+ Big Mentor WHO COMES HERE - TO DO 'INNER-WORK' on THEMSELVES ?

Big WHO ? 
COMES HERE 
TO DO 'INNER-WORK'

on THEMSELVES ?

Seriously...

Question

….And Buddhism is mucho playful too !

"Have you ever noticed, that it's Always NOW "

~ said Alan Watts --

He suggests you repeatedly keep noticing this fact

mindfully many, many, many, many times a day . . .

" Electronic screens aside --

these days I really like to be

in the same room
with the teacher... "  ~ Anya Mandel

" The Buddhist Mentoring Project " ~ 'Mentoring' is an ancient tribal 'teaching-exploration' found in every indigenous culture planet wide -- Buddhist sub-culture has it's own traditions and mentoring protocols into the village Elders passing on critical, skilled 'knowledges' that encourage, guide and support a very intimate and candid “Inquiry into personal-Self” with an initiated guiding teacher, in an experiential inner-practice, combining the cool, calm 'observation' approach of traditional, quiet Vipassana Mindfulness Meditation --- along side the 'Crazy Wisdom' irrationality of the 'Zen-mind Realizations' that cognitively short-circuits the common chronic suffering of ' My Self ' --- helping you in dismantling your so obsessive self- involved, self- concerned, self- absorbed, self- Identified ego-mind.

" WHO ? is this
'specialty' counsel for ? 

Actually anyone who walks in
the door and asks for the 'keys' --
maybe it's just the rest room keys,
but an 'asking' did take place,
and a 'transmission' did occur."

 

" There is no such thing as a strictly 'secular' therapy - or that a therapy is 'non-spiritual' .. That’s where establishment psychological sciences are poetically naïve. EVERY 'therapy' is spiritual if it deals with matters of the heart and emotions and feelings. Buddhist approaches in particular, are 'spiritual' BUT non-religious. The historical Buddha was a Humanist & a Pragmatist. There's a freedom of intelligence & openness to that - a big difference. "
~ Ab'ram Wolsam

• WHY of ALL Possible Things - are we Buddhist-based ???

 We particularly use the Buddhist branding name, because those Asian cultures have got some of the most skillfully mature, very grounded, least misleading, most inclusive and the very best of the mind-healing techniques available so far - so far as we've come across. So we use 'em. And we're still strongly very eclectic: we use many diverse approaches - so we'll use what YOU need, not what 'we' like best or 'believe in'. We're on your side! We practice as Buddhist ministers not as licensed MFT or clinical psychologists.

" Respected Grandfather, What is Destiny? "

“ DESTINY, my son, is every step we’re taki

and going thru right now - to get there " So, You Really Must Consciously Choose –

and make the Choice to Re-Choose again and

to Openly 'Talk Truth' with Someone
...and keep the talk up !

To Openly keep Talking with Someone

and keep it uTo be Open to 'Trust' in gradually letting it all arisand We all have these feelings. It's nothing new."~ Grandfather Bearheart, contemporary Creek Elder

Those who are of MAVERICK-MIND.

The Practice of Dharma Arts.

The highly educable,

the dedicated dharma student

or the committed therapy clien

or those appreciative of effective

conventional western psychotherapy

---- and yet now going way beyond it.
So, Who Does Come Here To Explore

This close and intimate practice of Mentor / Mentee ?

We encourage highly inquisitive, progressive minded

people, with a sensitive, natural, deep love of learning -

who relish the inquiry: abstract, and even the absurd –

and have a genuine taste for the

indefinable 'existential' stuff.

" The Buddhist Mentoring Project " ~ 'Mentoring' is an ancient tribal 'teaching-exploration' found in every indigenous culture planet wide -- Buddhist sub-culture has it's own traditions and mentoring protocols into the village Elders passing on critical, skilled 'knowledges' that encourage, guide and support a very intimate and candid “Inquiry into personal-Self” with an initiated guiding teacher, in an experiential inner-practice, combining the cool, calm 'observation' approach of traditional, quiet Vipassana Mindfulness Meditation --- along side the 'Crazy Wisdom' irrationality of the 'Zen-mind Realizations' that cognitively short-circuits the common chronic suffering of ' My Self ' --- helping you in dismantling your so obsessive self- involved, self- absorbed, self- Identified ego-mind.

“A Butcher, a Baker,
a Candlestick-maker ---
a Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief.
a Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor -
Rich man, Poor man,
Beggar man, Thief --
an Old Man, Young Man, Fiddler, Jailer,
Pirate, Captain, Crewman, Chef --

Plowman, Ploughboy, Farmer, Teacher,

Banker, Gardener, Cooper, Cook,

Burglar, Boxer, Baker, Preacher,

a Professor, Politician, or Crook.

People Who Teach Experience. 

….And Buddhism is quite playful also !

The Buddhist’s Theory of Everything.
The Buddhist’s Theory of Everything.
We are truly 'non-denominational' and 'non-religious' and welcome all journeyers of all Ways,
or especially even those of no way. 'Spiritual' doesn't mean 'Religion'. Actually, you can't even become a 'Buddhist', as that too is just another 'label'. The ONE Web of existence, life& amp; consciousness has many 'Names' in many different world cultures. The ONE Web 'itself', really has NO name at all. All cultures on the planet call it ‘The One’ ( 1. ) So we just simply call it "EVERYTHING". All of 'creation' itself. ‘Creator’ & ‘Creation’ is all the same thing, the same One. We simply leave it at that. One is One and there is nothing outside of it. It's All ONE. You gotta’ love it all. We try to love it All. Most of the time, piece by piece in peace.

So Guys,

It’s Time this show " Gets up in your Bid'nes ! "

It's really gotta' become fairly clear, fairly quickly

that it has to be - at some point in your exploration:

"That it's really OK - that it's just not OK" –

accepting but not liking that's the 'What Is' of it –

and let's get to 'work' on ourselves right from here –

It's a fact: You, or your loved ones, or your clients --

You're hurting - and you've got problems.

Together, we've gotta go in 'There' questing together.

As your counselor, coach, mentor, facilitator, friend -

We together go right in and - " Gets right up in your Bid'nes ! " Therapy gets personal.

Opening up, disclosing, revealing - if not Here, Where

"THERAPY" itself is not found in even the best of

academia or electronic devices or social media methods.

It's a 'Live' Interactive Relating-Process - It always has been.

Two people sit down and empathically 'Work'

on one of them Together... It's a living 'dynamic' -

it's a 'dyad' of two people in on this. Therapy

or counseling is a 'relationship' in it's truest form.

That's so 'risky' for the Wounded Spirit to chance.

 

" The Journey Itself

 IS the Destination! "
_________________

" Two people sit down,

and empathically 'Work'

with one of them,

Together...

 Mentoring, Counsel, Coaching,

Protégé Guidance and Therapy.
All of them a Living 'dynamic' ---

truly Alive !It's a 'dyad'

of two people in on this.
...and now we're just beginning
to interface with the ancient ideas
found in "mentoring" traditions,

in new living-body technologies -- 

as we each pass on our

specially honored learnings
and applied wisdom skills. 

 

Ooops !... EMOTIONS  

They Crowd Out REASON

 

And that's a Big Basic Fundamental Problem to heal

Emotions get to overrun - and then run thinking itself.

Thoughts get so embedded in feelings ~ Avoidant,

confused, hopeless, numb, crazy, angry and sad.

 

Maybe You've Become So Overwhelmingly ‘Identified’

And Over-Involved In Your Own Difficult 'Life-Story'

That You Can’t See The Forest Because of All The Trees !

 

Your 'Story' of being such a driven 'Winner' or a victimized 'Loser' - or just a plain Nobody ’out there’ - “I didn’t come to LA for this”… you're just so overwhelmed, you’ve become under-whelming - feeling so isolated - that you just plain 'hurt'. Maybe you’ve lost the path, or forgotten the way, or just feel so ineffective in your 'deeper' inner-search. Or you’ve just never yet really sought out Who ‘You’ really, really are - ‘in here’. Inside.

 

The Greatest Risk is Not Taking One

 

RE-DISCOVERING and DEFINING "Yourself" - totally defined in/on your OWN TERMS ! ( not society’s term’s or religion's terms or family’s terms ). YOUR Own Terms is what of Cultivation the Spirit' is largely about ! Healing of the 'True' Spirit is really where ALL mind / spirit / soul-healing MUST eventually start…. and conclude. True healing has to start and end with the Heart ! It’s been that way in every culture all through time !

