Soul's Code

A meditation to de-stress for the post-2012 era

BY DAVID RICKEY — January in northern California is usually a time of rain, cold, and a psychic hangover from the double-barreled Christmas and New Year holidays, which can tend to be anything but Holy days. After getting swept up in the maelstrom, let’s step back a bit a get some perspective. Thanksgiving is a good place to begin as both a word and place in time.

Being grateful for what we have, for what we experience — even for who we are — has a major effect on our daily life.

Gratitude comes from an awareness that this is not all just an accident. This morning, as I left for work, at about 5:30am . . .

Were the stories of impossible feats that Jesus performed the spiritual equivalent of case studies?

BY DAVID RICKEY — One of the miracle stories about Jesus that probably has actual truth behind it is the account of how he fed 5000 (or an additional 4000, according to Mark and Matthew). It’s framed as a miracle to impress upon us that Jesus is a powerful guy.

The version of that story that appears in Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 14:13-21) lends itself to a different interpretation, one that might hit closer to home.

Alternative healing and advanced science continue to converge — and leap-frog ahead of conventional wisdom

BY DAVID RICKEY and RICK LEED — As we evolve, both scientific researchers and esoteric healers have advanced new therapies to treat our bodies and our minds but when we first hear of some of them we make a snap judgement that this sounds too wacky to be legit. We use words like voodoo medicine or magical thinking.

Think back to examples like quinine and willow bark — the former a tribal medicine used by Peruvian Indians, the latter an ‘old wives’ remedy. In the modern age, the first was prescribed by doctors as a treatment for malaria and the second in derivative form as aspirin.

Can our brains evolve fast enough to solve the problems that the un-evolved mind has created

BY DAVID RICKEY —Einstein said that the level of consciousness that created a particular problem cannot solve the said problem.

A hot new book by sociobiologist Rebecca Costa, The Watchman’s Rattle: Thinking our way out of extinction, illustrates Einstein’s point by documenting how our rate of social and technical change is out-stripping evolution.

Look at the economy: we have developed complex computer programs that can trade stocks in milliseconds. We have developed virtual ways of making money, and created a subculture of the super-rich.

Meditation doesn’t require much time — you can do it while you’re thinking

DAVID RICKEY: I know it doesn’t come as a surprise to say that Meditation is important for spiritual growth. Ken Wilbur claims that it is the quickest way to advance spiritual evolution. But it might come as a surprise that I don’t meditate, at least not in any classic way. I could say “I don’t have the time.” But the truth is I have never had much discipline. So, I have a form of meditation that takes no real time and requires only a bit of discipline.

In the an issue of the New Yorker magazine, Malcolm Gladwell uses Microsoft heavyweight Nathan Myhrvold as a case study for coincident scientific discovery — and I say, a collective consciousness

DAVID RICKEY — The ego exists only to function in relationship to the whole system, and the ego functions best when it is consciously aware of itself as part of a larger system.

Inspiration derives from the word, spirit. But it is the latest breakthroughs in science, not necessarily spirituality, that give us the clearest prism for viewing the way inspiration is actually created. Malcolm Gladwell’s profile of Nathan Myhrvold in The New Yorker — In the Air: Who says big ideas are rare?— describes a number of instances where two or more people develop almost identical ideas or inventions pretty much simultaneously.

Haiti advocate Sean Penn will send Charlie Sheen to help raise spirits; We sent an Episcopal priest and psychotherapist

BY DAVID RICKEY – Haiti is a fascinating place in its own right, but for me it serves as a kind of microcosm of issues that are evolving around the planet. I just returned from my fourth visit to Port au Prince. Each time I go, I accomplish a little but learn a lot.

I can report that there is progress there. The streets, although still terrible and crowded with the chaotic traffic of trucks, SUVs and motorcycles weaving around each other, are cleaner and brighter. There is an renewed energy and purposefulness.

7 nights in tents, 3,000 cyclists + 500 miles. The 10th annual AIDS ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles made octagon-fighters look like wimps

DAVID RICKEY — As we marked the “30th anniversary of AIDS,” we acknowledged that many people on this cycling marathon at one time were fighting for their lives.

I suddenly realized that I personally know several people who have been infected with the HIV virus for 31+ years, and are still alive!

The AIDS Lifecycle Ride was both a testament to the continuing need for cure and treatment and a potent source of healing in its own right.

The AIDS virus entered the human bloodstream probably in late 1979. I can remember visiting, in 1980 as a student chaplain, gay men who were experiencing what was called the “Gay Plague.” The symptoms were various: pneumonia-like, intense fatigue, but the cause could not be determined.

The virus was discovered, isolated and named in 1981, hence the “anniversary.”

In those early years, AIDS was considered a death sentence.

As much of the world celebrates the killing of Osama Bin Laden, we need to ask ourselves what effect this will really have on the reality of terrorism.

BY DAVID RICKEY — Yes, Bin Laden was a very evil individual who masterminded much and mentored many. However, his death will stop neither the consciousness that breeds terrorism nor the historic causes that feed that consciousness.

The decision to bury Bin Laden’s body at sea within hours of his death demonstrates, it seems to me, a level of sensitivity that counters much of the insensitivity that lies at the root of the present pandemic of terrorism (although already there is conflicting opinion and criticism for this action).

While there will always be people who express their selfish anger in acts of aggression against others, the “West” — that over-encompassing term describing what we might describe as the “more enlightened” people in Europe and America — would do well to reflect on our own actions over the past 3+ centuries that have contributed to the anger in Africa, the “Middle East” and southest Asia that underpin the terrorist argument.

How would you survive the loss if your best friend, mentor or shrink were crucified? You’d have to awaken your own inner guru.

DAVID RICKEY — His career was short and ended with his crucifixion. It looked like failure. What had Jesus accomplished? At most a few miracles, healings and teachings. That was it. Or was it?

Like a CEO who doesn’t feel ready to retire, Jesus could at least take comfort in the succession planning of his time — his passing of the baton to a dozen floundering but well-meaning and capable followers.