Take a few paragraphs to describe a perfect world.
My ideal future is transhumanistic and spiritual.
Through advances in technology and culture, life quality and length are maximized. All basic needs are met; housing, nourishment, healthcare (including psychological care) and spiritual guidance are available to everyone. Enhancements of our natural capacities and wellness enrich everyone’s lives, ending needs of lacking and allowing us to step into explorations of being.
We are constantly connected through the heir of the internet and are able to live with rich relationships spanning all varieties differences. Communities are vibrantly alive with people at every stage of development, but with a smooth transition offered up the spiral as high as possible.
We live lives increasingly in conscious service of evolution, bringing as much joy, wealth, wellness and diversity to the world as possible. We are lead by the wisest among us, the saintly elite, and follow in the footsteps of greatness into ever more surprising greatness.
We are never living like this but always inching closer.

What book are you reading right now?
I’m in the middle of Murakami Haruki‘s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I fell in love with Haruki’s style while reading Norwegian Wood a couple years ago. His blend of fantastic and realistic elements in an accessable style endeared him to me immediately. So far this story is living up to all my expectations for his novels.

What’s one thing you know you could do to improve your health?
A lack of sleep is the biggest obstacle I have for better health. During each week there are several days I get less than an optimal amount of sleep and that snowballs by throwing off my tendency to exercise, eat well and otherwise maintain a healthy lifestyle. I’d like to secure 7-8 hours of sleep each day while still having time for my other commitments.

What, in your view, makes life meaningful?
Evolution makes life meaningful. Our ability to evolve to become more inclusive in our care, love, understanding and identity is so vast, mysterious and delightful that I can’t imagine being in the process of a better journey. From dust to divinity is quite a transformation, even if it’s only on the relative side of things.

Connect.

Grow.

Inspire.

Empower.

Let’s change the world.

Zaadz, the finest social networking site with a purpose, has started a wonderful daily prompt about the things that matter most in our lives.

It’s a lofty ideal, but we couldn’t expect anything less from a site that has a mission to change the world. The prompts are inspiring and give plenty of room to navigate our own thoughts through. I’m hoping to keep doing the prompts as often as I can.

I didn’t manage to start when the project began on the 21st, so I’ll play catchup here.

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
I would take bold actions without worrying about finances. My biggest fear is losing financial stability. It prevents me from doing many things I would if it was not a concern for me. If I didn’t worry about this I’d be free to be the nomadic writer-mystic I’ve always felt called to be. Within the fear is a very real danger of being paralyzed by poverty, but I still need to start taking some more daring steps if I want to live as I wish.

What’s your dream job? Describe it.
My three greatest passions are writing, mysticism and travel, so my ideal job has to include those. Being the nomadic writer-mystic I wrote of in my last response doesn’t have too many job listings that fit, though. Making a living writing would be the closest to my ideal job I’ll find in reality, but Zaadz is infected with idealism, so I’ll stick with that. I couldn’t imagine a better life than this: traveling the world, studying with teachers as I did and then blogging about it with clarity, living on sponsorships of the site.

What is one book that has changed your life? How?
The Atman Project: A Transpersonal View of Human Development was the one. Like a lot of folks at Zaadz, reading Ken Wilber for the first time was a milestone that irrevocably changed me. Coming out of a postmodern period that had left me in a bit of a bleak spot, his integral works were refreshing and gave me more hope than I could put into words. While his whole body of work has been invaluable to me, and his later books better written, I still look back at the first reading of The Atman Project as a pivotal moment in my life.

What are your top ten goals for the year?

1. Shed possessions, so that I can have everything I own fit into the trunk of a car.
2. Create a location-independent income source.
3. Finalize a long-term structure for my Integral Life Practice.
4. Socialize more frequently.
5. Read every book I have in paper.
6. Speak a second language or three (French, Spanish, Arabic).
7. Find a meditation teacher.
8. Enliven my circle of friends.
9. Reinvent my wardrobe.
10. Become tattooed.

In the emergency room is not an ideal place to spend a lone day off.

Sunday morning I arrived home from work and stayed up to do some laundry, install Ubuntu Feisty Fawn on my laptop and have some food. After being asleep a couple hours I got a call from Gwen, who was at the emergency room. I rushed to get dressed and got a cab to meet her.

