Richard L. Haight's Blog

by Richard L. Haight

I have been teaching spiritual awakening, meditation and awareness for more than 10 years, and I have noticed many sincere individuals suffer from lack of motivation and inspiration. They often suffer from lack of purpose in life. They have some grand idea that they are supposed to do something powerful in the world, but they have no idea what their specific purpose is. They are waiting for some grand vision to give them direction.

A story told by Tom Brown Jr. about his teacher Stalking Wolf, an Apache elder, succinctly expresses the feeling. Tom was constantly amazed that Stalking Wolf had a wise answer to every question Tom had ever asked him. Tom decided to try to stump “Grandfather” by asking him an unanswerable question. “Grandfather,” Tom asked with a grin, “What is the meaning of life?” Grandfather, sensing that Tom was trying to test him, paused for a moment to give the question some thought before answering, “To the man whose life has meaning, life has meaning, and to the man whose life has no meaning, life has no meaning.” www.trackerschool.com

How we see life as a whole is merely a projection of how we feel about our own life. Stalking Wolf’s brilliant statement sums up the challenge that so many on the spiritual path run into — purposelessness. Lack of purpose is a terrible form of suffering that consumes you one depressing day and one anxious night at a time. Individuals who tend toward depression are drained of all inspiration, which causes life to appear dull and heavy. Impotence permeates mind leaving the individual unable to make even the slightest impact in the world, despite the desire to do so. The individual whose tendency is toward anxiety will become increasingly tense and nervous, unable to relax and enjoy the inherent beauty of all that is. In either case the individual is effectively blocked from inspiration.

We all want inspired direction in life, but many of us live lives of duty and obligation void of inspiration. Lack of inspiration causes our lives feel hollow and uninspired. This feeling is even more pronounced in individuals who are walking the spiritual path, because they are typically more sensitive than individuals not consciously awakening. So how do we find our direction, our purpose?

Most individuals who walk the path of awakening also hunger for a grand vision their life direction, without realizing the price one pays for such a vision. Grand visions tend to torture your soul until you act on them. And there are few individuals who have had such visions who were in a place in life where they could immediately act upon the vision. As a result those individuals suffer from their own expectations and feelings of impotence until they have the capacity to fulfill the vision. This is exactly what happened in my life, and I would not recommend it to everyone, although it was right for me. From my vantage point now, I see that visions are just one vehicle through which inspiration and direction may come. There are kinder and more enjoyable means, and fortunately for most people these are the right vehicles for them.

The path of spiritual awakening is a razor’s edge. If we fail to move when inspiration comes, then no matter how much we meditate, no matter how much we pray, no matter how kind and compassionate we appear to be to others, there will be a feeling of meaninglessness that will permeate our lives and pull us toward depression and/or anxiety.

If we acknowledge that inspiration comes through consciousness to be shared with the world, then a very simple solution emerges, which is to take some sort of immediate action to birth that inspiration into the world. If we fail to act upon inspiration quickly it begins to fade in short order. As we turn away from inspiration the flow dwindles, and once we’ve made a habit of not acting upon inspiration it may cease to flow entirely. So how do we get the flow to start again? Typically individuals not walking the path of awakening have so filled their lives with duty and obligation that they have made no time for inspiration, to do what they are passionate about. But societal tendencies which value obligation over passion affect the masses as well as those people walking the path if they are not careful.

One student of mine was so focused on obligation-based productivity that she cut herself off from inspiration. The effect on her was a strong tendency towards willfulness in daily life and in her unfoldment process. Willfulness runs counter to the unfoldment process, so she was struggling quite a bit. I asked her what she was truly passionate about. She said she loved making pottery, but she had stopped doing it because she could see no profitability in it, and it was just a hobby. In her mind, she did not want to waste time doing something that did not enhance her financial or social bottom line. She had judged making pottery as being a trivial hobby. As a result she had nearly cut off her source of inspiration. This is a big deal because inspiration is a highway of spiritual awakening.

I advised her to take up pottery again with passion, to set aside all thoughts about practicality with regard to her pottery making time. The next time we spoke she was on fire with passion. Her voice was uplifted and she said she felt like her spirit was alive again. Inspiration was bubbling over, and as a result opportunities began to open for her. She met new people thanks to her hobby, and that changed the atmosphere of her life and her mindset. She began observing how she had unconsciously prioritized her life according to the values of society. As a result she began consciously dedicating more time to activities that she was passionate about. Creativity and inspiration became a torrent!

