Do you believe in Santa Claus?Seriously. This isn’t a rhetorical question. Do you?

Assuming your an adult and don’t wear tin foil hats to keep “them” from beaming thoughts into your head, I’ll bet you answered “No” and you probably thought it was a stupid question.
But let’s take a look at this Santa Claus thing.

The basic idea of Santa Claus is that someone is watching you, day and night, who knows everything you do and everything you think. Santa knows what you truly want, but if you want to make sure, you can write to him and tell him. Or, at special times, you can even go and see Santa and tell him directly.
And, if you take all the right actions and think all the right thoughts, one day when you wake up, you’ll find that something you’ve really, really, really wanted has appeared before your very eyes.

If you don’t do all the right things, well, you get a lump of coal… and next year you’ll have to try even harder to get on Santa’s good side so that he’ll magically deliver what you want.

Sound familiar?

Sound like the way we think of our spiritual or psychological lives?

If I think “positive” thoughts, raise my vibration, forgive my parents, learn to love myself, lose weight, attend the right workshop, clear up “blocks”, meditate with my eyes open, meditate with my eyes closed, meditate while remaining celibate, meditate while having sex… then, one day, as if by magic, I’ll be rewarded for all my good actions and thoughts and I’ll get a partner, more money, a new car, the house of my dreams, happiness, enlightenment, world peace…

So, let me ask again, do you believe in Santa Claus?

What are the actions that you do, hoping to prove to Santa you deserve to have what you want?

What are the thoughts you think you need to have to be a good boy or girl? What are the thoughts you need to get rid of?

How do you let Santa know what you want?

What are the ways you try to bribe him (think, milk and cookies)?

What do you do when Christmas morning comes and goes and you didn’t get the train set, or Barbie dream house, or BB gun (or perfect partner, perfect job or perfect body)?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to slight you for acting like there is someone or something out there — God, Universe, Source, Higher Power, etc. — that is constantly judging and deciding whether or if to bestow good or bad things upon you.

I mean, think about it, this is one of the oldest ideas that humans have. We’ve got thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years of people believing that some specific way of behaving or believing results in changing the world we live in. We may make fun of “primitive” cultures and the ways they try to influence the rains, the wind, the sun, and the gods that control them.

Our techniques and mythology might have changed, but in essence we’re just doing what our great-great-great-great-and so-on grandparents have done.

What if we stopped?

What if you no longer believed that making some arbitrary change in your thinking — for example, “focusing on what you want” — would reliably result in getting something you want? What if you no longer believed that if you prayed properly you wouldn’t get the kinds of terminal illnesses that end the lives of 99% of all humans?
What could you do with the free time and energy you would have if you stopped trying to convince Santa you’ve been good this year?

How might your life be different if you didn’t think you needed to get that present you’ve been dreaming about in order to be happy? (How long did the happiness you got from your presents last, anyway? Until New Years day?)

We love to make fun of the beliefs of children and those we see as unevolved. Once I stopped nodding my head, all I could see is how much I had been believing ideas that were, on a good day, no better than those I mocked.

And once I could see the Santa Claus Conspiracy in these beliefs, it was practically impossible to open the flue and put milk and cookies on the mantle any longer. Discovering that there is no Santa Claus requires uncovering the ways we act as if there is. And once you do, there’s no need to try to “live in the present” (if you do that, Santa will bring you a box of happiness and peace), since you won’t bother to live in the future Christmas day.

In fact, it’s stopping waiting for Santa to bring us goodies that reveals the goodies that are always available to enjoy. No need to wait for some magical day for the goodies of reality. And the goodie-ness of reality lasts waaaay longer than the ones that come wrapped up in the hope of future happiness.

No, I’m not proposing a new reality show where we put 10 meditators in a room, issue concentration challenges to them, and see who America votes for as the best meditator (though, now that I write it… nah, never mind).

What I want to talk about today is the problem with monks and meditators.

Not a problem with them as people or as practitioners.

But a problem with them as examples, as role models, as “proof” that the spiritual path reliably leads to where you want to go.

Now I’m not even going to touch the phenomenon of spiritual teachers and leaders who, it turns out, have been sleeping with their students while preaching celibacy, or stealing money while claiming poverty, or eating frozen burritos right out of the 7-Eleven freezer at 3:00 am after years of subsisting on nothing but “universal energy” (it was amazing to watch this “breatharian” try to explain away the security video showing him doing this).

What I want to look at is the honest-to-goodness, insightful, peaceful, clear-minded, level-headed men and women who spent their life in spiritual pursuits. These people (rare as they are) are the ones we admire, the ones we hope to emulate. They’re the ones who give us confidence that all the time we spend watching our breath, or praying, or doing good works, or going to workshops, or buying angel posters is not for naught.

