Why am I here?  What was I put on this earth to do?  So many people I come across have never actively sought the answer, yet desperately want to feel connected and on path.  When I sought answers,  it lead me to other ontological and metaphysical questions – Why does humanity exist? Where do we come from?   What is our purpose?  Do we have a creator, and if so, what was his purpose in creating us?

After many years of seeking, studying and soul searching,  my personal discovery was – yes we have a Creator, and our Creator’s purpose is simply to fulfill her desire to experience herself through the multiplicity of form  – humans, plants, animals, rocks – nature in general.  All exist to serve the creator’s experiential knowing.  And when we align ourselves with the desire to serve, we align ourselves with Universal law – we expand, we evolve, we grow – in wisdom, compassion, and peace – qualities that some people refer to as happiness.  And if we serve other’s needs, using our unique abilities, our purpose arises.

I was recently re-reading a few pages from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle yesterday – one of my favorite books of all time.  He was talking about purpose and had a clear and powerful explaination.

According to Tolle, our life’s journey has both an outer purpose and an inner purpose.  The outer purpose is clearly to aim for a destination, or a goal.  But if we become preoccupied with the goal, or the next steps we must take in order to reach our goal, we disconnect from our inner purpose, which is to be totally present to the step we are taking now – or  “the quality of our consciousness at this moment”.

So while the outer journey might contain a thousand steps,  the inner journey contain’s only one step – the step we are taking right now.  And as this realization deepens, we become increasingly aware of the depth, the beauty, the perfection in the present moment, and the light of “being” shines through, both revealing and fulfilling our purpose and journey at the same time.

Then the question arises – does it matter whether we achieve our outer purpose – whether we succeed or fail?

The answer is it only matters if we haven’t achieved our inner purpose.  If we have, the outer purpose is only a game, to by en-joy-ed.  It is possible to achieve the outer purpose, and not the inner purpose – “outer riches and inner poverty” – we all know people like that.  The key point is that every outer purpose is ultimately doomed to fail – since it is subject to the law of impermanence – constant change, and we all die at some point.  So to give up the notion that our outer purpose can make us “happy”, makes tremendous sense.  And to subjugate our outer purpose to the practice of achieving our inner purpose – Consciousness – is the what I’ve experience as the only real path to fulfillment.

What does everybody, universally, throughout humanity desire most?

Happiness.

Psychological and spiritual thought leaders all point to one fact – that we cannot find happiness, without first cultivating inner peace.  Happiness, or joy, grows from inner peace. In my experience, our nature is peace, joy, freedom, love.  Yet our nature is mired in interference – a powerful force that pushes our egos into the driver seat, causing us to become unconsciously motivated by fear (with its subtler forms of anxiety and worry) and greed (with its subtler forms of “wanting” more).  This only creates suffering, which can occasionally be medicated by pleasure – shopping, drinking, eating, numbing out to TV – yet with no progress toward sustainable inner joy.

How do we release the interference and access inner peace and happiness?

There are many paths, and no one size fits all.  A progressive release of attachments to the finite material world constructed by our minds is critical.  A journey into authenticity, heart and humility is vital.  A prayer ritual is powerful.  Finding a teacher, and beginning a meditation practice cultivates all of the above.

In my journey, I’ve found that the access point to peace, and then joy, is Presence.  Presence is the Way to open the door to the ‘absolute’ unmanifested – from our ‘relative’ finite worlds, and receive the flow of life force.  How do we achieve Presence?  I suggest a five step daily practice.

1. Awareness on a moment to moment basis (become aware that we’re not present);
2. Choose to be present;
3. Breath – connecting mind body and spirit;
4. Feel the internal energy field that arises, regardless of whether it’s pleasant or uncomfortable; (which takes us out of useless mind activity); and
5. Practice becoming focused on -  becoming one with -  the task at hand

As the frequency of awareness increases, and the choice to “be” is made in the moment, presence is deepened, inner peace is expanded, and joy is available – to arise from the foundation of presence.

So many of us feel anxious today. There are seemingly infinite sources of stress all stemming from things we cannot control. Will we have enough money? How do we ensure we are successful in life? The pressure to keep up at our jobs, in our businesses, with our families, friends, hobbies. The great stress and pressure from the need to stay ahead financially, or the need to be a good parent, a good son or daughter, a good sibling, a good friend and the list goes on.

Our sense of inner peace, which is our birthright, is under constant fire and is replaced by a sense of not being enough. And in the wanting desire to become enough – an aim that can’t ever achieve the perfection we often seek, we are left with a feeling of anxiety. I would assert that accompanying the age of information is the age of anxiety.

While we cannot control our external environment, we can control our reactions to stress triggers. However, many of us have not built up the natural “stress inhibitors” and instead fall victim to our conditioned responses of worry and fear that we’ve learned from our culture – parents, teachers, society. The worry is totally useless, does not serve us in any positive way, and increasingly sucks up positive life force energy from our daily existence.