It's just only that until very recently, the 'choices' of these kind of 'Healings' have always been so few and restricted in availability to either doctors or shamans or the church. No longer. Every approach world-wide is now available to you! It's from this very Big Approach that you can truly find yourself and then truly give back to others in a valuable, clear, sweet and easy-going and natural way ... true 'Goodness'. Faith in ourselves simply as ‘Humans-restored’. And it can and will be 'Spiritual' AND YET totally NON-RELIGIOUS.. Please consider that!

___________________________________

“The SPIRITUAL ADULTHOOD PROJECT” is a Buddhist-based Psycho/Spiritual oriented Resource, Counseling and Alternative Therapy. The world renown and respected ancient tradition of Buddhist Mindfulness as an applicable psychology, as a path of cultivating a 'transcendent' - a 'higher sanity' - a very clear-seeing ability for yourself. By developing this wisdom understanding, you are now available to generate a much more all-inclusive compassion - which leads to an authentic peace in ourselves, which we can then extend out to our family, friends and the world. Learning and using a 2500 year-old, tested self-development approaches and techniques, towards a clear, wholesome, peaceful, joyful mind.

Traditional contemporary Buddhism is absolutely NOT a ‘religious path’ but more of an empirical, practical, pragmatic, highly intelligent ‘Humanism’ -
There are NO gods and NO worship and NO religious superstitions involved in anything we offer in any way whatsoever. Unless you do want to hear more about it -- Historically it’s very kewl too ! Working archetype-forms that are really just good stories -- Or not. The Buddha ( 528 BC ) himself was an atheist to the bone. There are some challenging bewilderments in Buddhism for the mind. Zen is founded on it… Just discovering and uncovering the essence of a sane, wise, peaceful, pure spirit that is YOU.

 Guys, it's really gotta' become fairly clear,

fairly quickly that it has to be - at  some point:

"That it's OK - that it's just not OK" –

that's the 'What Is' of it – and let's go to 'work' on ourselves from here – It's a fact: You're hurting -

and you've got problems. Together, we've gotta

go in 'There' questing together. As your counselor / facilitator - we together go right in and - 

" Gets up in your Bid'nes ! " Therapy gets personal.

Opening up, disclosing, revealing - if not Here, Where ?

"THERAPY" itself is not found in even the best of

academia or electronic devices or social media methods.

It's a 'Live' Interactive Relating-Process - It always has been.

Two people sit down and empathically 'Work'

on one of them Together... It's a living 'dynamic' -

it's a 'dyad' of two people in on this. Therapy

or counseling is a 'relationship' in it's truest form.

That's so 'risky' for the Wounded Spirit to chance.

 

"Spiritual Adulthood"

form of Counseling – more geared to people in the whole spectrum of contemporary 'Creatives' and the 'New-Thought-minded' and Millennial media sensibilities. Basically experiencing more social contact than less. We're actually learning to communicate, talk and write all over again - actually quite progressively remarkable. Maybe more Voluntary Simplicity has emerged in the culture- Green or Liberal or Socialist. Maybe much better tempered Radicals are revealing themselves and contributing. Maybe it's just You.

" The Buddhist Mentor Project " an exploration that encourages and supports a very eclectic “Inquiry into Self” an experiential inner practice, combining the cool, calm 'observation' approach of traditional, quiet Mindfulness Meditation.

We can then loosen up, soften up our poor, tightened, threatened, fear-filled anxious  inner world -- countering

our stress with the 'Crazy Wisdom' irrationality of the

'Zen-mind Realizations' that cognitively short-circuits

the common chronic suffering of ' My Self ' - helping you

in dismantling your so obsessive self- involved, self- absorbed, self- Identified ego-mind.

Humans are tough nuts to crack.

Soak 'em in kindness...

" One easily-made, very common mistake
is to think that 'your reality’ is THE Reality.
You must always be prepared to bravely leave
your reality for a greater one."    ~  Buddha

WHO COMES HERE to SEE US ?

We encourage highly inquisitive, progressive minded

people, with a natural, deep love of learning -

who relish the abstract, and even the absurd –

and have a genuine taste for the

indefinable 'existential' stuff.

.

~ and Buddhism is mucho playful too.

".... ever noticed, that it's Always NOW " ~ Alan Watts

He suggests you repeatedly keep noticing this

many, many, many times a day . . .

.

Usually, the people who do eventually come to us -

are more explorative, curious, do have a more active intellect, are innately, intensely inquisitive people by

their nature. The 'Inner-Search', 'The Quest',

The 'Understanding' of it All. They are people

who relish the 'safari' of it – the 'search', the 'inquiry',

the brave 'quest' of it - hurting or not - rather than settle

for 'popular' ideas and shallow packaged prescriptions

just 'served-up' ready to eat. Enlightened Freedom is

just not a 'home-deliverable product'. For each of us -

it's all a life-long psychological pilgrimage, experienced

thru your own compassionate Spiritual Heart. . .

__________________________

Question:

" Respected Grandfather, What is Destiny? "

“ DESTINY, my son, is every step we’re taking

and going thru right now - to get there ”

" So, You Really Must Consciously Choose –

and make the Choice to Re-Choose again and again -

to Openly 'Talk Truth' with Someone…

...and keep the talk up !

To Openly keep Talking with Someone -

and keep it up.

To be Open to 'Trust' in gradually letting it all arise

and unfold - Messy or tidy, depressed or distressed.

We all have these feelings. It's nothing new."

~ Grandfather Bearheart, contemporary Creek Elder

.

"Eighty percent of success

is just showing up"              ~ Woody Allen

So go ahead and get into

some quality counseling-therapy –

You, really being heard –

here or somewhere –

Where someone will really take

a deep caring to listen to YOU –

and really, really hear you ....

AND, that’s a very courageous move on your part –

to go get some help for yourself thru some 'counseling'.

It just may be the right place for you to start. Open to it.

Be very welcome to inquire more about me,

as you search out where to do this inner-work.

Please Read Some More on this site.

_______________________________

.

Maimonides, more than 800 years ago said:

.

"A Single Deed,

a Single Word,

a Single Action -- 

even just One Single Thought -- 

has the power to TIP the scales

and bring redemption and resolve to your world.

No matter how dark that world may seem or feel

~ Light is just a single action away."

.

_______________________ 

"Cultural Creatives"

"There is now a rapidly growing number of very bright

American people who basically need a whole other level,

a much, much higher level of true intellect, an intelligent,

a 'reformed', a deeper level of Inner-Unfolding of Spirit".

But without formal 'Religion' - or many other religion-ized

forms of 'cultish' language and obsequious behaviors

around new media jargons, social settings and events....

~ "The Cultural Creatives" ( 2000 ) read footnote below

.

– and we wish to assist you as you bring yourself

to this new level of a natural, highly conscious,

sensitive awareness – and fearless unfolding...

_____________________________________

.

Thank you for reading all this !

Hopefully you'll learn to cherish the Life-Journey

even more – for again, always remember that

"The Journey Itself IS the Destination!"

Be Brave, Courageous

and Enjoy the Journey ~

_________________________________________

footnote:

.

"Cultural Creatives" from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Cultural Creatives, a term coined by sociologist Paul H. Ray

and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson to describe a large

segment in Western society that has recently developed

beyond the 'standard paradigm' of established Modernists

versus Traditionalists or Conservatives. The concept was

presented in 2000 in their book The Cultural Creatives -

How 50 Million People Are Changing the World

( Harmony Books, New York ), where they claim to have

found that 50 million adult Americans ( slightly over

one quarter of the adult population) can now be

'identified' as belonging to this 'group' of individuals

which have not yet found its OWN 'identity' – but

is disenchanted with materialism and consumerism,

and most of what is currently available in the daily round.

Dr. Ray calls this segment The New Progressives.

This growing section of the population is

admittedly 'Spiritual' and embraces the 'practice'

of spiritual values in daily life without formal religion.

'Not Identified' means that they themselves
do not know they are part of a larger
sociological grouping, that it has a 'name',
and that there are 'others' like them out there.

Many of this urban cohort patronize specialty stores and

specialty children's schools etc. that support their values.

Many adherents to the tenets of the 'cultural creatives'

tend to become familiar with a variety of religions

and seek to identify with principles that are universal

among all religions. The intention is to search for universal,

practical spiritual principles that have deep intrinsic value,

and do not depend on ecclesiastical authority whatsoever.

Read More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Creatives

Links to alternative lifestyle; modernism and postmodernism;

post-materialism; radicals; voluntary simplicity.