But should we be reassured by them at all? Does their life actually demonstrate something relevant for us?

A few weeks ago, I spent some time with a good friend who also happens to be a high-ranking Tibetan monk. During one conversation, we talked about how most of the young men who entered the monastery with him had long ago removed their robes and gone onto mundane lives. There were relatively few who had been in monastic life as long as my friend, and he’s only in his late 30’s.

By the time he’s in his 50’s or 60’s or 80’s — assuming he hasn’t replaced his robes with blue jeans by then — even fewer of his monastic brothers will still be in the monk business (one thing you learn from hanging out with leaders of religious orders is how much of a business it is).

In other words, as time goes on, there are fewer and fewer “survivors” still in the game.

It’s the same in any business or endeavor. Over time, some stay, some fall away.

By definition, the ones still standing at the end are a rare and unusual breed.

But, when we look at or to these people, we seem to forget how unusual they are (or get angry when they engage in one of those infractions I mentioned and find out how un-unusual they are!).
Looking at the rare survivors as if they are typical is what behavioral economists and cognitive psychologists call “survivorship bias.” We have a natural tendency to look at the people who’ve “made it”, who’ve gotten what we think we want, and believe we can get what they got if we just do what we think they did. We overlook the significantly larger number of non-survivors, most of whom are much more like us.

In other words, what I realized when I talked to my monk friend without nodding my head is that the we only hear from the spiritual survivors, the rare beings who, for reasons that we may never know, are still standing. And then we compare ourselves to them… And this is where the suffering begins.
But once we recognize that they are just the survivors. Once we stop nodding at the idea that we can simply do what they did and get what they (ostensibly) got, things get pretty interesting.

Rather than proving long-term spiritual practice leads to certain attainments, it’s just as likely that the people who have a propensity for certain attainments also have a leaning toward doing long-term spiritual practice.

Look at your own life for examples of this: Did you ever start a sport or a hobby and then stop when it became clear that there were some people who were just naturally gifted and that you would never be as good as them? My running career ended in 9th grade when all the other sprinters suddenly grew to 6′ and I barely made it to 5’6″ — no amount of passion or training would overcome their physiological advantage. And then the tall group separated themselves when it became clear that, well, some guys are just plain faster.

Many people I meet tell me how they need to meditate more, or better, or whatever, citing the example of some teacher who says “The only way to get what I have is to do what I do — 10 hours a day!”

Maybe. Maybe not.

Maybe you could do 20 hours a day and not get “there”, because they just happen to be “faster.”

Or, maybe they have misapprehended their own life and believe that the 10 hour/day practice is what made them who they are… but, maybe being someone who would even consider a 10 hour/day practice is someone who, with 1 minute a day, would have gotten to the same place (looking over history and assuming we can identify the causes that led to the present is what cognitive psych and behavioral finance guys call “hindsight bias”).

If we aren’t aware of how survivorship bias affects our thinking, we could put ourselves in some situations that we hope would lead to happiness, but get or infer information that points us in the exact opposite direction.

Without understanding survivorship bias, we could 1000 people play Russian Roulette and, when there was only one person still standing ask him, “What’s your secret to success?!”

“Simple,” he’d reply, “you just pull the trigger and don’t shoot yourself!”

When’s the last time you were depressed about having 2 arms?

Seriously, when is the last time you went to therapy complaining about the condition of having arms?

Never?

Okay, maybe it’s a bad example.

How ’bout legs?

Ever go to a workshop to resolve your “having legs” issue?

Ever complain to your friends that if you could just get over having legs that then you could be happy and have the relationship you desire and make the money you deserve?

No?

Why not?

Seriously. Why don’t you complain and bemoan and struggle with having 2 legs or 2 arms or a head or a torso or feet or hands or eyes?

I can only find 2 answers.

First, because we think these things are useful. (more about this in a moment)
Second, and more importantly, because almost everyone we see on the planet has them, too!

We don’t try to get over our having limbs issue because everyone has the same issue. We think it’s normal to have arms and legs. We think we’re supposed to have arms and legs. Everyone else does. We call people that don’t “handicapped” or “disabled” (or some other term that’s currently politically correct or not).

So, think about that internal issue of yours that you’ve wanted to change, that you’ve tried to get rid of, that you’ve been working on. That problem that, if it were resolved would make the rest of your life work better.

You want an interesting experiement to try? Try this: Walk up to people and say, “I have this issue where I ___ (fill in the blank with your issue). Do you have that one or one that’s similar?”

Give a dollar to anyone who says “No.”

Don’t worry, you could start out with $5, ask MILLIONS of people and still have enough cash left over for a candy bar (or maybe $5 worth of candy bars!).