Living in anxiety certainly cannot be the intent of a friendly universe designed to support our individual and collective well being. So how do we cultivate inner peace in a practical way in our busy day to day lives – without enrolling as an apprentice in a Zen monastery? It is certainly possible, but it requires practice and a commitment to becoming more conscious of our mental emotional reaction patterns – events, thoughts and feelings that trigger us into unconscious reaction – which are so often the cause of our inner disquiet. Stress reduction techniques can be broken down into three categories: physical (body), psychological/emotional (mind), and spiritual (spirt).

Three Dimensions of Stress Reduction

Physical

We cannot reduce stress and anxiety if we neglect our bodies. Diet, sleep and exercise are the obvious pillars of well being – so simple, yet not so easy. Exercise enables our bodies to abort the production of stress hormones, releases physical tension and promote relaxation. As well, with breathing, we regulate oxygen intake and carbon dioxide, and when we exhale in conjunction with our musculature, we can access deeper peace and serenity. Yoga is a powerful combination of both.

Psychological

We cannot reduce stress and anxiety unless we become aware of our thoughts, and the emotional reactions they produce. Without awareness there is no control, only reactivity to the incessant stream of daily forms that bombard us. This is the heart of mindfulness practice – developing increasing awareness of your thoughts, emotions and the accompanying awareness of physical sensations. Mindfulness minimizes anxiety, as you create space for yourself and become the observer of the anxious mind, vs. being the anxious mind.

Spiritual

We cannot reduce stress and anxiety unless we create perspective of the big picture -which means releasing attachments to the ever-so-dramatic “story of me”. Spirituality doesn’t necessarily only mean being religious, or praying in a church, mosque or synagogue . It can also mean internalizing spiritual qualities like gratitude for what is. Investing time into making a difference to others or the world – being of service. Spending time in nature and feeling a sense of sacredness in the natural world. Having a sense of being a part of something greater than ourselves, a sense of the presence of a higher power. Cultivating compassion for the human race, the earth, and a better world.

The following practice has helped me get through my most anxious days, and it is with gratitude and a desire that you find peace, that I share it with you.

Daily Practices for Stress Reduction

1.       Breath.

Breath is the life force of our worlds, the oxygen rich fuel that powers our sense of being. Yet so often we unconsciously move into shallow and choppy breathing when our lives become overwhelming. Consider committing to a week of steady, consistent breathing throughout your day, and feel the wonderful results.

2.      Be mindful.

Become the observer of your thoughts, not the reactor to your thoughts. This is the ultimate practice of presence, or mindfulness. We are constantly in reaction to the incessant stream of thoughts that bombard our daily lives, and we expend most of our existence in our heads. We have 60,000 thoughts per day, and 90% of those thoughts are the same! We repeat them over and over, consuming tremendous amounts of life energy to no avail! So often these thoughts center around mentally avoiding something we fear may happen, or mentally desiring something for our futures. They take us out of the present, and out of the flow – the juice of life. Begin watching your mind in this pattern of thinking that causes emotional volatility, and creating some space between you (your Self, Consciousness, Observing Ego) and your mind.

3.      Embrace stillness.

As your practice of watching yourself deepens, your consciousness arises – and your levels of inner peace increase. Take quite time for yourself. Begin a meditation and/or yoga practice.  Use yoga as a moving meditation (the original intention of Yoga) and observe how your thoughts manifest as emotional reactions, often in resistance to a pose or thought form. I’ve studied different forms of meditation and yoga for many years, and found that Jon Kabot Zinn’s book Full Catastrophe Living, provides a simple and elegant methodology for beginning practice.

4.      Practice gratitude.

There are always infinite interpretations of reality. See the proverbial glass of ‘your life’ half full, and invoke a feeling of deep gratitude for all the blessings in your life. Do this daily.

5.      Practice acceptance.  Surrender resistance.

When an event arises that creates a negative reaction in your system, feel it in your body, watch the reactive thoughts in your mind. Be with the thoughts and feelings. The thoughts are neutral, it’s the meaning we create that gives them the toxic charge. And know that you have the power to let that go. You can choose to hold on to the negative reaction – whether anger, resentment, fear, anxiety, rage etc., or you can choose to let it go in the moment.

Realize Greater Peace in 7 Days: Turning Knowledge Into Practice

There is a common understanding among business managers that what gets measured, gets done. I’ve extended this practice to my inner world, and the results have been significant. One way to start is to set up a spreadsheet, Word table, or use a paper notebook and create one row on the left hand side, and one column at the top. On the vertical row list each behavior. On the horizontal column list the days of the week. At the end of each day rate yourself on a scale (1 – 5 works) on how conscious you were of each behavior. At end of 7 days, enjoy the progress and keep the evolution moving.

Inner peace is the ultimate source of happiness, joyfulness ~ Dali Lama

That’s because it is.

