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Dear Swami:  

   
     I voted for hope and change last November, but unfortunately the change I’d hoped for hasn’t quite materialized.  Too many of Barack Obama’s appointments have been disappointments, and it seems as if the usual suspects are still in charge.  Thanks to the bail out the banks are making huge profits, and the average Americans who thought they had retirement money are facing huge losses.  I am coming to the sad conclusion that the two party system has failed us.  As a respected political guru, Swami, what do you say?
                             
 Hugh R. Phelan, Somerville, Massachusetts

Dear Hugh:       
I am sorry to have to confirm your sad conclusion, but indeed the two big parties -- which we collectively can call Dempublicrats -- have been partying on our dime -- and we the people haven’t even been invited to the party.  Sure, there’s been political climate change. But instead of letting the light shine through, the two parties and the media continue to cloud the issues.  

Once again, the Democrats have positioned themselves not as a force for transforming the trance, but as the lesser of two weasels.  Imagine an ad campaign for any product that proclaims:  “Buy our product.  It’s not as bad as the other guy’s.”  As long as we the people buy this illogical logic, we will be sold a bill of bads.

 So, how do we create change we can really believe in?  We can begin by changing our beliefs, and imagining something that seems unimaginable -- going to the polling places to vote for the greater of two goods.  Believing is seeing, so once we see this we can take the next step.  We can throw a party of our own.  We can call it the Right To Laugh Party, and offer our own slogan:  “One big party, and everyone is invited ... all for fun, and fun for all.”

Why Right to Laugh?  Well in these times when our problems are so serious, doesn’t it make sense that the solutions are humorous?  What if we came together from across party lines to laugh at the institutionalized insanity of a system too big to not fail?  What if we laughed at the obscene foolishness of spending so much of our livelihood on weapons of deadlihood, and the utter absurdity of doing the same things over and over and expecting different results?  Why, we might get struck by enlightening, and commit ourselves to a sane asylum.  And in the wake of the laughter, we might awaken from the trance of just voting for the two candidates we are given and begin to choose our own -- candidates who serve the commonwealth and not just the uncommonly wealthy.

      *            *            *            *

Dear Swami:

      
Is it true we have to be childlike to get into heaven?  
                                
Sue Nafter, Dayton, Ohio

Dear Sue:       
Actually, it’s more accurate to say you have to be adult-like to get out of heaven.  The cosmic joke is that we are born to create heaven on earth just for the hell of it.  However, we are soon conditioned to be serious, hence the serious condition the world is in.  Next thing you know it, you’ve got Sinatra’s Syndrome – a doo-be-doo-be-doo imbalance  -- from too much being and not enough doing.  No wonder those who spend so much time being a doer will come home and do a beer … or do a doobie.  All these are ways people try to “get into heaven,” or at least make a short visit.  But here is the thing.  Heaven is in our own hands.  In fact, it is in our faces.  Want to go to heaven?  Just turn up the corners of you mouth in a smile.  It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel like it.  You will.  Just the act of smiling releases a flood of chemicals to make the body think you’re happy … and the body doesn’t know the difference!  Pretty soon, you realize that you’re happy and you don’t know why.  If that ain’t heaven, I don’t know what is.

Dear Swami:

I have asked this question of many great masters, and none could answer it to my satisfaction.  So I will ask you:  How do you know you know?

 Ashir Dropov, Brooklyn, New York

Dear Ashir:

    As far as I know, there are Four Stages of Knowing:     
1.  You don't know.     
2.  You don't know you don't know.    
3.  You know you don't know.     
4.  You know "I don't know" is all you need to know.

Clearly, you have not achieved Stage Four because you still think you need to know if you know, and your desire to be aware of what you know and what you don't know has led you to a state of mental confusion.  I understand this condition from my own experience, because I too was a know-aware man.  But then in an instant of enlightenment, I went from know awareness to no awareness.  As soon as I knew I didn't know, I knew.  Y'know?  

 I'll put it another way.  All of the knowing we fill our heads up with is to avoid a void.  But emptiness is the space of all creation. It says so right in the Bible:  "In the beginning vas the Void." (Note:  It is not widely known that the early God of the Hebrews spoke with a Yiddish Brooklyn accent.)  So instead of doing a void dance to avoid an unavoidable void, we must seek Holeness.  That is why I recommend you carry your own box of Nothing with you at all times. This is nothing personal.

And I recommend that you stop throwing bait at all these spiritual masters.  Believe me when I tell you this mental master-baiting will not get you nowhere.  As my friend Brad Blanton says, "The mind is a terrible thing -- waste it!"

  © Copyright 2009 by Steve Bhaerman.  All rights reserved.  Swami Beyondananda -- and his hilarious books and CDs -- can be found online at  http://www.wakeuplaughing.com.  Steve’s new book with Dr. Bruce Lipton, Spontaneous Evolution:  Our Positive Future and a Way to Get There From Here, is now available.  Just go to www.wakeuplaughing.com/ or call toll free (800) SWAMI-BE to order.