It turned out she’d been having high blood pressure and a high pulse rate and had been sent to the hospital after calling her GP. We spent the rest of the day, until nearly midnight, at the emergency room, waiting for her to see a doctor. We left without much resolved, and the cause of Gwen’s vision loss, heart abnormalities and other ailments remains in mystery.

It was a draining night for both of us, but Gwen seems to be holding together. I know it has to be incredibly hard to go through all she has in the past few months. I’m glad I can be there for her, even during days like that.

I like to reevaluate the trajectory of my personal growth fairly often. It’s been helping me to keep on track more and to push my limits further than I would when I was less disciplined. With the first quarter of the year fast approaching its end, and Spring officially here, it seems like a good time to reflect on my progress.

In February I wrote about entrenching new patterns in my life and I’ve continued with this in the time since. My resistance training is showing modest but steady results, I’m still churning out a photo each day and my daily writing is lagging behind, sadly. Overall, I’m happy with my trajectory.

In April I will be getting rid of as many items as I can from amid my clutter, through selling and giving away as much as I can in 30 days. I’m actually looking forward to this a lot, because I always feel more creative and unfettered in an environment that is uncluttered. It might just be a clinging to order and minimalism, but it works well for me.

The framework I use to direct my personal development is an Integral Life Practice, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Central to ILP are various modules used to assess and improve many aspects of our lives. I’d like to share with you my most recent look at my overall practice in a range of areas in hope it might inspire you to look at your own life.

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I was sad to have to miss out on Gala‘s International Dress-Up Day #2 on Saturday. She had a theme I was looking forward to, dressing up as a character, but my work schedule wasn’t condusive for it. The results from those who did take part were impressive, though. Gala as Witch Baby and others as Garth from Wayne’s World, Sherlock Holmes, Lizzie Bennett from Pride and Prejudice, Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, Tosca from Madame Butterfly, Strawberry Shortcake, Red Riding Hood, and the Queen of Hearts offered some fun from the sidelines.

I think I’ve found the geekiest (and hottest?) retro gaming tattoo ever in Electracat‘s Konami Code piece.

It’s been a while since I last shared my Threadless favourites, so here are some in the running I’m hoping will be made.

I don’t usually go in for a lot of nostalgic mucking, but sometimes it’s done right. No More Kings is a band that really knows how to play with nostalgia in a smart and fun way. Their debut video for “Sweep the Leg” is a perfect example. It’s a song from the perspective of the villain of the Karate Kid movie, and the video brings back some of the movie’s cast and also features Mr. Belding! Saved by the Bell was a staple of my childhood, so seeing him immediately brought a grin to my face. You can watch the video below.

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Tonight I was invited out to a spoken word event by my friend Pam. I scrambled to be clean and fed and headed out to Ginger’s Tavern for Speak! On third Thursday of each month Word Iz Bond, Halifax’s spoken word collective, holds the event and this was the first time I’d been able to attend.

At the venue I met up with Pam, her girlfriend Jenn and our friend Sara. I hadn’t seen any of them for a long while. It’s rare I’ve had a chance to be social at all lately, so it was doubly nice to see them again, even if we didn’t have a chance to talk much.

The performances throughout the night were mixed. There were some lackluster poems and some genuinely inspired poetry presented by capable performers. Pam’s roommate, who goes by the name Native Son, was one of the highlights, with a really smooth delivery. I was deeply impressed by this community I didn’t have anywhere on my radar; Halifax has a surprisingly vibrant poetry life.

While there, Sara asked me about my own poetry. I’ve left that dormant for a long time, but tonight has me feeling inspired to find the time to write a poem again. It’s been a couple years since my last one, if my memory is serving me well, so maybe it’s time to unearth my inner poet.

I’ve found one of this city’s real gems at last. This small city still holds a lot I haven’t yet discovered. I’m looking forward to the next time I can make it to Speak!, even though that may have to be a couple months from now.

For a long while I’ve been unable to find a suitable label for my spirituality. I’ve inhabited a number of religions but haven’t been able to settle within the boundaries of any. Still, I recognize how much it can help to have the structure of the practices, community and culture of a home religion. As I strive to become more deeply engaged in spiritual practice, this freedom and deficiency has become a knot I find myself trying to untie often.

I grew up as a Christian, going to church and believing whole-heartedly in it, fully inhabiting Christianity in its ethnocentric form. Moving out of this I sampled a lot of different modes, including atheism, agnosticism and strange new agey stuff. As I abandoned blind belief and crawled through achievement and rationality into the mess that was my pluralistic and post-modern university period, I was unanchored, under no religious flag and inquisitively exploring.