We’re afraid of imagined futures. We dislike certain thoughts that appear in our minds. We engage in actions that don’t lead to happiness. We believe unpleasant things about ourselves. We don’t like how we look or feel or act sometimes.

Guess what?

That’s just the way these human things are built.

That’s just part of the package, like arms and legs.

We come out of the womb with arms, legs, mental stuff and habits we don’t like.

Imagine being the first one on the planet, no instruction book for your human mind/body, no other people to compare to… and you begin noticing these “issues” of yours. So you call tech support. Sanjeev answers and says, “Welcome to human being tech support. How may I give you great assistance today?”

You describe your problems and your issues and Sanjeev says, “Let me check with my manager. May I put you on hold for 2-3 minutes?”

Two to three minutes later, he returns. “Yes, what you’re describing is how the human being is supposed to operate. That is a “feature” not a “bug.”

What if you knew that these “issues” were simply a part of being human… and you knew it so deeply, that you put no more effort into the issue (let alone resolving it), than you do trying to get rid of the “having legs and arms” issue?

What if these “problems” were so commonly accepted — like having arms and legs — that it wouldn’t even occur to you to discuss having them?

What if we thought of people who tried to change these “features” as “disabled” or “handicapped”… because they weren’t able to move through life with normal freedoms since they were so caught up in trying to fix something that nobody else sees as broken?

What could you do with the free time and energy if you weren’t using it trying to fix yourself? If you weren’t trying to escape the phenomenon of being human?

Oh, I said that one other reason we don’t take antidepressants over having limbs is that they’re useful.

Think of at least 3 ways that your “problems” are useful. Even better, think of 3 ways that your problems are gifts, blessings or responsible for you having gotten something valuable in your life.

Geez, every one of my biggest issues is also one of my favorite aspects of myself! Were it not for those issues I wouldn’t have had any of my favorite experiences in life. Were it not for that “problem,” I would have been unable to escape situations with which I couldn’t cope! (at least it seems that way)

So, once we get hip to the idea that our problems are part of the way these human things come out of the package, what if we could only see these same features as useful, beneficial, important, valuable. More, even, than our limbs?

Sure it would put a bunch of therapists out of business, but I trust they’d find something fun to do with their “issue” of believing other people need fixing 😉

I don’t make an effort, but when I see Bill Moyers’ show, Faith and Reason, on my Tivo, I’ll watch it. I spent so many years listening to spiritual teachers and, well, old habits are hard to break. So far, I haven’t been able to make it through an episode. I hear a lot about faith, but not so much about reason. Or, more accurately, I hear reason that, at some point, hits its limit, and then is replaced my major leaps of logic that are called faith.

Anyway, the Western-born Tibetan Buddhist Nun, Pema Chodron, was on the other day. I used to really enjoy her writing, but I hadn’t read anything of her’s since I stopped nodding my head (see the first post). And, back in my nodding days, I nodded a lot at various Buddhist ideas.

Watching Pema Chodron, it was as if a Buddhist veil had fallen off of my head when I began tilting it. Let me tell you what I mean.

I only saw the second half of the interview (my Tivo is set to record the whole thing if it’s ever replayed), but in that 30 minutes, Pema said 3 things that floored me:

1. She sees the Buddha as a role model because he’s an ordinary human who achieved “awakening.”Now this is the common idea about the Buddha in the West. In the East, most Buddhists think of the Buddha as a god. “Lord Buddha” isn’t just an honorific over there. But, more importantly, when you read the Buddhist stories, the “he’s just a guy” idea doesn’t hold water.Ignore for a moment the uniqueness of his life — born the son of the king of the Sakya clan, raised without seeing suffering, experiencing the best that his father could offer. The same teachers that say “he’s just a man” also tell the stories of his past lives, the hundreds of thousands of lives where he demonstrated almost super-human levels of compassion, insight, wisdom, intelligence, generosity, etc. It’s said that all those lifetimes prepared him to become awakened, to become the Buddha. And the Buddhist teachings also talk about how rarely an awakened one appears in the world.Does that sound like an ordinary guy?Michael Jordan is an ordinary guy. But nobody thinks that by practicing basketball for a few hours a day they’ll become one of the rarest basketball talents is the world. Tiger Woods is just a man, but nobody thinks that — with any amount of practice — they will become the next Tiger Woods.

   So why do we think that we can and will like someone who, by definition, is an unfathomably rare individual?

   And, hey, I’m not saying we won’t. I don’t know. (At some point, I’ll write the Kabbalistic story about how we *could* be that one and not know it).

   But look at what it costs to hold a unique and rare individual as a model… when our lives don’t seem to compare to it. When, no matter how much we meditate or pray or chant, we still get angry in traffic, or confused by our spouse, or frustrated at, well, anything.

