Living the Real Tree of Life: Personal Journal Edition

By Colleen Jiron, Ph.D.

Despite our best efforts and regardless of our spiritual paths and beliefs, we all find ourselves confronted moment-to-moment with a mind-boggling array of life demands and challenges. In these pages, Dr. Jiron offers strategies and tools for help in navigating this “dance on spinning logs in churning rapids” for use by almost anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Chapters are presented in brief, essay format, for ease of reading and application. Topics are sequenced like a tree, beginning with the “Roots,” such as Bodacious Breathing and Building Focus, then moving on to “Branches” and “Foliage & Flowers,” the universal challenges of managing conflict and adversity, with the “Canopy” chapters addressing deeper discussions of personal and spiritual growth. Appendices include Italicized Points to Ponder, Joyful or Useful Self-Talk, and a Glossary of Terms.

With this book, Dr. Jiron presents a grass roots manual grounded in the bedrock of perennial teachings and applied to contemporary issues. These ideas are based on forty years of study/practice and professional experience, yielding a unique blend of common sense and the spiritually sublime, and are intended to be helpful for people from all walks of life.

For more information, downloadable materials, blog, and other titles, please visit drjiron.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Colleen Jiron, Ph.D.
• Release date: Nov 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781974431175

Book preview

CHAPTER 1:  Dancing on Spinning Logs

in Churning Rapids

THERE ARE THINGS about our reality that I love. Earth’s natural setting is indescribably gorgeous, with venues and vistas that take our breath away. We have a lush potpourri of abundance and spontaneity, entertainment in all its guises, and opportunities for love, joy, and pleasure.

But there are also things about our reality that dismay and disgust me. Our world can be cruel beyond imagining. Needless suffering and anguish, hatred of others for real or imagined reasons, greed rooted in fear and paranoia, power mongering, and vicious lies wielded by those masquerading as leaders are some of the problems. 

There is also the unspeakable loneliness of being locked into a skin, a human identity, which sometimes overwhelms me. No matter how sincerely we reach out, connect with others, and focus on the good and trustworthy, in the end, we make the journeys into and out of this life alone. 

So how can we make sense of these seemingly incongruent elements within which we live?

All the major religions and spiritual belief systems attempt to explain the good versus evil we see around us every day. Although these vary in terms of their appearances and practices, there are essentially three different approaches or themes in their teachings, and they form the infrastructure of virtually every belief system in one form or another. The following is an admittedly oversimplified summary of these three themes. See which one most closely resembles your belief or tradition of choice (or not).

(1) The first theme depicted in many major religions is that good and evil exist as supreme beings. The good in the world is credited to an all-knowing, all-powerful male or female being who resides in an otherworldly place, such as a mountain Shangri-La, a celestial heaven, or another planet. The evil is blamed on a fallen angel or malicious entity who lives down below in what might be a fiery pit a la Dante’s Inferno or a dark, cold world devoid of creature comforts.

(2) The second major theme is that good and evil are two sides of the same coin, cannot be separated, and represent a perversely symbiotic relationship. This is kind of like a mortar and pestle, which, when used together, generate life (as in male and female energies). These are the traditions that regard both sides of the coin (good and evil) equally, sometimes giving them identities, such as Shiva and Shakti or Creator and Destroyer. You can see the similarity between this good-versus-evil idea and the God-versus-devil described above, but in these same-coin systems, neither is bad; they are just opposites. They can, however, still be represented by humanlike gods and goddesses sometimes described as different aspects of one overall supreme God.  

(3) The third broad spiritual theme lays the credit and the blame at our own feet, suggesting that human beings embody all that is good and evil and that both potentials dwell within all of us. These are manifested in the world by and through the choices we make in our own lives.

Once we understand these three different themes or belief systems, it becomes easy to see why people have such widely different points of view regarding how they belong and fit in the world. And how religious arguments become so intense!

Just to clarify that, let’s talk it through a little more.

The belief in supreme beings governing good versus evil implies that we ourselves are children of God who are naïve and/or sinful and expected to follow a set of spiritual rules as we resist temptations posed by the evildoer(s). Our success in doing so results in the appropriate reward or punishment in our afterlife.

The second theme, different sides of the same coin, is often referred to as the yin/yang in Eastern philosophies, meaning you can’t have one without the other, and each contains the seed of its opposite. In these traditions, we are less like children and more like random leaves floating along on opposing currents of life. If we are attuned, aware, and in the flow, we perceive the currents and float in the best general direction at a similar rate of speed, trying to move in harmony with other leaves. There may not be clearly prescribed rules, but we are responsible to stay in the flow, and we are in the wrong if we keep swimming upstream and creating havoc with our own and others’ lives. 

So in this go-with-the-flow perspective, there is no parental God or Goddess who is going to reward or punish us; there is only the river, and we are the floating leaf. While some find this notion pleasing, others find it threatening because it implies that both do-gooders and do-badders can theoretically come out ahead or fail altogether (at least in this lifetime, although perhaps not in the next one), irrespective of how well they follow the spiritual rules.

The third major theme (we embody both good and evil and manifest either or both, depending on our free will), puts most, if not all, of the responsibility solidly back in our laps, which many people find really uncomfortable. In other words, we are not spiritual children trying to obey God or leaves trying to float in harmony with others as we navigate opposing currents. Rather, we are vessels containing a balanced but fluid and unwieldy mix of good and bad, with a kind of expectation or unspoken mandate that we are supposed to be making the best choices from moment to moment, based on a set of personal ethics. Of course, we might all have different personal ethics.