The landscape of the global financial markets are distraught. Another bubble, expanded with the air of greed, bursts – and the most tragic casualties as usual, are main street America.  How can the most prominent financial fixtures – global foundations of financial services – disintegrate in a matter of days?

Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, AIG – all wards of the US government. Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch – fire side sales.  Lehman Brothers – bankrupt.   Jobs lost, billions of dollars of capital eroded, tax payers footing the bill to the tune of $700 billion and counting, and the Bush cronies busily creating a plan that will see the US government buying excessive quantities of toxic paper from the financial institutions – and leaving Main Street America footing the further tax bill and hanging out to dry – losing jobs, homes and worse.   So many unable to purse “life, liberty and the pursuit of justice” – the Jeffersonian ideal – the “core purpose of the US” – the spirit that created the great American dynasty.

What happened?

Well, I’ll try to consolidate and summarize the boring details, but a better question might be why did it happen?  And why does it continue to happen?

Wasn’t it just a decade ago that the smartest people were telling us that the internet had fundamentally changed the traditional business cycle, and that companies without cash flow and profit had a limitless ceiling of value?  And a decade before that, hadn’t the shrewd leverage buy-out promoters of the ’80s redefined the capital structure of enterprise, demonstrating that disproportionately high leverage pressurizes management to become more efficient and make better business decisions – until the junk bond market collapsed along with its architect Michael Milken.

I could go on with “bursting bubbles history lessons”, but I think you get the point. So let’s look at how and why.

How did the most prominent financial institutions disappear in days?

Simply put, regional commercial banks figured out how to loan money to John Q. Public, earn fees, and not take any risk.  They had ready buyers for the loans – Wall Street brokerage houses – who then packaged them up in pools, earned their ‘pound of flesh’, and sold them in small securitized pieces to investors hungry for yield in a low interest rate environment.  (They came up with fancy names for these pools like SIV’s – Structure Investment Vehicles).

To make the loans more attractive, they sold credit insurance to protect the ultimate mortgage buyer in the case of default.  The insurance was just another fancy vehicle that they called a CDS – Credit Default Swap – which is essentially an insurance policy (that of course earns more fees) held often by the same group of brokerage firms that were structuring and selling the mortgage pools.

What is most amazing is that these brilliant Ivey League MBA’s got so caught up in the blinding greed of fees and the deals, that they couldn’t play the tape to the end and say “what happens when low income, lesser educated American families can’t make their mortgage payments because they were never qualified properly by their bank – who didn’t care if they could make the payment or not, since the bank wasn’t assuming any risk? Could this possibly increase our systemic catastrophic risk?”

Why did the most prominent financial institutions disappear in days?

The technical summary is a confluence of events:

1. because smart guys on Wall Street were too consumed with feeding to see the viral growth sprouting from their seeds of destruction
2. because the brokerage firms deployed business models that relied heavily on short term funding tools to finance operating costs and they deployed major leverage – approximately $30 in debt for every $1 in equity.

While this is highly profitable in liquid growing markets, it obviously has a devastating effect when leverage and short term funding tools disappear.  So as the leverage tide turned, short term funding dried up, balance sheet assets consisted of securities that no one would buy, there was no place to turn.

The real cause of the economic crisis

I would propose the deeper cause of this catastrophe, is the same as the cause of each and every implosion in the business world. It is simply unbridled ego-driven greed run amuck.

Our Collective Mantra

We live in a society where the existential mantra, underneath the surface of much of collective capitalism, is “I have, therefore I am”.  We then raise the bar by internalizing beliefs like “the more I have, the more I am”.  Fueled by adrenaline, and tantalized by the pleasure of consumption, so many of us get caught up in our raging desire for more of whatever we think we need to enhance ourselves – money, skills, talent, bigger homes, nicer cars, better jobs, more accomplishments, etc.

Competitive Adversarial Model

This desire is what the Buddha called the “hungry ghost”.  It is never satisfied, yet fools us into believing it is the key to fulfillment.  And it never fails to bring suffering. And while we occasionally achieve objects of our desire, they become mere Band-Aids that quickly wear out their effectiveness and fall off leaving unhealed and exposed spiritual wounds.  So until we wake up, and see the hungry ghost for what it is, we continue to crave, in a constant spiritual downward spiral.

As human beings, our most basic desire is to love and be loved.  Unfortunately society, as a construct of our collective egos, is based on a competitive, adversarial model.  We compete under the illusory belief that the universe is limited, not abundant.  We believe we need our fair share in order to feel safe.  In this battle we learn to close our hearts, shut down our feelings, and strive to win based on logic, reason and hard work.

Our Collective Ego

As we compete on foundational beliefs of scarcity and competition, we bring ourselves undue stress, powerlessness, and insecurity – both individually and collectively as society. And I would propose it is this collective desire for consumption – the collective ego – that remains the source of modern day ailments, creating a giant hungry ghost, cunning and baffling, capable of leveling a century old financial services infrastructure in a single bound.