____________________

“And then the day came

when the risk to

remain tight in a bud

was more than the risk

it took to blossom”    ~ Anais Nin

_______________________________________________

•♦• Much of this inner-work is 'Spiritual'
NONE of this inner-work is 'Religious'

____________________________________________ 

“Directionless ?

Know that The Way

always faces East....”

“The Road Now Taken”

And, after that...
Be most welcome to read

Akasa's Himalayan Journal

of an American Buddhist Monk ~
A Star-studded Adventure Story
Full of Illuminated Luminaries
with an invitation to sit nearby
to watch them work that ‘thing’
they do so well: sharing the true
Wisdom of Loving Kindness, the
way Buddha must've radiated it.
Essentially you still have to go out,
search and find these special people.

Bring Sweets -- Bring Sweets

Don't show up empty handed

Back in the day it was all accessible
and Live. No click button to register -
and Asia was much more 'primitive',
yet more user-friendly intimate in a way...
but even today, in our edgy, uncertain times,
you still have to search your heart as you search
for human beings who are 'pointers-out' of the Way.
Asians do it all the time:

It's called going on Pilgrimage.

16 Himalaya Lama Lane ~

Little Tulku came thru here

with Particular and Peculiar

Early 'Contributing Factors' 

and Unexpected 'Conditions'

KARMA arrived, showing up as a series

of many 'Non-Ordinary' Human Influences,
Impressions and Impacts were consistent,
yet unusual 'Contributing Factors' - early

Magical 'Conditions' the best of Fine Arts
layered onto a little receptive boy person
and that has made all the difference --

What kind of Key ???

A Dorkey, Hauskee, Kark-kee,
Porchekee, Gerachkee, Gaat-ki,
A Key !

2 WHO ???

COMES HERE 

TO DO 'INNER-WORK'

on THEMSELVES ?

Those who are of
MENTORING-MIND.  

The highly educable,

the dedicated dharma student,

or the committed therapy client,

or those inclusive of effective

conventional western psychology

- and yet now going way beyond it.

SO, WHO DOES COME HERE to SEE US ?

We encourage highly inquisitive, progressive minded

people, with a sensitive, natural, deep love of learning -

who relish the abstract, and even the absurd –

and have a genuine taste for the

indefinable 'existential' stuff.

.

~ and Buddhism is mucho playful too.

".... ever noticed, that it's Always NOW "

~ said Alan Watts

He suggests you repeatedly keep noticing this

mindfully many, many, many times a day . . .

.

" Electronic screens aside --

these days I like to be

in the same room
with the teacher... "  ~ Anya Mandel

" The Buddhist Mentoring Project " ~ 'Mentoring' is an ancient tribal 'teaching-exploration' found in every indigenous culture planet wide -- Buddhist sub-culture has it's own traditions and mentoring protocols into the village Elders passing on critical, skilled 'knowledges' that encourage, guide and support a very intimate and candid “Inquiry into personal-Self” with an initiated guiding teacher, in an experiential inner-practice, combining the cool, calm 'observation' approach of traditional, quiet Vipassana Mindfulness Meditation --- along side the 'Crazy Wisdom' irrationality of the 'Zen-mind Realizations' that cognitively short-circuits the common chronic suffering of ' My Self ' --- helping you in dismantling your so obsessive self- involved, self- absorbed, self- Identified ego-mind.

" WHO ? is this
'specialty' counsel for ? 

Actually anyone who walks in
the door and asks for the 'keys' --
maybe it's just the rest room keys,
but an 'asking' did take place,
and a 'transmission' did occur."

WHO ? “A Butcher, a Baker,
a Candlestick-maker ---
Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief -
Soldier, Sailor, Tinker, Tailor -
Rich man, Poor man,
Beggar man, Thief “

...and Dharma-people

What kind of Key ???

A Dorkey, Hauskee, Kark-kee,
Porchkee, Gerachkee
A Key !

So Guys,

It’s Time this show " Gets up in your Bid'nes ! "

It's really gotta' become fairly clear, fairly quickly

that it has to be - at some point in your exploration:

"That it's really OK - that it's just not OK" –

accepting but not liking that's the 'What Is' of it –

and let's get to 'work' on ourselves right from here –

It's a fact: You, or your loved ones, or your clients --

You're hurting - and you've got problems.

Together, we've gotta go in 'There' questing together. 

As your counselor, coach, mentor, facilitator, friend -

We together go right in and - " Gets right up in your Bid'nes ! " Therapy gets personal.

Opening up, disclosing, revealing - if not Here, Where ?

"THERAPY" itself is not found in even the best of

academia or electronic devices or social media methods.

It's a 'Live' Interactive Relating-Process - It always has been.

Two people sit down and empathically 'Work'

on one of them Together... It's a living 'dynamic' -

it's a 'dyad' of two people in on this. Therapy

or counseling is a 'relationship' in it's truest form.

That's so 'risky' for the Wounded Spirit to chance.

You've heard this
famous aphorism
many times before,
of course you have ~
" The Journey Itself

IS the Destination! "  ~ Tao
_________________

You've heard this
famous aphorism
many times before,
of course you have ~
" The Journey Itself

IS the Destination! "  ~ Tao
_________________

" Two people sit down

and empathically 'Work'

with One of them,

Together...

Mentoring, Counsel, Coaching,

Protégé Guidance and Therapy.
All of them a Living 'dynamic' ---

truly Alive !It's a 'dyad'

of two people in on this.
...and now we're just beginning
to interface with the ancient ideas
found in "mentoring" traditions,

in new living-body technologies -- 

as we each pass on our

specially honored learnings
and applied wisdom skills. 

" Two people sit down

and empathically 'Work'

with One of them,

Together...

Ooops !... EMOTIONS  

They Crowd Out REASON

And that's a Big Basic Fundamental Problem to heal.

Emotions get to overrun - and then run thinking itself.

Thoughts get so embedded in feelings ~ Avoidant,

confused, hopeless, numb, crazy, angry and sad.

Maybe You've Become So Overwhelmingly ‘Identified’

And Over-Involved In Your Own Difficult 'Life-Story'

That You Can’t See The Forest Because of All The Trees !

Your 'Story' of being such a driven 'Winner' or a victimized 'Loser' - or just a plain Nobody ’out there’ - “I didn’t come to LA for this”… you're just so overwhelmed, you’ve become under-whelming - feeling so isolated - that you just plain 'hurt'. Maybe you’ve lost the path, or forgotten the way, or just feel so ineffective in your 'deeper' inner-search. Or you’ve just never yet really sought out Who ‘You’ really, really are - ‘in here’. Inside.

The Greatest Risk is Not Taking One

RE-DISCOVERING and DEFINING "Yourself" - totally defined in/on your OWN TERMS ! ( not society’s term’s or religion's terms or family’s terms ). YOUR Own Terms is what of Cultivation the Spirit' is largely about ! Healing of the 'True' Spirit is really where ALL mind / spirit / soul-healing MUST eventually start…. and conclude. True healing has to start and end with the Heart ! It’s been that way in every culture all through time !

It's just only that until very recently, the 'choices' of these kind of 'Healings' have always been so few and restricted in availability to either doctors or shamans or the church. No longer. Every approach world-wide is now available to you! It's from this very Big Approach that you can truly find yourself and then truly give back to others in a valuable, clear, sweet and easy-going and natural way ... true 'Goodness'. Faith in ourselves simply as ‘Humans-restored’. And it can and will be 'Spiritual' AND YET totally NON-RELIGIOUS.. Please consider that!

___________________________________

“The SPIRITUAL ADULTHOOD PROJECT” is a Buddhist-based Psycho/Spiritual oriented Resource, Counseling and Alternative Therapy. The world renown and respected ancient tradition of Buddhist Mindfulness as an applicable psychology, as a path of cultivating a 'transcendent' - a 'higher sanity' - a very clear-seeing ability for yourself. By developing this wisdom understanding, you are now available to generate a much more all-inclusive compassion - which leads to an authentic peace in ourselves, which we can then extend out to our family, friends and the world. Learning and using a 2500 year-old, tested self-development approaches and techniques, towards a clear, wholesome, peaceful, joyful mind.

