Triggers: Revelations from Training a Dog

LucyFeature

Lucy

A lit­tle more than three weeks ago, my wife and I, adopted a res­cue dog from our local SPCA. This dog, which we call Lucy, was recently spayed. When we first saw her she was calm and serene. Lucy3She was recov­er­ing from her ‘pro­ce­dure’ and was under the effect of the minor surgery.

But after tak­ing her home and started to get acquainted with her, we saw why some fam­ily aban­doned her into the streets of Philadel­phia. Inside she was mostly calm and extremely sweet, but once she was out­side she was over­whelmed by fear and became vio­lently aggres­sive with every dog she encountered.

She pulled with all her might on her leash and when she even thought another dog was near, she would go absolutely crazy with rage and feroc­ity. She would throw her entire body against the leash, growl, and act like she wanted to kill every­thing in sight. When she actu­ally encoun­tered a dog, she would attack.

And then when we returned home, she was noth­ing but sweet­ness and love. Lucy2

Our dog suf­fered from emo­tional trig­gers that made her extremely fear­ful. This is a com­mon prob­lem, espe­cially among res­cue dogs.

But there is a far more inter­est­ing story here and that was about my own trig­gers. Her aggres­sion, matched with my inabil­ity to con­trol her behav­ior, trig­gered my own sense of help­less­ness and inef­fec­tive­ness. I dreaded tak­ing her on a walk and often after one of our har­row­ing walks ended, I was filled with the sense that I was totally inad­e­quate to the task of liv­ing with this dog.

We hired an expert dog obe­di­ence trainer who was not at all over­whelmed or dis­cour­aged by our Lucy’s aggres­sion. She showed us many tech­niques we could use to start trans­form­ing Lucy into becom­ing a real com­pan­ion. We were inspired by her many sto­ries of suc­cess­fully deal­ing with these kinds of dogs. I started using these tech­niques and I could see improve­ments in Lucy.

But then on one walk, on a very quiet path near our house, she encoun­tered a fear­ful girl and excited by the girl’s fear she became even more aggres­sive and truly ter­ri­fied her. I sim­ply broke down in my own dis­tress and decided to return her to the pound where she would surely be killed. I even knew the prob­lem was me and yet my emo­tional dis­tress was mak­ing it pos­si­ble to make her death a fact.

Lucy became my ulti­mate trig­ger. Gun to headMy Fear-Self, which was con­fi­dent and self-assured, was bro­ken by this dog and I was in direct con­tact with my under­ly­ing Wound. I was not only mis­er­able, but I was sud­denly filled by an iden­tity that was entirely char­ac­ter­ized by my per­sonal inad­e­quacy. I was even filled with thoughts of self-destruction. This lit­tle dog had taken me to the depths of depres­sion. I would never have thought it was possible.

If you have read my book Lib­er­a­tion from the Lie you will know exactly what I’m talk­ing about it. The brit­tle Fear-Self, the enlight­ened Eric mask had crum­bled and what was revealed was the scared and ago­niz­ingly painful Wound that lay under­neath. My fail­ure with Lucy placed me in direct con­tact with my own pri­mal inval­i­da­tion expe­ri­ence and I was in the full embrace of my inad­e­quacy belief.

That day, when my wife returned from work, we talked about every­thing that was hap­pen­ing. I said that acquir­ing Lucy was a huge mis­take, it was like hav­ing a baby with devel­op­men­tal prob­lems and at the age of 60 I no longer had the energy or capac­ity to han­dle the chal­lenge. I said that I believed that Lucy was an insane dog, a kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. She sar­cas­ti­cally called me “Mr. Zen” and asked why I was so effected by a com­mon dog prob­lem — why was I so quick to give up — why was I so ready to give this lov­able dog the death sentence?

We decided that the prob­lem was much more about me than the dog and I agreed with this. I knew I was the prob­lem and I knew that I was dis­cov­er­ing some­thing that needed to be dis­cov­ered and explored.

Lucy’s main trig­ger was sim­ply being out­side. Away from the safe con­fines of her home she became hyper-reactive. She was in a place where poten­tially lethal dan­ger was around every cor­ner. She could never let her guard down. So she scans her envi­ron­ment for dan­ger and her way of deal­ing with that dan­ger was by killing it. As her owner, I knew that her thoughts were crazy, that her insane behav­ior was the out­come of liv­ing a life in the streets of a big city; a place where threats to her well-being were everywhere.

Peo­ple are no dif­fer­ent. Our psy­ches are filled with dark, vul­ner­a­ble places where our most extreme fears are given life. To some­one else, our fears may appear strange and unnec­es­sary. But to the per­son expe­ri­enc­ing the fear, these trig­gers are the most real thing in their lives. This is the land of the Wound. The details of why we are so prone to suf­fer are com­pli­cated and go way beyond a sim­ple blog post. If you want to learn more about the source of our fears then I urge you to read the Lib­er­a­tion Book. You can do so for free (see the left side of this page for a link to the book online) or you can pur­chase a mobile edi­tion for 4.95 (see left side as well) or pur­chase the phys­i­cal copy of the book here.