For individuals who feel completely uninspired, we will need to take a slightly different approach. First, go and buy a pocket-sized notepad and a small pen. Keep them in your pocket at all times. Whenever any interesting idea comes through, write it down immediately and date it. As I said earlier, inspiration comes through to be acted upon. People who feel no inspiration are people who have a habit of not acting on inspiration when it comes, so they are suffering from inspiration constipation. To give inspiration birth into the world make sure to write down any feelings and ideas within five minutes of receiving inspiration. This will help to get the flow started again. Thus begins a virtuous cycle that ultimately leads to the realization of a greater purpose for your life.

Inspiration is of consciousness and therefore it is not inherently limited by practicality. Inspiration could be a hobby or it could be starting a business. It could be writing a book, or raising your children with love and integrity. Really, it could be almost anything. Take a small step back from duty and obligation, embrace what inspires and watch what happens. You’ll feel inspired, and before you know it your spiritual unfoldment process is back on track and steaming forth full throttle. Life has meaning, and you are alive!

Now go get that notepad!
The Unbound Soul: Applied Spirituality

The Unbound Soul is on Kindle $.99 Countdown Special right now! Get it while you can!

An instructional memoir, The Unbound Soul is the true story of a young boy's spiritual vision and his subsequent trek across the globe in search of truth. Tormented by visions of coming worldwide economic, social and ecological collapse, he presses ever onward in his search and eventually realizes the elusive truth of awakening. Through The Unbound Soul, Richard L. Haight reveals the understanding that transforms your life and provides a unique meditation method and set of powerful awareness tools to assist you on your personal path towards practical realization in everyday life.The Unbound Soul: Applied Spirituality
https://www.amazon.com/Unbound-Soul-A...

Richard Haight Demonstrates the martial aspects of Shinkaido "The Way of the Open Heart". Shinkaido incorporates elements of Shinkage-ryu Kenjutsu, Seigo-ryu Battojutsu, Daito-ryu Aikijujutsu as well as a specialized form of meditation for development of awareness and inner power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVu2G...

Amazon has The Unbound Soul (paperback) on discount for an undisclosed period of time. Normally, it is priced at $12.99. But right now you can get it for $7.56. That's more than $5 off! Get it while you can!
https://www.amazon.com/Unbound-Soul-A...

Since publishing my book, The Unbound Soul: Applied Spirituality, I have been asked on multiple occasions to write more about illiteracy and how I overcame it. Although I wrote a bit about it in the book, the story is much richer and more nuanced than was appropriate to include there. Now, I’d like to go into greater detail about how I overcame illiteracy in hopes that it may be of some inspiration to others suffering from learning/reading disorders. In all honesty, the thanks go to my childhood friend Tim for cultivating my interest in gaming.

When I was about eight years old, Tim and his brother Rob moved into my neighborhood to live with his mother. His mother invited my family to their house for lunch and a swim in their pool. Tim was four-and-a-half years my senior, and at roughly 12 years old he was already over six feet tall and probably damn near 200 pounds. He was a curious combination of professional wrestler and Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock from Star Trek) in my eyes. We had a great time in the pool, playing Marco Polo and eating grilled hamburgers.

Tim lived at the top of a hill in an old adobe house that overlooked our neighborhood. The neighborhood kids thought the place was haunted prior to Tim moving there. As it turns out it wasn’t haunted at all; the ghostly entity that we saw on rare occasions through dusty windows was Tim’s near-80-year-old grandmother, who never came out of the house. In pre-Tim days the rite-of-passage was to go up there and stand in front of a window for five minutes to get a glimpse of the undead—the scariest damn five minutes I could imagine when I was a kid.

All of that changed after the summer Tim moved down to So-Cal for good. On occasion we neighborhood kids gathered at his house for a weekend of Risk or Dungeons & Dragons, which Tim ran with sadistic joy. He was a very creative game master with fantastic story telling abilities. At that time, Tim was the only kid in our neighborhood, and probably our town, to have his own personal computer, a Tandy TRS “TRASH” 80, which he would program code into in order to make it do odd and, to my eyes, infinitely interesting things.