Traditional contemporary Buddhism is absolutely NOT a ‘religious path’ but more of an empirical, practical, pragmatic, highly intelligent ‘Humanism’ -
There are NO gods and NO worship and NO religious superstitions involved in anything we offer in any way whatsoever. Unless you do want to hear more about it -- Historically it’s very kewl too ! Working archetype-forms that are really just good stories -- Or not. The Buddha ( 528 BC ) himself was an atheist to the bone. There are some challenging bewilderments in Buddhism for the mind. Zen is founded on it… Just discovering and uncovering the essence of a sane, wise, peaceful, pure spirit that is YOU.


Guys, it's really gotta' become fairly clear,

fairly quickly that it has to be - at  some point:

"That it's OK - that it's just not OK" –

that's the 'What Is' of it – and let's go to 'work' on ourselves from here – It's a fact: You're hurting -

and you've got problems. Together, we've gotta

go in 'There' questing together. As your counselor / facilitator - we together go right in and - 

" Gets up in your Bid'nes ! " Therapy gets personal.

Opening up, disclosing, revealing - if not Here, Where ?

"THERAPY" itself is not found in even the best of

academia or electronic devices or social media methods.

It's a 'Live' Interactive Relating-Process - It always has been.

Two people sit down and empathically 'Work'

on one of them Together... It's a living 'dynamic' -

it's a 'dyad' of two people in on this. Therapy

or counseling is a 'relationship' in it's truest form.

That's so 'risky' for the Wounded Spirit to chance.

.

"Spiritual Adulthood" is offering a much more 'radical'

form of Counseling – more geared to people in the whole spectrum of contemporary 'Creatives' and the 'New-Thought-minded' and Millennial media sensibilities. Basically experiencing more social contact than less. We're actually learning to communicate, talk and write all over again - actually quite progressively remarkable. Maybe more Voluntary Simplicity has emerged in the culture- Green or Liberal or Socialist. Maybe much better tempered Radicals are revealing themselves and contributing. Maybe it's just You.

" The Buddhist Mentor Project " an exploration that encourages and supports a very eclectic “Inquiry into Self” an experiential inner practice, combining the cool, calm 'observation' approach of traditional, quiet Mindfulness Meditation.

We can then loosen up, soften up our poor, tightened, threatened, fear-filled anxious  inner world -- countering

our stress with the 'Crazy Wisdom' irrationality of the

'Zen-mind Realizations' that cognitively short-circuits

the common chronic suffering of ' My Self ' - helping you

in dismantling your so obsessive self- involved, self- absorbed, self- Identified ego-mind.

Humans are tough nuts to crack.

Soak 'em in kindness...

" One easily-made, very common mistake
is to think that 'your reality’ is THE Reality.
You must always be prepared to bravely leave
your reality for a greater one."    ~  Buddha

WHO COMES HERE to SEE US ?

We encourage highly inquisitive, progressive minded

people, with a natural, deep love of learning -

who relish the abstract, and even the absurd –

and have a genuine taste for the

indefinable 'existential' stuff.

.

~ and Buddhism is mucho playful too.

".... ever noticed, that it's Always NOW " ~ Alan Watts

He suggests you repeatedly keep noticing this

many, many, many times a day . . .

.

Usually, the people who do eventually come to us -

are more explorative, curious, do have a more active intellect, are innately, intensely inquisitive people by

their nature. The 'Inner-Search', 'The Quest',

The 'Understanding' of it All. They are people

who relish the 'safari' of it – the 'search', the 'inquiry',

the brave 'quest' of it - hurting or not - rather than settle

for 'popular' ideas and shallow packaged prescriptions

just 'served-up' ready to eat. Enlightened Freedom is

just not a 'home-deliverable product'. For each of us -

it's all a life-long psychological pilgrimage, experienced

thru your own compassionate Spiritual Heart. . .

__________________________

Ques

" Respected Grandfather, What is Destiny? "

“ DESTINY, my son, is every step we’re taki

and going thru right now - to get there " So, You Really Must Consciously Choose –

and make the Choice to Re-Choose again and

to Openly 'Talk Truth' with Someone
...and keep the talk up !

To Openly keep Talking with Someone

and keep it uTo be Open to 'Trust' in gradually letting it all arisand We all have these feelings. It's nothing new."~ Grandfather Bearheart, contemporary Creek Elder

.

Ques

" Respected Grandfather, What is Destiny? "

“ DESTINY, my son, is every step we’re taki

and going thru right now - to get there " So, You Really Must Consciously Choose –

and make the Choice to Re-Choose again and

to Openly 'Talk Truth' with Someone
...and keep the talk up !

To Openly keep Talking with Someone

and keep it uTo be Open to 'Trust' in gradually letting it all arisand We all have these feelings. It's nothing new."~ Grandfather Bearheart, contemporary Creek Elder

.

"Eighty percent of success

is just showing up"              ~ Woody Allen

So go ahead and get into

some quality counseling-therapy –

You, really being heard –

here or somewhere –

Where someone will really take

a deep caring to listen to YOU –

and really, really hear you ....

AND, that’s a very courageous move on your part –

to go get some help for yourself thru some 'counseling'.

It just may be the right place for you to start. Open to it.

Be very welcome to inquire more about me,

as you search out where to do this inner-work.

Please Read Some More on this site.

_______________________________

.

Maimonides, more than 800 years ago said:

.

"A Single Deed,

a Single Word,

a Single Action -- 

even just One Single Thought -- 

has the power to TIP the scales

and bring redemption and resolve to your world.

No matter how dark that world may seem or feel

~ Light is just a single action away."

.

_______________________ 

"Cultural Creatives"

"There is now a rapidly growing number of very bright

American people who basically need a whole other level,

a much, much higher level of true intellect, an intelligent,

a 'reformed', a deeper level of Inner-Unfolding of Spirit".

But without formal 'Religion' - or many other religion-ized

forms of 'cultish' language and obsequious behaviors

around new media jargons, social settings and events....

~ "The Cultural Creatives" ( 2000 ) read footnote below

.

– and we wish to assist you as you bring yourself

to this new level of a natural, highly conscious,

sensitive awareness – and fearless unfolding...

_____________________________________

.

Thank you for reading all this !

Hopefully you'll learn to cherish the Life-Journey

even more – for again, always remember that

"The Journey Itself IS the Destination!"

Be Brave, Courageous

and Enjoy the Journey ~

_________________________________________

footnote:

.

"Cultural Creatives" from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Cultural Creatives, a term coined by sociologist Paul H. Ray

and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson to describe a large

segment in Western society that has recently developed

beyond the 'standard paradigm' of established Modernists

versus Traditionalists or Conservatives. The concept was

presented in 2000 in their book The Cultural Creatives -

How 50 Million People Are Changing the World

( Harmony Books, New York ), where they claim to have

found that 50 million adult Americans ( slightly over

one quarter of the adult population) can now be

'identified' as belonging to this 'group' of individuals

which have not yet found its OWN 'identity' – but

is disenchanted with materialism and consumerism,

and most of what is currently available in the daily round.

Dr. Ray calls this segment The New Progressives.

This growing section of the population is

admittedly 'Spiritual' and embraces the 'practice'

of spiritual values in daily life without formal religion.

'Not Identified' means that they themselves
do not know they are part of a larger
sociological grouping, that it has a 'name',
and that there are 'others' like them out there.

Many of this urban cohort patronize specialty stores and

specialty children's schools etc. that support their values.

Many adherents to the tenets of the 'cultural creatives'

tend to become familiar with a variety of religions

and seek to identify with principles that are universal

among all religions. The intention is to search for universal,

practical spiritual principles that have deep intrinsic value,

and do not depend on ecclesiastical authority whatsoever.

Read More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Creatives

Links to alternative lifestyle; modernism and postmodernism;

post-materialism; radicals; voluntary simplicity.

____________________

“And then the day came

when the risk to

remain tight in a bud

was more than the risk

it took to blossom”    ~ Anais Nin

_______________________________________________

•♦• Much of this inner-work is 'Spiritual'
NONE of this inner-work is 'Religious'

____________________________________________ 

“Directionless ?

Know that The Way

always faces East....”

“The Road Now Taken”

And, after that...
Be most welcome to read

Akasa's Himalayan Journal

of an American Buddhist Monk ~
A Star-studded Adventure Story
Full of Illuminated Luminaries
with an invitation to sit nearby
to watch them work that ‘thing’
they do so well: sharing the true
Wisdom of Loving Kindness, the
way Buddha must've radiated it.
Essentially you still have to go out,
search and find these special people.

Bring Sweets -- Bring Sweets

Don't show up empty handed

Back in the day it was all accessible
and Live. No click button to register -
and Asia was much more 'primitive',
yet more user-friendly intimate in a way...
but even today, in our edgy, uncertain times,
you still have to search your heart as you search
for human beings who are 'pointers-out' of the Way.
Asians do it all the time:

It's called going on Pilgrimage.

