Soul's Code

SPIRITUAL IQ QUIZ — Religions channel the fears and aspirations of our collective unconscious through archetypal images and stories. That’s why the religious enterprise has been so successful for such a long period of time.

And maybe it’s also why video games are the fastest-growing form of modern entertainment.

If you don’t think video games are also spiritual, you simply haven’t played very many. Video games are rooted in the same myths and archetypes that have shaped us for millennia.

The key difference: video games put the audience in the middle of the action, whether that means blasting armies of alien invaders in Halo Reach or fighting with crooks and your own conscience in Grand Theft Auto IV.

Don Miguel Ruiz, author of the bestselling book The Four Agreements, invites people to go to the largest pyramid in the Americas for a peak experience. Now I know why. I just had one.

PAUL KAIHLA — Like a typico gringo, I launched into a litany of questions about historical facts so that I could “know” Teotihuacan, a sacred city that was built by the Toltecs 2,000 years ago — when an Atlantic away the Romans were achieving hegemony over the Antique World and crucifying Christ.

My guide dissuaded me from such thinking — and thinking, at all.

Think of him as a modern-day Don Juan. Not the 14th-century libertine, but Don Juan as in Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge.

A Soul’s Code short-list of magical, mystical tours

Where does the tallest tree in the world live? As old as Christ, a redwood called “Hyperion” went ‘undiscovered’ by humans until recently

Where do NASA and Nova research the origins of life after the Big Bang? Mono Lake, California is the most primordial place on the planet

Who is building the “Temple of Transition”? Burning men, August 29 – September 5, in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert

Global warming, Mid-East nukes and economic distress? No worries! It’s only the end of the world as we know it, in Roland Emmerich’s third disaster movie. This time, it gets spiritual

BY SOUL’S CODE — When Spanish adventurers, centuries after the Conquest, stumbled upon Mayan ruins in the jungles of present-day Mexico, they surmised that the monuments were created by Mediterranean transplants — survivors of Noah’s flood, or perhaps trans-Atlantic commuters who sailed between ancient Egypt or Rome and meso-America.

When archeologists completed the decryption of Mayan hieroglyphs after World War II, they proved beyond a doubt that the lost civilization was indigenous, and that the region’s Indian tribes were its descendants.

The Mayan mystique was born: their biggest pyramids are essentially giant sundials and calendars. The inscriptions accurately forecast solar eclipses to this day, and document the orbits of Mercury, Mars and Venus.

Most of the gurus and guides on Soul’s Code would answer that spirituality is an unmeasurable quality. But  a regional economist would answer the above question with two words: Ojai, California

BY PAUL KAIHLA — Ojai, CA is to spirituality what Silicon Valley is to technology. Due east and a 40-minute hop inland from Santa Barbara, Ojai has more mind-body spas per capita than anywhere else in the U.S. — probably, the world.

How does Ojai pull that kind of rank? For one thing, it’s got a tiny population: 8,000 souls. For another, Ojai was the North American base of the great Indian mystic, J. Krishnamurti. He underwent one of the most famous enlightenments in history at Ojai in 1922.

Krishnamurti chose an estate there, granted to his foundation by patrons, as his part-time home for the next six decades (The great sage died in Ojai in 1986).

The sacred day of the Irish Saint Patrick is actually on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 but Americans of Irish and non-Celtic origin are already going holy-roller

“At that moment, language, distance and time were transcended. Where the sacred brings the past and present together is the point at which each experienced traveler knows that any one of us is open to meeting the next person.”

BY KOHL GLAU — When traveling abroad, I strive not to be just another tourist, either on the inside or the outside. But what else could one possibly be? Stepping foot into another country, by definition, implicitly means you’re a five-year-old again: open to meeting all good people, open to unanticipated ideas, fresh ways of life, speaking a new mother tongue — and like, blending in as much as possible.

So why go through all this trouble as an adult? To paraphrase the great Harold Bloom, we can never meet enough people, and we learn something new about ourselves when we learn something original from another. If this is also the merit of reading great literature, doesn’t the same hold true of travel?

Congratulations to Xuan-An Thai, an upwardly-mobile seeker from Texas who took a clandestine trip to Cuba — and stumbled upon a smokin’ (cigar, that is) smiling Buddha

First, we asked everyone in the world to send Soul’s Code an image of a person, place or thing that inspires or “enlightens” them.

Then, some in our Soul’s Code circle may have quietly imagined  . . . ‘Megan Fox meditating at Machu Picchu’?

Still others may have projected: modern-day shaman, Tony Samara, imagining satori in San Francisco?

But we suspect that you fell in love with the winning entry (left) because Xuan-An’s moment of Zen-lightenment in Havana, Cuba is such a pristine revelation of the  serendipitous, sublime, shit-happens quality of being that defies linear thought.

Lucid dreaming in three easy steps: a tool for expanding your consciousness

GUEST COLUMN: SUSANNA BELLINI — Imagine that you could be anywhere and do anything, with all the resources you need, the star of your own live-action virtual reality adventure. . .

Lucid dreaming lets you do all this, and more.

Lucid dreaming lets you fly, touch the stars, go back in time to heal your childhood and much, much more — best of all, this is not only an imaginary, dreaming, experience.

Scientology leader accused of slapping subordinates

David Miscavige, Church of Scientology chairman, has been accused of  hitting staff members on several occasions. Said one alleged witness, “It was random and whimsical. It could be the look on your face. Or not answering a question quickly. But it always was a punishment.” Soul’s Code finds this a curious use of the word “whimsical,” but hopes that such whimsy, if true, will come to an end, soon. It can only contribute to our collective pain body.