   Related to this is…

2. Pema Chodren said she has faith that all beings have the potential for awakening.Sounds good, but then Bill asked, “Are you awakened?” She laughed at the seeming absurdity of the question. “No,” she said.Now, this is a woman who has been “practicing” Buddhist meditation for over 30 years. She’s a Buddhist nun. She hasn’t “gotten it,” but everyone has the potential to?Sure, given enough time, enough lifetimes, it seems possible. I’m all for it. But Buddhism promises “enlightenment” (and other religions promise something similar or the same). The question is: Where is the evidence that it delivers what it promises?

   Where are all the enlightened beings who are no longer “practicing” because they’re playing (the game, the music, or whatever else you practice for)?

   Again, reading the Buddhist texts, the Buddha taught 84,000 people and only 500 “got it” (and they became awake, but NOT Buddhas… they still had many of the personality traits that most practitioners hope will go vanish in the light of enlightenment). He was the best teacher there was and only .6% of his students got the gold ring.

   Tibetan Buddhists like to say that what makes their version of Buddhism unique (and better than Zen or Theravada) is that it promises awakening in one lifetime. Then the obvious question is: Why aren’t all practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism enlightened?

   Before you answer something like, “Not everyone practices well enough,” I’ll ask, “How can you really know what’s going on in someone’s head, in someone’s practice?” I’m sure I’ll write about how we can’t use end results as a “proof” for undefinable causes, like how well you concentrate, how much you want something, or what your “vibration” is.

   Maybe the better question is: If there are any who did become enlightened, was it REALLY a result of their practice or was a bigger factor something like past lives or eating Mexican food or some other factor that we can’t know or can’t quantify?

3. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Bill quoted the Zen teacher, Suzuki Roshi, who once said to his students, “You’re all perfect; and you need some improvement.”Pema Chodren nodded in agreement with that one. It’s a great line. It points to the paradox of unity and duality. Genuinely understood, it’s a show stopper. But think about how we normally hear that statement.Normally, we REALLY BELIEVE the second part, and HOPE TO EVENTUALLY REALLY BELIEVE the first part… after we finish improving ourselves. We give lip service to the idea that we’re perfect, fine, showing up exactly as we should be. But we spend countless hours, dollars and energy attending to our self-improvement project.

   This line — we’re perfect and need improvement — and that we don’t really experience the perfection but do experience the idea of needing improvement, is the motor that drives a multi-billion dollar improvement industry. It’s what keeps us in annoyingly lit hotel rooms for a weekend instead of enjoying a day in the park with our loved ones. It’s what motivates us to engage in all sorts of practices that subtly reinforce the idea of our being broken while simlutaneously letting us think we’re better than others who aren’t “on the path.”

So, how do I put all this together?

Without the idea that there’s some ideal person to emulate, that there’s some practice that will get me to become that person, that in this imagined “awakened” future I can finally be happy… without all of those ideas? Guess what? Perfection. Here. Now. Really.

Not “perfection” as in: the best, the smartest, only having the thoughts I want, etc. That’s perfection COMPARED to imperfection.

Instead, without nodding my head at the notion of being an improvement project, it (and by “it” I mean “me) is genuinely fine, exactly as it is. I can see how every movement of my life, and my parents’ lives, and their parents’, and so on all the way to the beginning of time, led inexorably to this moment. How dare I suggest I think I know how it could/should be “better.”

And, if I wake up in the morning with the idea of exercising or meditating or chanting or whatever… it’s not about improving this thing I’ll call me. It’s just what this me thing does as an expression of… well, there’s no word that can even fill that place in the sentence.

Okay, it’s done. Off to what’s next.

I hopped in a car to ride down the spiritual path at the age of 7. By 10 I was comparing notes with 63 year old physicians on the clinical application of hypnosis for anaesthesia and pain relief.

And off it went from there… biofeedback, Vedanta, Shaivism, Tai Chi, Aikido, Taoism, Vipassana, Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Kabbalah, and Western therapies and workshops of all kinds.

I wasn’t just a student. I became a teacher in many of these diciplines.
And, no matter where I went, no matter what I did, I would nod my head at the fundamental promise:

If I followed these teachers and/or teachings, I would eventually get what I wanted — happiness, spiritual attainment, peace of mind, awakening, realization, enlightenment. Pick the word, I wanted it.

One day, after 28 years travelling on the path, with no end in sight (and not many examples of people who had reached the goal) I stopped nodding my head and, instead, I began “tilting my head.”

Almost literally, instead of nodding in agreement, I took on the attitude of “Hmm…? What’s really going on here? Is it true?”

Since that moment, my life has never been the same.

And, perhaps, when you hear what I’ve discovered since then, your’s won’t be either.

Enjoy.