16 Himalaya Lama Lane ~

Little Tulku came thru here

with Particular and Peculiar

Early 'Contributing Factors' 

and Unexpected 'Conditions'

KARMA arrived, showing up as a series

of many 'Non-Ordinary' Human Influences,
Impressions and Impacts were consistent,
yet unusual 'Contributing Factors' - early

Magical 'Conditions' the best of Fine Arts
layered onto a little receptive boy person
and that has made all the difference --

xx split WHO ?
COMES HERE 
TO DO 'INNER-WORK'
on THEMSELVES ?

Those who are
MENTORING-MINDED --- 
The dedicated dharma student
or the committed therapy client,
those inclusive of conventional 
western psychology...
and yet going beyond it.


" Electronic screens aside ---
these days I like to be
in the same room
with the teacher... "  ~ Anya Mandel




" The Buddhist Mentoring Project " ~ 'Mentoring' is an ancient tribal 'teaching-exploration' found in every indigenous culture planet wide -- Buddhist sub-culture has it's own traditions and mentoring protocols into the village Elders passing on critical, skilled 'knowledges' that encourage, guide and support a very intimate and candid “Inquiry into personal-Self” with an initiated guiding teacher, in an experiential inner-practice, combining the cool, calm 'observation' approach of traditional, quiet Vipassana Mindfulness Meditation --- along side the 'Crazy Wisdom' irrationality of the 'Zen-mind Realizations' that cognitively short-circuits the common chronic suffering of ' My Self ' --- helping you in dismantling your so obsessive self- involved, self- absorbed, self- Identified ego-mind.




" WHO ? is this
'specialty' counsel for ? 

Actually anyone who walks in
the door and asks for the 'keys' --
maybe it's just the rest room keys,
but an 'asking' did take place,
and a 'transmission' did occur."

WHO ? “A Butcher, a Baker,
a Candlestick-maker ---
Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief -
Soldier, Sailor, Tinker, Tailor -
Rich man, Poor man,
Beggar man, Thief “


...and Dharma-people

What kind of Key ???
A Dorkey, Hauskee, Kark-kee,
Porchekee, Gerachkee, Gaat-ki,
A Key !

.
" The Journey Itself
 IS the Destination! "
______________




" Two people sit down,
and empathically 'Work'
with one of them, Together...
------------------------------

Mentoring, Counsel, Coaching,
Protégé Guidance and Therapy.
All of them a Living 'dynamic' ---
truly Alive !
It's a 'dyad' of two people in on this.
...and now we're just beginning
to interface with the ancient ideas
found in "mentoring" traditions,
in living-body technologies -- 
as we each pass on our
specially honored learnings
and applied wisdom skills. 

Ooops !... EMOTIONS :
They Crowd Out REASON

And that's a Big Basic Problem to heal.

Emotions get to overrun - and run thinking.

Thoughts get so embedded in feelings ~

Confusion, hopeless, numb... angry and sad

MAYBE YOU'VE BECOME SO OVERWHELMINGLY ‘IDENTIFIED’ and OVER-INVOLVED IN YOUR OWN DIFFICULT 'LIFE-STORY'
That You Can’t See The Forest Because of All The Trees!

Your 'Story' of being such a driven 'Winner' or a victimized 'Loser' - or just a plain Nobody ’out there’ - you're just so overwhelmed, you’ve become under-whelming - feeling so isolated - that you just plain 'hurt'. Maybe you’ve lost the path, or forgotten the way, or just feel so ineffective in your 'deeper' inner-search. Or you’ve just never yet really sought out Who ‘You’ really, really are - ‘in here’. Inside.

RE-DISCOVERING and DEFINING "Yourself" - totally defined in/on your OWN TERMS ! ( not society’s term’s or religion's terms or family’s terms ). YOUR Own Terms is what 'Therapy of the Spirit' is largely about ! Therapy of the 'True' Spirit is really where ALL mind / spirit / soul-healing MUST eventually start. True therapy has to start and end with the Heart ! It’s been that way in every culture all through time!
It's just only that until very recently, the 'choices' of these kind of 'healings' have always been so few and restricted in availability to either doctors or shamans or the church. No longer. Every approach world-wide is now available to you! It's from this very Big Approach that you can truly find yourself and then truly give back to others in a valuable, clear, easy-going and natural way ... true 'Goodness'. Faith in ourselves simply as Humans-restored. And it can be 'Spiritual' AND YET totally NON-RELIGIOUS.. Please consider that!

________________________________

“The SPIRITUAL ADULTHOOD PROJECT” is a Buddhist-based Psycho/Spiritual oriented Counseling and Alternative Therapy. The world renown and respected ancient tradition of Buddhist Mindfulness Psychology is a path of cultivating a 'transcendent' - a 'higher sanity' - a very clear-seeing ability for yourself. By developing this wisdom understanding, you are now available to generate a much more all-inclusive compassion - which leads to an authentic peace in ourselves, which we can then extend out to our family, friends and the world. Learning and using a 2500 year-old tested self-development approaches and techniques towards a clear, wholesome, peaceful, joyful mind.
Traditional contemporary Buddhism is absolutely NOT a ‘religious path’ but more of an empirical, practical, pragmatic, highly intelligent ‘Humanism’ -
There are NO gods and NO worship and NO religious superstitions involved in anything we offer in any way whatsoever. Unless you do want to hear more about it. Working archetype-forms that are really just good stories…. Or not. The Buddha ( 528 BC ) himself was an atheist. There are some challenging bewilderments in Buddhism for the mind. Zen is founded on it… Just discovering and uncovering the essence of a sane, wise, peaceful, pure spirit that is YOU.

____________________

“And then the day came

when the risk to

remain tight in a bud

was more than the risk

it took to blossom”    ~ Anais Nin

_____________________________

•♦• Much of this inner-work is 'Spiritual'
NONE of this inner-work is 'Religious'
____________________________________________ 

The Greatest Risk is Not Taking One

Directionless ?
Know that The Way

always faces East....

16 Himalaya Lama Lane ~

The Road Now Taken

And, after that...
Be most welcome to read Akasa's

Himalayan Journal
of an American Buddhist Monk ~
A Spiritual Star-studded Adventure Story
Full of Illuminated Luminaries
with an invitation to sit nearby
to watch them work that thing
they do so well: sharing the true
Wisdom of Loving Kindness, the
way Buddha must've radiated it.
Essentially you still have to go out,
search and find these special people.
Sweets: Don't show up empty handed
Back in the day it was all accessible
and Live. No click button to register -
and Asia was much more 'primitive',
yet more user-friendly intimate in a way...
but even today, in our edgy, uncertain times,
you still have to search your heart as you search
for human beings who are 'pointers-out' of the Way.
Asians do it all the time: It's called going on Pilgrimage.

Early 'Contributing Factors' 
and Unexpected 'Conditions'

KARMA arrived, showing up as a series of
many 'Non-Ordinary' Human Influences,
Impressions and Impacts were consistent,
yet unusual 'Contributing Factors' - early

magical 'Conditions' the best of Fine Arts
layered onto a little receptive boy person
and that has made all the difference --

Himalayan Diary of an
American Buddhist Monk
at Kopan Gompa Monastery
Bodh’nath, Kathmandu, Nepal

___________________________________

Dear Reader ~

This same never-ending story in every human culture

always repeats itself, it always begins with a 'Search' -

through the deep Unknown with raw beginner's skills

that are barely known to an unaware beginner's mind.
Spiritually speaking, that's a very classic way to start.
At one's Core, something got lost - and one goes out
to try'n find it.  Don't we all kinda' relate with that ?

__________________________________

Foolish Nasreddin's Lost Keys ~

One late evening Nasreddin is walking home.
He can be seen to be upset about something.
Just then a young man comes along
and sees the Mullah's distress.
"Mullah, please tell me - What is wrong? "

"Friend, I seem to have lost my keys.
Would you help me search for them ?
I had them when I left the tea house.

So he helps Nasreddin search for the keys.
For quite a while the young man is searching
here and there but no keys are to be found.
He looks over to Nasreddin and sees him
searching only a very small limited area

around an old oil street lamp.
" Mullah, why are you only searching over there ? "
" Because there's much more light over here. Should I foolishly search where there is no light ? "
The Mullah Nasreddin never found his keys.

