our nature. But the unenlightened side of our mind is out of control and causing major problems. So rather than urging us to do good, we actually need to change our direction and stop doing bad.  It’s not so much a matter of doing, it’s more a matter of not doing, because at the essence of our being, we’re already good. In fact, we’re much more than that.

          The whole discussion wasn’t a huge deal to me, I just found it interesting and filed it away for possible review down the road.

          It was about 1958 when this happened. Now flash forward ten years later to 1968. I was a normal American Baby Boomer and like the rest of my generation at that point, I just basically did whatever the Beatles did. To call me a fan would have been a gross understatement. They had recently gone to India and started meditating, which generated an enormous amount of world press. Naturally, I thought I’d give it a try, even though I didn’t know a thing about meditation and couldn’t have cared less. I just wanted to be a fifth Beatle.

          I went to a class and learned a basic technique. But I was really bad at it and quit after a few weeks. Even so, I had gotten introduced to the idea of going beyond your thinking mind. I learned that one part of the mind is like a nervous monkey, endlessly jumping from tree to tree. But there’s this other part that is far greater, where peace and realization reside. You have to calm the monkey mind to get to the greater part. Although it seemed impossible, I had never heard anything like it before and the idea of a higher mind made me curious.

          A few years later, in the early 70s, it seemed like a tidal wave of spiritual and psychological insights started to hit America on a constant basis. I learned a different form of meditation that worked for me and I started investigating every interesting idea I could find about inner growth.   

          The first one that really got me was that the human mind can never really understand God. The mind, by its nature, is a finite tool. And God, by its nature, is infinite. So, no matter who or what, the one can never truly understand the other.  It is simply impossible.

          On the surface, the idea seemed logical enough, but coming from my strict religious background, it hit me pretty hard.  It meant that all these human conceptions about God that I had learned were, by their very nature, flawed. As sincere as they might be, they were still a finite view of the infinite, which had been manufactured by the human mind. And furthermore, I was learning that the mind can be really tricky. Even though it can never comprehend the infinite, it will still swear on a stack of bibles that it can. And I usually believe whatever it says. Now, at least it seemed a little suspect.

          I soon ran into another idea that brought me to a new perspective. It was called the “Indwelling God Presence,” and the concept was that God, the Infinite, or whatever you want to call it, isn’t far away at all. It’s much closer than we think. In fact, it dwells within us. It’s been in there all along, welcoming us to come to it.

          For all my life I’d been steeped in standard western theology, along with a good, strong dose of the Puritan ethic, and I always thought that God had basically kicked me out of Heaven. Maybe it wasn’t just me, maybe it went all the way back to original sin, but something had pissed the big guy off, and now here I was, making mistake after mistake trying to beg, steal or borrow my way back into his good graces. Or at least get to the pearly gates and see if I could charm one of his guys to let me in. At that point, I’d gladly take a dog house if I could get it.

          Now, suddenly I was exposed to this new idea, which opened me up to the possibility that maybe this view of an angry, vengeful god, punishing an endless line of guilty sinners, wasn’t necessarily true.  Maybe it’s was just a long running myth of some kind. Who knows?

          But what if this indwelling thing was real? It was a pretty nice idea. Yes, there is such a thing as God. Yes, it’s infinite. No, you can’t grasp it with your finite mind, but you can feel it with your heart.

           And you can finally let go of the idea of it being a cold aloof deity, off in some distant, faraway land that you can only get to after you die, having done enough self-punishment to have whipped yourself home, whatever’s left of you.  

          Instead, you can embrace the feeling that it actually lives within, closer than you can imagine, the source of happiness, joy, laughter and all the highest and best human traits, constantly trying to encourage you to make the choice to turn to it.

          This may all seem a little trite now. It’s fifty years later and our culture’s entire cosmology has gone through major transformations. But back then, it was quite a revelation to me. And a most welcomed one at that.

          It was around this time that the Hillel version of the Golden Rule popped back up in my mind and suddenly, it all made sense…this brilliant idea that the source of all goodness lies within and all we have to do is just stop moving in the wrong direction.

          Then I got quite a pleasant surprise. I was reading a book called “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying,” which begins with a powerful statement, “At the heart of all religion is the certainty that there is a fundamental truth and that this life is a sacred opportunity to evolve and realize it.

          Then it goes into something it called, “The Four Faults.” It starts with a question. If we have this higher side of our intelligence that’s merged with the Infinite within, and is the source of so much joy, peace and bliss, why is it so damn hard to get to?

          Then it says that the reason it’s hard is because we make it hard. We follow the dictates of our ordinary mind, which is basically a problem solver. It always looks for problems. As the old saying says, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”  

 

          It went on to say when it comes to merging our consciousness with our enlightened mind, our ordinary mind has four blind spots that hinder us. Hence the four faults.  

          The first one is that our enlightened self is just too close to us. We can’t accept that we are as close to it as we really are. It’s like your own face. Even though you may not be able to see it, you can’t be any closer to it.

          The second fault is that the nature of the enlightened mind is too profound for us to fathom. We have no idea of how deep this thing is and what a profound effect it can have on our lives. If we did, we would readily accept and realize it.

          The third fault is that realizing it is just too easy. In reality, it is always within us and all we need to do is let go of our agitation and just rest in its awareness. But we think it must be harder than that, so we keep looking for problems.

          And the fourth fault is that it is too wonderful for us to grasp. It is far greater than we can imagine and the sheer immensity of it is too vast to fit into our narrow way of thinking.  And on top of all this, we can’t possibly imagine that the state of enlightenment is actually the true nature of our being.

          So, in summary, when it comes to embracing our enlightened mind, we have four blind spots. We don’t see it because it’s too close, too profound, too easy and too wonderful.

          Boy, wouldn’t it be great if this perspective was really true?  If all we had to do was let go of our own blocks, see beyond these four faults and merge into the happiness, peace and fulfillment that countless masters, teachers, saints and sages through the ages say is waiting for us?

          Sounds too good to be true. But then again, that’s probably exactly the problem.

          Well, so much for this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together in the next one.