Sunday, July 09, 2006

Spiritual risk management

Wanting to buy shares in God, Inc. (having heard that it is the biggest corporation in the universe), I went to the Church and eagerly bought into their mutual fund. It seemed great at first; they took care of everything, and there were always lots of people to talk to about how great our portfolios were doing. But after ten years I realized I had only been getting a 1% return. Hey, the Church was doing great but I wasn't.

Then I heard about this guru/broker who was offering a much better deal, so I signed up with him. He only had a small group of clients but that was better because I got a lot of personal attention. He encouraged me to invest everything in The Self LLC because it was a small cap, supposedly faster growth than the lumbering God Inc. which the Church seemed to have an overly cozy relationship with. Everything seemed great but after another ten years, I added up what I had made and was a bit shocked to find I had only made 3% when after all under the guru's guidance I was expecting nothing less than to get rich.

So I began wondering how else I could get my piece of spiritual fortune. I decided to try to do it myself and jumped into speculation, directly buying futures on God using metaphysical leverage and got burned pretty badly when the market tanked in one of those "Dark Night of the Soul" depressions. I wasn't totally wiped out, but I was down to my irrefrangible religious assets (IRA).

Finally I realized I needed to be realistic about the downside of my investments in my spiritual life and decided to take a more conservative approach, looking for incremental regular gains rather than a windfall by betting the farm. I mitigated my speculative excesses by writing low-risk option spreads on the DIV index (a market basket of gods and saints of all religions) protected by stops whenever the index moved too close to my strikes. Thus whenever the heat gets too intense I jump out of the fray and cool my heels until the moment is opportune to trade again. The returns are steady, and they do add up.

You have to learn to manage the risk, because you sure can lose it all, but you're not going to really make it unless you take control of your own fund of spiritual happiness. It's possible to do it, and the Tao of it is—very carefully.

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Space for a moment

Insofar is not a word
to be used in a poem
and yet insofar as this is a poem
it will be used.

Truth is spoken here,
let us be clear,
and in these few words
we’ll create a space for a moment
where the real can find a perch.

Feel it when it lands
how it speaks commandingly in your cells
and delivers its disarmingly
frank message.

It wants nothing more
than to be a significant other
while turning your body into molten love.

In so far a way as you may walk
you are near for what is here for you
for what is.
Ingest the truth, my friend.