_______________________________­­___

" We shall not cease

from exploration,

And the end of

all our exploring

will be to arrive

where we started ~

And know the place

for the very first time."  ~ T.S. Eliot

________________________________

This LONGER Story version presented here, hops around, makes a bunch of confusing time-jumps, leaves the story or ideas dangerously hanging, at times makes no sense or non-sense or takes you nowhere until you actually go somewhere or get something: and you are still asking Why ? - But the text drops enough names you can use as 'keywords' so that you can do this miraculous Wikipedia thing called 'Search' - and their site opens up like a blossoming lotus flower - because my muddy site here has no fancy formats and links yet…

Sorry, Worthy and Good Seeker, ya' gotta Work it.a bit…
All On Board  

__________________________________________________

MYSTERY of  MYSTERIES ~ 1948

I lost my Mom to breast cancer when I was seven. My whole future relationship with women’s lovely souls and the sweet softness of the goddess Kwan Yin and my male Yang changed. So did my relationship with Death and Life. The young potent power-filled Son with no Mother to come home to proudly protect, stalled. Arrested development. A dark cloud home where everybody’s clothing had the salty smell of tear soaked tragic dampness. For now Reader, I’m keeping all that boy into man Oedipal Phallic Freudian stuff for me to explore with Doctor Max Zugger, the Don Rickles of insult psychiatry. It’s in his office where I heard it for the first time -- 'Shit Happens'.

“ It’s a pity that misery is wasted on the miserable “~ Woody Allen

Suffering Early Childhood Loss: I was a miserable kid. The totally transitory,  totally unarguable, ever changing, unforgiving, unstable, unreliable, absolute Suffering the 'Impermanence' of it all. Buddha's Dharma ( teachings ) is sort of the Reality Science School of Ultimate Total Loss - The What Is of The Way It Is. This IS It. The healthy, not morbid, Wisdom that is experientially developed directly out of insecurity itself, is the prominent cornerstone of Buddhism's acceptance teachings on Impermanence. "Unfortunately for human beings" - said The Dalai Lama giggling, "Buddhism has no Savior, yet people still have a desire for one - meanwhile they do have TV ".    

At the time though, I  experienced a suddenly new phenomena very few kids get to have: Real ‘Death’ up close. Death lived with my family by the beach in Far Rockaway, New York. Death had a room upstairs. Death ate at the table, Death sobbed along with everyone else sobbing. No alternative weekends with a divorced parent. There wasn't any. No back-button. No click Undo. No relief from broken hearted stories told half in English, half in German about “How talented… “How gifted… your Mother was… Ahh, Beatrice was the maestro Rubakian’s best piano student. She had radiated a young painter’s delight with our little farm up in Woodstock… and of course, the eminent reality of a recital in Carnegie Hall and all.

So I sat on the floor as a mommy-less little kid and watched everything. I sat on the grass and watched. I sat at the window and watched. I was a sullen kid - and overcame the tedium by taking an uninvolved, yet steady interest in what I was watching since that was " IT " for what was currently available in that moment. I was conscious. So I just watched. Not much content. No ‘story’ line with it. I just watched. Watching was all too real for me to be a voyeur. It was enough for me just to be in the presence of all that. Death by Default -- Whew !  I was sorta' like Peter Seller's character in the film "Being There" ~ I was a passive Watcher, not a Doer, a Watcher. I'm a llife-long meditative, mindfulness trained 'Observer'. I like to simply watch.

I developed a child’s un-informed notion that - So maybe there were bona fide resurrection ‘Miracles’ out there. That would bring Mommy Beatrice back and stop the random outbursts of continual sobbing. So at ten years old I began to practice and perform stage Magic, to see if there was such a thing. Anyway, I didn’t like the reedy clarinet or the clarinet teacher who smelled funny. God forbid, I should turn my back on the oh so sacred piano. It was  funny how all the music teachers had really flakey dandruff and smelled funny - and no store-bought, standard kid’s hobby took my interest or my heart.

But I was very adept at being critical, complaining and genetically k'vetchy. Surprisingly, this was the beginnings of an oddly developing Wisdom - if’ the ability’ was apprehended in time. It usually isn’t and the kid becomes a ‘crank’. If it is, the kid learns that ‘Wisdom’ Really Likes ‘Wisdom’ - and the kid will search the world over for confirmation that he ‘Knows’ - and that he is highly desirable and is worthy of being loved for that. He soon found that nobody gave a shit.   Unfortunately the wounded, narcissistic, gifted kid had become cynical, contemptuous and disdainful - and could simply get lost out there - go downstairs for a pack of smokes and never return.

Just around the corner of my beingness, as a Pre-Bar Mitzvah Boy, with a smelly Hebrew teacher, I started hanging around with some older boys who were local amateur magicians and a few performing stage 'pro's -- after my Dad would really check them out first. But wait, there’s more ! Besides being the son of an extraordinarily talented, almost worshipped, deceased classical pianist and painter -- I was also the physically way under-developed, seemingly talentless, disinterested, chubby son of an athletic, muscular NYPD police officer who sang German and Italian opera on Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour on TV as The Singing Patrolman. Back in the 1950’s you’d never say ‘Cop’.

Through Whitey, Dad’s friend the antique dealer who was a magician, I met my first real teaching ‘mentors’ in the City, where they clustered at Harry Houdini’s old shop upstairs near Penn Station.  Jeez, the peculiar company I kept ! I never saw it that way. What I saw was that these guys, they kinda of 'knew' stuff - stuff that ‘ordinary’ people didn’t know. Esoteric stuff. I found that I genuinely, thoroughly, wasn’t ordinary. Uncommon or Non-ordinary were new academic terms it was called. Back in the 50’s I was pretty alone in all this -- all of us Magi sti

Soon, as the remarkable teenage Mr.Magic, I got booked to do children’s birthday parties on weekends, earning pocket and later, gas and date money for college at SUNY  Running In the background to all this was, of course, a Certified Wicked Witch of the West Jewish Stepmother that Doctor Zugger has already reserved for a water boarding in Milton’s Purgatory. I’m currently attempting to share the dharma teachings with my less resistive clients, students and myself: on boundless appreciation, unconditional acceptance and the authentic magic of continual forgiveness. Keep forgiveness mindfully in front of you, and keep try’in ….. 

" Go to holy places,
you'll meet up
with holy people "

1959 Rebel without a cause -- with AKASA LEVI ~ There is only once around, only once upon a time, long, long ago, and for Akasa it was the body and mind of a Long Island high school kid in a black turtleneck, driving a 51' Chevy lime green coupe, Kerouac and non filter Pall Malls in his pocket, and a condom - every guy had to have the circular badge of a condom bulge in his wallet. Akasa was actually there in the Village experiencing the very last remnants of the Beat generation. Akasa did some rather singular things in his life, when others were not. Not yet ! But very soon. They were a comin' - to the sound of a different drummer. Hey, good clichés rule !

At the movies, James Hilton’s 1939 "Lost Horizon" jump started ‘something’ really serious buried deep in my soul when I was sixteen. My first 'contact' with the movie depiction of a lead character called the Grand Lama became a living reality when I first met His Holiness The Dalai Lama in India years later. It brings a slight swelling behind my eyes even now as I write this. Weekly, I soaked myself  in a young Jean Shepard’s heady late night, late 50's WOR jazz/talk radio show in the Village ( New York City ), where he read from the "Amazing Adventures of Doctor Fu Manchu" and lots of Tao and Zen poetry. I started to grow a tiny teenage goatee, hung around the Art Room crowd, explored the social dangers of wearing black and read Kerouac. Forget high school sports, me and The Exotic Esoteric were off and running! In 1959 I concluded high school with Paul Reps’ "Zen Flesh Zen Bones", the Buddhist-theories of D.T. Suzuki and lots of Alan Watts "The Wisdom of Insecurity". There’s ‘wisdom’ in insecurity ?  Why that title of all things ? It really made me ‘question’ it all. I learned that Buddhists laugh a lot and are still willing to give voice to ‘impermanence' and 'uncertainty in an Age of A-Bomb Anxiety and devastating Hollywood Blacklisting. In 1959 the winter snows were just melting as the young Tibetan Dalai Lama and a small horseback party began the final crossing into exile in India. His Holiness has never been home since.