Please understand I am not recommending or excluding any particular religion or spiritual belief. In fact, it’s not uncommon for people to become deeply ensconced in one belief system, only to find themselves growing out of it and into a different system over the years. The great thing about being a seeker is that you will eventually find a religious teaching or spiritual tradition that resonates for you, even creating your own unique mix of beliefs from different sources. 

In the final analysis, every spiritual path I have ever studied is about living to one’s fullest and best potential, despite the obstacles, naysayers, and predators we encounter, including those who are nothing more than misbegotten echoes in our own mind.

Of course, I realize we can argue ad infinitum that it’s all just a grand illusion (the great duality debate), or a techie’s virtual reality in which we are programmed characters who haven’t figured out how to reprogram ourselves, or even just one of multiple dimensions/realities. But I find those debates can be endless loops, and the main point is this: For all intents and purposes, we seem to be here now.

No matter what your spiritual system or belief, in order to live a healthy and effective life, you have to be continually aware, authentic, and appropriately responsive to ever-changing situations and environments. I call this the challenge of dancing on spinning logs in churning rapids. 

The good news is that this dance takes place in the greater context of any and all religions or philosophies. The bad news? It also means we are on the hot seat here and now to put our own chosen belief or spirituality into practice, let it access our feelings, inform our decisions, guide our actions, and make it real. Otherwise known as living real.

Personal Journal

What are my beliefs? Do they resemble any of the three systems described in this chapter, or are they different entirely? How so?

How do my beliefs manifest in everyday life? How do I put them into practice?

Where did my beliefs originate? From whom did I learn about them? Do they need some reexamination or do they still fit for me in today’s world?

CHAPTER 2: 

Who’s in Charge, and What Comes After?

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT living real, so it seems reasonable to at least touch on the question of whether or not there is a God and an afterlife. After all, these are overriding questions with which we all wrestle at one time or another. Let’s just get them out of the way up front, so we can move on to the more nitty-gritty stuff.

So ... um ... is there?

Okay, please don’t be disappointed. I don’t know. Definitely, I have within my heart an absolute and blinding faith that this world and the people in it are not all there is. I know there are those who have experienced miracles, including many of my family, friends, and even me. I have felt the fundamental power of love that some believe to be proof of God and perceived what I thought were angels during urgent personal crises. But some would debate, Were they angels or my own subconscious mind offering advice and comfort?

In other words, if we want to be strictly scientific, until our science advances beyond its current state, we don’t seem to have a reliable way of measuring our faith-filled experiences. They may be completely sincere and profound, but that doesn’t make them real in terms of proven beyond any doubt, the way things can be proven in a laboratory. 

So do we have what a scientist would call hard and fast proof? Despite my own spiritual cornerstones and mainstays, in all honesty, I have to say, No, we don’t. 

Does that mean we need to launch into that wearisome debate between science and faith? Happily for our current purpose here, no, we don’t. This book can be useful for you, regardless of your spiritual beliefs or lack thereof. All the suggestions on these pages are equally effective for everyone—devout Christian, Orthodox Jew, jack Mormon, Seventh-day Adventist, nonpracticing Hindu, dogmatic Muslim, drifty New Ager, die-hard atheist, and so on.

In my diverse circle of friends, there are those who devoutly believe and pray, there are those who deny any belief whatsoever, and there is the majority who fall somewhere along that continuum. If we are brutally honest with ourselves, from a hard proof–bound perspective, the only thing we know for sure about God is that there’s a lot we don’t know. It’s kind of like the only real guarantee in life is change.[i]

What a relief! We can allow ourselves to skip the debate about defining God and move on to living our own spiritual reality—what I call living real. For my part, I believe that spirituality is real and that prayer is effective, as are meditation and well-wishing or any kind of thought or feeling that is focused and centered on what is right and good in the world. But just because I believe it doesn’t mean you have to believe it. Living real means putting your faith or even just your personal ethics into action in the most consistent, meaningful, and life-affirming way.

So invoke God if you like (I do), but you don’t need to invoke God in order for the strategies presented here to be real and effective. All that’s really needed is the authentic intent and energy you invest when you engage in them.

In our reality, energy is power. If you believe in God when you pray, that’s great. If you envision life as a flow between yin and yang, and that motivates you to meditate, that’s also great.  

If you don’t believe in God at all, but you are fascinated with nature, then contemplate nature with the appropriate awe and appreciation, and that’s great too. Find spirituality wherever and whenever you can, in whatever way makes sense for you, and put your energy into it, because energy is indeed measurable and real.

In other words, acknowledge and utilize the power of your own targeted energy, your own ability to make a difference by focusing your mind, stewarding your emotions, and choosing with awareness how you treat others. 

No matter what we believe, these things are all our own responsibility—not our priest’s, our minister’s, our mullah’s, our prophet’s, our rabbi’s, or our guru’s. Ours. Own your energy and your ability to grow into an increasingly aware and complete person. 

As for the afterlife?

The great majority of people in the world believe in some kind of life after death. It might be heaven or hell, it might be reincarnation, it might be rejoining the void, or one of the many variations. There can be great angst and arguments about what follows after we no longer exist as who we are now. 

What about those who have a near-death experience and claim to have seen the afterlife? Some of them equate the event to a spiritual epiphany that completely changes their lives. On the other hand, there are highly qualified neurologists who scoff that these experiences are nothing more than the explosive firing of neurons in a highly distressed brain. 

So what is it, eternal