About the time I was 12, and inspired by Tim’s “TRASH,” I got my first computer, a Commodore 64 and some games for it. Tim became a regular at my house, because while his computer was fine for programming, it really lacked in the gaming department. We played video games on my computer for hours and hours, bending joysticks beyond their capacity. I had a basement/game room, where we played pool and Ping-Pong while we planned how we were going to conquer the world when we got older.

It was about then that Tim introduced me to play-by-mail games (text-based games) in hopes that I would play too, but at my age, money was hard to come by—not to mention that I could barely read. About the time I turned 15, I got consistent work on our family ranch and that earned me some money. It was good timing because Tim introduced me to a text-based gladiatorial combat game with simple enough grammar and sentences that even I could figure it out. It helped that the text ran in a repeating pattern with only a few variables changing like “Joe strikes powerfully with his battle ax” or “Kent parries quickly with his broadsword.” Once I learned those patterns, I could read the bimonthly fight printouts without too much effort. With my new work, I had enough to pay my twice-monthly game dues, and go out bowling with Tim a few times a week.

Eventually Tim started his own gaming company. Tim’s first game was a text-based, open-ended space saga. I wanted to play, but I couldn’t afford it, so Tim decided to let me work for him by stuffing envelopes, as well as occasionally entering turn orders into the computer, which I was infinitely underqualified to do. Realizing this, it didn’t take long for Tim to downgrade me to mere stamp-licker/envelope-stuffer extraordinaire. This work allowed me to keep playing his game, which I loved, so I didn’t mind the numb, swollen, pasty tongue. Eventually I began prepping the stamps with water, but Tim was kind enough to let me break in my tongue first before he introduced me to the water method.

Somewhere along the line, Tim and I started betting on our bowling throws. Tim, my elder, was a more experienced gambler and better bowler, so he clearly had the advantage over me. After just a few months of gambling, I got myself $300 in debt thanks to stupid double-or-nothing bets, which I worked off at Tim’s company, doing his bidding. I suppose I can’t complain though; I enjoyed almost every minute of it … almost.

Fortunately, Tim snatched up a new gladiatorial combat game that was for sale. It was a much more sophisticated game than the first game that I had played. The sentence structure and content were much more challenging for me, but I was feeling up to the task, so I transitioned into this new game.

Every Friday night Tim’s stepfather drove us over to Barnes & Noble to buy books. Tim typically bought two or three new books every time and read them that night. I, on the other hand, just followed him around the store, while he recommended this title or that title. I think Tim knew I was functionally illiterate, but he never mentioned it to me, something I was grateful for. I don’t think I could have handled the embarrassment at that point in my life.

Week after week we went to the bookstore, where Tim tried to entice me with great stories. Little by little, I began to take interest. I suppose my reading confidence was rising due to playing those text-based games. Eventually, I asked if I could borrow a book from Tim.

Tim, sadist that he was, picked out a hefty tome of a book called Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy, a novel about World War III. I re-read the first page of that book seemingly countless times, but every time I got to the end, I couldn’t remember any of the content. The mere struggle overloaded my brain circuitry, wiping my memory card.

I struggled with Red Storm Rising for what seemed like forever before I gave up and asked Tim if I could borrow an easier read. He handed me a book about vampires, which was much easier. It had lots of sex and gore in it. What teenage boy wouldn’t want to read it? I don’t remember the title but it was part of a series, and I read the entire thing. I moved on to Stephen King. I read a number of his books before getting back to Tom Clancy. It was such a feeling of triumph when I turned the last page of Red Storm Rising; I could read!

As I look back on my life, it is now clear that those simple gladiatorial combat games helped me learn to read. Were it not for Tim and his games, I probably would never have been able to write The Unbound Soul.

As often happens with childhood friends, Tim and I drifted apart as we got older. I may never get the chance to thank him in person for his contribution to my life. Be that as it may, I can feel it. Thank you, Tim!

Book Giveaway from September 29th - October 29th! Enter for a chance to win one of ten signed first edition hard-copies of The Unbound Soul with the original cover!

Richard L. Haight

When I was young, I had an older friend named Tim. He was the only person that I hung out with at the time due to my personal issues. Tim was disliked by most kids, largely because he flaunted his intelligence, bragging of a 165 IQ. Intelligence used rightly is a wonderful attribute, but he made a point of intellectually dominating, something few could tolerate. At that time I was insecure about my own intelligence due to a learning disorder. Tim’s intellectual dominance didn’t bother me because I was willing to accept some degree of minor abuse.