Hear, Here and Gone ~ in the radical hotbed it became, SUNY Harpur College / Binghamton University in sleepy upstate New York, Akasa was mostly gone - having a front aisle seat at the back beat sound of this new emerging round of old but unsurprising classic 'inner' explorations of the mind. Except, they work ! Without the dependency on "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" -- and he did. Through a plethora of 'Far Out' incredible Music, permissive Love and the psychedelic insights that fueled Hippies, lots and lots of Hippies. But there were the painful, unforgiving Addictions. Most of us had to go sweetly, stubbornly or go suffering: The Only Way Out Is Through". With more organized gravitas: the Activists and Progressive people of all Liberation and Freedom loving ideals, and very, very vocal Civil Rights risk takers stood up, stood proud, stood strong. There were the heroic miracles of Dr. King, and many others deeply influenced impressions at the Heart level by the great classic European thinkers - and the compassionate Wisdom teachings of the East. There was the chaotic but growing critical mass community of fresh, newly awakened consciousness expanding really opening minds in process. Warm, young concerned bodies out in the surround, in the streets and other 'Live' venues - seeking and absorbing 'non-ordinary', truly 'uncommon' experiences that would emotionally support me by making all the difference. So I could help make a difference !  I wasn't alone in my mind and being-ness anymore... 

 SUNY, the State University of New York in the heating-up Sixties, revealed to me the tight-assed academia, the ill-conceived struggles for misunderstood meanings of Western philosophy, that I didn’t ‘get’ anyway - and the permissive, easy-going spaciousness of Eastern ‘emptiness’. Emptiness is the ‘joy’ of uncertainty 'realized’. Living in Greenwich Village after being a journalist in the U.S.Army ( Desert Storm: First / 81st Armored Division, PIO information specialist 63’-65’ ) 

Finally his number literally came up, and Akasa found his charlatan ass drafted, serving the Army as a Special Services journalist, till he came home honorably discharged, only to be spit on in the heat of the 60's Counter-Culture generation's zeal. Be it Protesters, Yuppies or Hippies - his soul exhausted, this ex-pat-Vet, eventually went on to live abroad.

I was right there with another generational shift I witnessed at the poetic heroic wane of the Beat-era -- and my ‘Self’ becoming ‘consciously’ reconstituted with my own beginnings, of my own authentic Hippie soul. The birth of a fledgling Bodhisattva - a few old ones still here - new stock arriving all the time.

The Puer: The Most Interesting Boy Man In The World ~
Akasa found it just plain ol' fun to be the epitome of Hip - eccentric/artistic, a well dressed intellectual smoothie, a lovable fraud, he would charm and talk his way in - he became a young "creative" that simply knew that it simply was all created. Constructed. Fabricated. Designing himself as a savvy young 'designer' in men's wear fashion, or directing TV deodorant spots or canned dog food commercials on Mad Ave, or gory Slasher film production for the elusive Rabbi Herb Freed. 

My personal archetype was as ‘The Outsider’ - that was quite clear. I was / I still am an acquired taste for a few - but the Wunderkind me was soon making expensive visual magic at a TV commercial production company directing pilot spots. It so happened that I smoked some outstanding weed one day in ’68, and left for a long sojourn in Europe and points unknown. "Freedom From the Known" as Krishnamurti deliciously and disturbingly called it. In Israel I just kept meeting people coming back from India - and they all said “India Man, You gotta go, Man - You gotta go ! - That’s the ‘real’ Holy Land!.” Further East, the compass pointed the direction I needed. I met lotsa’ helpful Indiana Jones- types along the Silk Route when it was still archeologically more intact. 

Winter 1972 - 'Over-Land' to Secret India --

Saying farewell to Rosh Pina, the Kibbutz, and daily rocket fire from Syria -Akasa sets off as a filmmaker and ongoing student of the Sufi teacher Gurdjieff and his pioneering Mindfulness 'Work' - "Meetings With Remarkable Men". Icy slick snow on the ground, driving the treacherous ancient “Silk Route” in a lightly armed tight caravan formation from Istanbul in Mick's five smuggled Benz luxury limos on a single lane nearly empty road, except for horseback bandits cum road tax locals, who would actually kill you. No accommodations meaning there was just nothing there - we all slept on donkey hair mats in a big smelly black goat skin tent - had multiple vehicle breakdowns, actual film-making waylaid yet another few months, and my own complete psycho-physical breakdown near Herat, Afghanistan - where quite to my surprise, I found a small ongoing orthodox Jewish community, still wearing kaftans and get this, they were abiding here at least a thousands years, having come with Al Xander ! Nursed with their chicken soup, of course, and other 'medicine' certainly from elsewhere - some kind of far out black sticky stuff - and soon I'm healed up good to go. Over the Khyber Pass and Paki food at last - finally arriving at the Amritsar crossing into Mother India." 

I wasn’t aware then, that I was traveling with a spiritual ‘dedicated purpose’, a mission, a holy 'intent' as Lama taught me later. I traveled in an old Russian mini-bus, overland thru the thick snows of Eastern Turkey, the Shah’s Iran and many months of a restorative, recuperative layover with the Jewish community in Herat, Afghanistan during the brutal winter 1972-73. I kept observing a subtly different, ‘alternative’ cultural paradigm out there. Asia was not Kansas anymore, Coney. It certainly wasn’t the South Shore of Long Island where I was raised W.J.M., either. Here, people looked right into your ‘mind’. They can read you. In India they had a legacy of deeply observing and comprehending the human mind - a very complete, ancient ‘science-teaching’ about the true nature of mind. No ‘churches’ that could  suppress it - no matter how the Brits tried to civilize the Wogs…   

At the Eastern Pakistani/Indian border in Amritsar, a seasoned ex-patriot American yogi who looked like Shiva said to me, unsolicited - “Hey Man, Just skip Hinduism altogether, my friend, and go straight to Dharamsala / McClod Ganj where The Dalai Lama lived, and hang around with the Buddhists” - “You’ll end up a Buddhist anyway, from what I see in you.”  He then gave me the address of a very special ‘Teacher’ to visit there, and literally vanished. Weeks later I ambled down a crooked little street high up in the thick pine covered foothills of Northern India, past a flock of laughing Tibetan Buddhist monks full of horseplay, back from their visit to The Dalai Lama’s residence up the hill -- and ‘Lost Horizon’ became a reality.

After a plate of Tibetan mo-mo dim sum, I went to pay, and discovered the teacher’s address deep in my shoulder bag. As described, I found an alley, then a door, knocked - and a voice said “Come in”. Sitting in full lotus on the floor nursing a single-burner propane stove and tea, was the same yogi guy I met at the border ! He looked up at me, smiled, then laughed and said “You made it man - Good, I have some great people for you to go up into the hills here to meet”…

I said to myself ~ " Way to go Mr. Magic, let me wholeheartedly praise you - You ‘showed up’ for yourself again -
It made all the difference ~ Whew !

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"How and Who I met - What sacred 'transmissions' they would share from directly within their very own inconscious paradigm surrounded by their very own cultural artifacts lived resplendently by a little nut brown man in a tiny hut sitting on a woven mat. Or the woman art-maker activist who embraces and holds tiny, mistreated babies, and won her nation's highest regard for literally saving, feeding and caressing the souls of abused children in Nepal, or maybe it was South India, or maybe it was South Central. Or the actor who went to dig in the muddy fields beyond the jungle, and found his own magic celebrity-energy transform into indelible compassion. Many empathic  Americans served abroad in the Peace Core. You can find them there too -the teachers, the tortured - and sometimes it's just me mostly writing about ‘me’ and my Parkinson's medication side effects... and I'd rather go back now to my pisha'ka travel 'story', and my basic bad writing...

Hopefully the wider, deeper, Greater Purpose here gets awakened and somewhat achieved by reciting my peculiar life story: to get you interested, or get you interested once again - and gets you going out on the road less traveled - doing some serious sacred 'searching' here in the USA, or better, for the really gutsy, brave and unattached, if you take the risk to go abroad. You get to mindfully see and eat and shit and live and serve in these raw cultural contexts that these unbelievable ancient spiritual practices originate from -- Roots, always look for the roots of things, always look for the indigenous origins ! Notice the similarities everywhere !