A turning point came when I delved into Taoism and discovered meditation. Having a practice was exciting and fresh. There’s a world of difference between mystic (esoteric, experiential) and mythic (exoteric, faith-based) religion and I couldn’t have moved forward without mysticism. Without direct experience of the spiritual I didn’t have a compass to move my spiritual life into the increasing discernment I’d soon embrace.

And next I moved into an affinity for Buddhism. Its practices and landscape were so very inviting to me, and it became as close to a home as I’ve had since my childhood’s rigid belief. I’ve maintained an interest in many religions, but Buddhism has held some sway over me for several years now. But, like Will over at thinkBuddha, I feel I can not call myself a Buddhist, just Buddhish.

So where in the vast expanse of religions does my wanderlusting heart reside? Trans-path integral mystic may not flow as smoothly or clearly as I’d like, but more of who I am can fit in it than any other name I have discovered. Being unwilling to slide Buddha, Christ or other teachers from my view, I must accept the challenge of creating structure and communion as skillfully as possible. Guidelines may be scarce here, but I feel less alone in this new territory and every day discover fellow explorers here. May we be surefooted in ascending the shrouded heights ahead.

Our human frailty has been terribly obvious to me this week. My roommate April has been hospitalized and underwent spinal surgery, which was unexpected by any of us. My girlfriend Gwen has been hit by a number of maladies, culminating in losing sight this afternoon. It’s been a jarring time, to say the least. Witnessing people I love suffer is always painful, but it’s no longer something I’m moved from deeper stillness by.

Today at work I was faced with a rather unpleasant afternoon. Unusual circumstances left my co-workers and I facing angry, frustrated and unconsolable guests. I held up under considerable stress but saw my co-worker break down under the pressure he faced. If I hadn’t spent the past few years cultivating equanimity I couldn’t have found a smile for our guests or kept sharpness from my voice and I may not even have made it through the shift.

It’s often easy to miss the practical benefits of a spiritual practice, but these two aspects of my life recently have reminded me of how much my capacity to be unwaveringly present with hardship has expanded with my practice. Whether tonglen or a simple mindfulness practice, the fostering of equanimity and presence is incredibly powerful. The less we turn away from, the better able to live with grace and act with compassion we become. This bears fruit in everything we do, from our work to our relationships and into our times of solitude; nothing is left untouched by the kindness we muster through a resolve to never turn away.

Sunday afternoon Nathan and I headed out to The Pavilion, Halifax’s all ages venue, to see a show by Gamma Gamma Rays, The Sleepless Nights and The Most Serene Republic. There we met up with three of Nathan’s friends and settled into a small crowd of indie kids. It was strange to see a live show while it was still light out.

The Gamma Gamma Rays were a fun surprise, opening the show with scrappy indie pop. They paled compared to the two following bands, but I wouldn’t mind seeing them again. They’re Halifax locals, so I’m sure they’ll pop up again.

Since first seeing them live, I haven’t been able to stop listening to The Sleepless Nights; I now rank them as my favourite local band. Sunday they were superb, treating us all to some great new material. Their songcraft is exceptional, with A. A. Wallace being a formidable frontman. Through to the end of “Godspeed You Deathwolf” there wasn’t a lull in the greatness of their sound.

I didn’t have much of a sense of what The Most Serene Republic would be like live, though I’d been listening to them for a while. I was impressed by their performance, a tight and immersive experience, though not entirely accessible, much like their albums.

Over at Integral Options Cafe, William posted about Multiple Intelligences. Multiple Intelligences is a way of exploring our diverse aptitudes. We each have strengths and weaknesses we live with and it’s very helpful to be aware of these. There’s a simple M.I. test available that measures 8 intelligences, and is a good way to begin.

My results placed my strongest intelligence as naturalistic. This makes sense, both because I’ve always had a love for nature and because understanding the workings of life has been a focus in my personal study.

Second is the linguistic intelligence, which is what I’ve always considered my strongest of these areas and the most obvious trait to be measured. I wouldn’t claim mastery of language, just an abiding love for it.

On the other end of the spectrum, my kinaesthetic intelligence is a bit weak. I’ve been actively working to improve this for a while now, and February was a turning point in my dedication to putting effort into shaping my body. An indicator like this is a strong reminder of the work still left to do.