When Tim and I hung out we’d play games (video games, bowling, table-tennis, billiards, etc.), while he told various stories of his accomplishments, and he taught me about government, economy, politics, current events, and history. I absorbed these things like an unconscious sponge, not realizing that I was learning anything. Tim treated me well, and we became good friends.

I remember one day, we were playing video games when Tim brought up the subject of death. At the end of a game, Tim turned to me deliberately and stated that if he ever had to choose between his life and mine, he would choose his life without hesitation. To accentuate his point, he stated that he would pull the trigger himself if that meant saving his life, which he justified by saying, “Hey, I like you and all, but I’m number one.” He said it with such determination, that I had no doubt that he meant it. He claimed that this was natural self-love, but I didn’t believe it. It felt more like a combination of self-absorption and fear of death.

That was my moment of choice, and Tim was quite intentionally showing his cards. At least he wasn’t lying to me. There was a hollow place in my gut, and I knew in that moment that someday I was going to pay for this friendship. I felt like a bug waiting to be squashed.

I made a choice in that moment to sacrifice my long-term interest in order to maintain the immediate friendship. I didn’t want to be alone anymore, so I chose to have this friend rather than no friend.

I understood the permutations of my choice in an instant and without much thought, although I reflected back on that moment repeatedly over the years of our relationship. If, at that time, you had asked me about that decision, and assuming I was honest in my answer, I would have said that someday I might pay a big price for that choice, but it was better than being alone. I hoped that Tim would change or that I would get lucky and avoid someday being used up and tossed away like an empty soda can - or worse.

Many years later, Tim asked for money to start up a new company, which I agreed to give him in exchange for stock. He got the remaining money he needed from his family. Within months of starting his company, he closed it due to new laws prohibiting his venture. He kept the money that he had remaining, but he promised to pay it back.

About ten years later, I had still not received a penny. I needed some cash, so I emailed Tim. I knew he had a good job and was saving money because he had told me as much. I couldn’t understand why he neglected his debt. I pressed him about it, so he sent me a check for less than half of what he originally owed me, saying that was all he owed. I replied to remind him of the original amount. I never heard from Tim again. I thought he might have died.

About a year later I found that he was writing a blog, so I knew he was alive and well. He had chosen his life over mine. In my mind I could hear him saying, “If it’s a choice between me or you, I will shoot you myself.” He had metaphorically “pulled the trigger” to avoid paying me.

It hurt badly because he was an old friend with whom I shared many precious memories. I was angry, feeling betrayed and cheated. It was then that I recalled I had been given fair warning so many years earlier, when Tim said he would chose his life over mine every time. In my heart of hearts, even as a kid, I suspected our relationship would end badly from the outset. I was responsible in a lot of ways.

Since then, I have realized that there has always been a warning at some point regarding unhealthy relationships. After each crash, I could identify the moment where I had made the choice. I suspect this is the case with all of us. In my heart, I usually knew, but I went along anyway because I felt that I couldn’t do any better. I told myself that they will change, not realizing that I was the one who need to change. Sometimes I wanted to "be kind,” when actually I was afraid to stand up for myself or disagree by saying, “no”. Later, I felt resentment and the desire to blame.

Clearly, there are benefits to “toxic” relationships. If there weren’t, we would never enter into them, would we? In my case, I had a lot of fun, I learned a lot about the world, and even how to read as a result of hanging around Tim—rewards for which I feel deep gratitude. I needed this friendship to awaken. Realizing this truth, I can feel no regret.

To be clear, I am not absolving abusers. That’s a battle necessarily fought in their mirror, not mine. Of course, there are few of us who haven’t taken advantage of someone at some point in our lives, right?

About the author:
Richard L. Haight instructs martial, meditation, and healing arts. Guided by a series of profound visions, Haight discovered the realization of the Oneness, which so many seek. Through his new book, The Unbound Soul, his meditation, and martial arts seminars, Richard is helping to ignite a spiritual awakening that is free of all constraints.

Book giveaway! Enter for a chance to win one of 10 signed first-editions of The Unbound Soul (original cover). Sept 29 - Oct 29th, 2016
The Unbound Soul: Applied Spirituality

The Unbound Soul: Applied Spirituality
Join the most epic adventure - awakening!