♦ The Himalayan Diary in these pages ardently encourages you to 'search' out some of the history of the renown Buddhist teachers mentioned, as well as the many inspiring, un-named unknown un-educated teacher's wise and clarifying counsel and potent clean energy influences - literally what arises out of them and flies over into you. Sacred seeds a plenty are dropped during these meetings with remarkable people - unique indigenous people who recognize the potential value of a good student, possibly to serve as a future teacher - in service to this idea, these senior guides themselves would pass you around, sending you Hither and Yon to meet other teaching masters too - human to human, this is how the sacred "Teachings" and their highest cultural traditions are kept vibrantly alive, kept going, and are aurally preserved in perpetuity thru other specially 'taught' humans -- these were basic precious human 'realizations' that would carry me and make ALL the difference on the road less traveled. ( Friends ~ They are still out there to be learned from... Mister G. would be proud -- so far... )

♦ " Like Attracts Like "  Wisdom LIKES Wisdom

So basically, Wisdom Attracts Wisdom. The very beginnings of true Wisdom is very attracted to Higher Wisdom. Wisdom likes Wisdom - as Stupidity likes Stupidity,  and seeks out more Stupidity. Ignorance seeks out Ignorance. And so it goes... And so the very beginnings of Awakened Enlightened-mind -- "Enlightenment" seeks out Enlightenment and is so happy to find more enlightenment out there, that it never wants to go back to ignorant stupidity."

 ~ Lama Thubten Teshe 

_____________________________

Guys, it's really gotta' become fairly clear,
fairly quickly that it has to be - at  some point:
"That it's OK - that it's just not OK" –
that's the 'What Is' of it – and let's go to 'work' on ourselves from here – It's a fact: You're hurting -
and you've got problems. Together, we've gotta
go in 'There' questing together. As your counselor / facilitator - we together go right in and - 
" Gets up in your Bid'nes ! " Therapy gets personal.
Opening up, disclosing, revealing - if not Here, Where ?

"THERAPY" itself is not found in even the best of
academia or electronic devices or social media methods.
It's a 'Live' Interactive Relating-Process - It always has been.

Two people sit down and empathically 'Work'
on one of them Together... It's a living 'dynamic' -
it's a 'dyad' of two people in on this. Therapy
or counseling is a 'relationship' in it's truest form.
That's so 'risky' for the Wounded Spirit to chance.
.
"Spiritual Adulthood" is offering a much more 'radical'
form of Counseling – more geared to people in the whole spectrum of contemporary 'Creatives' and the 'New-Thought-minded' and Millennial media sensibilities. Basically experiencing more social contact than less. We're actually learning to communicate, talk and write all over again - actually quite progressively remarkable. Maybe more Voluntary Simplicity has emerged in the culture- Green or Liberal or Socialist. Maybe much better tempered Radicals are revealing themselves and contributing. Maybe it's just You.

" The Buddhist Mentor Project " an exploration that encourages and supports a very eclectic “Inquiry into Self” an experiential inner practice, combining the cool, calm 'observation' approach of traditional, quiet Mindfulness Meditation.
We can then loosen up, soften up our poor, tightened, threatened, fear-filled anxious  inner world -- countering
our stress with the 'Crazy Wisdom' irrationality of the
'Zen-mind Realizations' that cognitively short-circuits
the common chronic suffering of ' My Self ' - helping you
in dismantling your so obsessive self- involved, self- absorbed, self- Identified ego-mind.
Humans are tough nuts to crack.
Soak 'em in kindness...

" One easily-made, very common mistake
is to think that 'your reality’ is THE Reality.
You must always be prepared to bravely leave
your reality for a greater one."    ~  Buddha



WHO COMES HERE to SEE US ?
We encourage highly inquisitive, progressive minded
people, with a natural, deep love of learning -
who relish the abstract, and even the absurd –
and have a genuine taste for the
indefinable 'existential' stuff.
.
~ and Buddhism is mucho playful too.

".... ever noticed, that it's Always NOW " ~ Alan Watts

He suggests you repeatedly keep noticing this
many, many, many times a day . . .
.

Usually, the people who do eventually come to us -
are more explorative, curious, do have a more active intellect, are innately, intensely inquisitive people by
their nature. The 'Inner-Search', 'The Quest',
The 'Understanding' of it All. They are people
who relish the 'safari' of it – the 'search', the 'inquiry',
the brave 'quest' of it - hurting or not - rather than settle
for 'popular' ideas and shallow packaged prescriptions
just 'served-up' ready to eat. Enlightened Freedom is
just not a 'home-deliverable product'. For each of us -
it's all a life-long psychological pilgrimage, experienced
thru your own compassionate Spiritual Heart. . .

__________________________

Question:

" Respected Grandfather, What is Destiny? "

“ DESTINY, my son, is every step we’re taking
and going thru right now - to get there ”

" So, You Really Must Consciously Choose –
and make the Choice to Re-Choose again and again -
to Openly 'Talk Truth' with Someone…
...and keep the talk up !
To Openly keep Talking with Someone -
and keep it up.
To be Open to 'Trust' in gradually letting it all arise
and unfold - Messy or tidy, depressed or distressed.
We all have these feelings. It's nothing new."

~ Grandfather Bearheart, contemporary Creek Elder
.

"Eighty percent of success
is just showing up"              ~ Woody Allen

So go ahead and get into
some quality counseling-therapy –
You, really being heard –
here or somewhere –
Where someone will really take
a deep caring to listen to YOU –
and really, really hear you ....
AND, that’s a very courageous move on your part –
to go get some help for yourself thru some 'counseling'.
It just may be the right place for you to start. Open to it.

Be very welcome to inquire more about me,
as you search out where to do this inner-work.
Please Read Some More on this site.

_______________________________
.
Maimonides, more than 800 years ago said:
.
"A Single Deed,
a Single Word,
a Single Action -- 
even just One Single Thought -- 
has the power to TIP the scales
and bring redemption and resolve to your world.
No matter how dark that world may seem or feel
~ Light is just a single action away."
.
_______________________ 

"Cultural Creatives"

"There is now a rapidly growing number of very bright
American people who basically need a whole other level,
a much, much higher level of true intellect, an intelligent,
a 'reformed', a deeper level of Inner-Unfolding of Spirit".
But without formal 'Religion' - or many other religion-ized
forms of 'cultish' language and obsequious behaviors
around new media jargons, social settings and events....

~ "The Cultural Creatives" ( 2000 ) read footnote below
.
– and we wish to assist you as you bring yourself
to this new level of a natural, highly conscious,
sensitive awareness – and fearless unfolding...
_____________________________________
.
Thank you for reading all this !
Hopefully you'll learn to cherish the Life-Journey
even more – for again, always remember that
"The Journey Itself IS the Destination!"
Be Brave, Courageous
and Enjoy the Journey ~

_________________________________________
footnote:
.
"Cultural Creatives" from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Cultural Creatives, a term coined by sociologist Paul H. Ray
and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson to describe a large
segment in Western society that has recently developed
beyond the 'standard paradigm' of established Modernists
versus Traditionalists or Conservatives. The concept was
presented in 2000 in their book The Cultural Creatives -
How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
( Harmony Books, New York ), where they claim to have
found that 50 million adult Americans ( slightly over
one quarter of the adult population) can now be
'identified' as belonging to this 'group' of individuals
which have not yet found its OWN 'identity' – but
is disenchanted with materialism and consumerism,
and most of what is currently available in the daily round.
Dr. Ray calls this segment The New Progressives.
This growing section of the population is
admittedly 'Spiritual' and embraces the 'practice'
of spiritual values in daily life without formal religion.
'Not Identified' means that they themselves
do not know they are part of a larger
sociological grouping, that it has a 'name',
and that there are 'others' like them out there.
Many of this urban cohort patronize specialty stores and
specialty children's schools etc. that support their values.
Many adherents to the tenets of the 'cultural creatives'
tend to become familiar with a variety of religions
and seek to identify with principles that are universal
among all religions. The intention is to search for universal,
practical spiritual principles that have deep intrinsic value,
and do not depend on ecclesiastical authority whatsoever.
Read More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Creatives
Links to alternative lifestyle; modernism and postmodernism;
post-materialism; radicals; voluntary simplicity.

" The Buddhist Mentoring Project " ~ 'Mentoring' is an ancient tribal 'teaching-exploration' found in every indigenous culture planet wide -- Buddhist sub-culture has it's own traditions and mentoring protocols into the village Elders passing on critical, skilled 'knowledges' that encourage, guide and support a very intimate and candid “Inquiry into personal-Self” with an initiated guiding teacher, in an experiential inner-practice, combining the cool, calm 'observation' approach of traditional, quiet Vipassana Mindfulness Meditation --- along side the 'Crazy Wisdom' irrationality of the 'Zen-mind Realizations' that cognitively short-circuits the common chronic suffering of ' My Self ' --- helping you in dismantling your so obsessive self- involved, self- absorbed, self- Identified ego-mind.