What are your trig­gers? What causes your mask to crum­ble into unhap­pi­ness, frus­tra­tion, and hope­less­ness? Often they are chal­lenges with chil­dren, work, health, spouses, friends, par­ents, and poverty. Every trig­ger is a bul­let that goes straight to the Wound. They are rev­e­la­tions into our own deep­est mem­o­ries of pain and suf­fer­ing. In these cir­cum­stances, we are no dif­fer­ent from the dog Lucy or her owner Eric. We are in face-to-face con­tact with our orig­i­nal inval­i­da­tion expe­ri­ence long, long ago.

The vast major­ity of our trig­gers are much sub­tler. The more sen­si­tive we are to these trig­gers, the more we real­ize that they are almost always present. We also make the unex­pected dis­cov­ery that we have count­less “pos­i­tive” trig­gers as well.

We come to real­ize that trig­gers are mem­o­ries and that mem­o­ries are thoughts. Trig­gers are the legacy of our mem­o­ries oper­at­ing ener­get­i­cally in our moment-to-moment expe­ri­ence. Seen this way, they are all point­ers to our past express­ing them­selves in our present. Ulti­mately we see some­thing even deeper. Trig­gers are who we take our­selves to be! We come to see that we are our triggers!

I can watch polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing on the tele­vi­sion and notice trig­gers hap­pen­ing in how I react to what I’m watch­ing. When I see a beau­ti­ful Ver­meer paint­ing, I can under­stand that as a trig­ger. When I smell a rose, that trig­ger con­nects me with a world of flow­ers that I have enjoyed through the years. Every emo­tion, every expe­ri­ence of stress is the result of a trig­ger. Each is an invi­ta­tion into who we believe our­selves to be.

Trig­gers that cause undo stress are those that will tem­porar­ily destroy our con­fi­dent Fear-Self mask and bring us into con­tact with our unseen, under­ly­ing Wound.

Awak­en­ing is the real­iza­tion that we are not our trig­gers. We are what is that notices them and that which notices them is not effected by them.

Per­haps our great­est trig­ger of all are books, videos, and blog posts that sus­tain the belief that we can become per­son­ally enlight­ened through our inte­gra­tion of their mes­sage into our own lives!!!

And we see this final truth: that all of life is a sin­gle vast trigger.

Ulti­mately, trig­gers are sources of heal­ing. In those moments we need to draw on our even deeper capac­ity to see (SEE) what is hap­pen­ing. We see the pain. We see the inad­e­quacy belief. We see the breaking-up of our Fear-Self. And then, from within that see­ing, we draw on our capac­ity for self-understanding and com­pas­sion to our own child selves that are aris­ing pow­er­fully and painfully into our con­scious­ness. And we allow the emo­tions to flow within that greater chan­nel of self-compassion and patience … for the storm will pass.

When life is too com­fort­able, we loose touch with our own trig­gers. But often hav­ing a child, los­ing a job, or sev­er­ing an impor­tant rela­tion­ship are sources of suf­fer­ing that can wake us from the dol­drums of every­day life. In my case, it was get­ting a chal­leng­ing dog. Lucy became my own mir­ror and in a way she has become my guru.

When we can allow life to become our guru, espe­cially in times of great per­sonal suf­fer­ing, we can allow the light of chal­lenge to become our own healer. Life can always be counted on to pro­vide just the right cir­cum­stances to get the heal­ing we need. It takes us to the next level of self-realization. The deeper we go, the tougher it gets … but if Life pro­vides us with the oppor­tu­nity, then it must mean that Life believes that we are capa­ble of tak­ing on the chal­lenge. We release into the pain and we are deliv­ered onto the other side wiser, more com­pas­sion­ate, and stronger.

This sin­gle post has the power to change your life. Just these words can change every­thing. A lot went into it. If you can afford it, would you con­sider treat­ing me to a latte? If so, just locate the lit­tle wid­get on the top left on the top of this page. Thank you

You Are Happening: Seeking Ends

2 And you think your life sucks s640x426 52174 580You are hap­pen­ing. That is the one and only unde­ni­able truth!

Within that hap­pen­ing is every­thing else; the space, the objects that are in that space, sounds, smells, tex­tures … life.

But there is some­thing else inside this hap­pen­ing that is you. There is a thought clus­ter labeled “me”. That too is happening.

This thought clus­ter per­sis­tently says, “I’m such a loser”, “I’m bored and need some­thing to excite me”, “The world is a ter­ri­ble place”, “My life sucks”, and so on and so forth. This thought clus­ter makes unremit­ting demands on the world and one’s self.

These thoughts really appear to have power. They are both objects (thoughts) and atten­tion draw­ing energy.

But also notice how much hap­pier and lighter you’d be were these thoughts just expe­ri­enced as pass­ing wisps of the past, lit­tle more than the tini­est sparks of mem­ory and habit.

What gives these thoughts the power they seem to have is only one thing.

The hap­pen­ing that we are is sub­tle and so ever-present that the mind over­looks it. Instead it places its iden­tity with these demand­ing thoughts about our crappy self and our crappy world. That’s where the excite­ment is … that’s where the habit­ual energy resides. Because these thoughts are so monot­o­nous, we are dri­ven to dis­tract our­selves from their cease­less demands through any­thing that we might find excit­ing and new. Thus, if we seek to escape them, we live lives con­sumed by dis­trac­tion and that too becomes a bit­ter fruit.

And it’s exactly that which keeps the life of end­less seek­ing in place. The thoughts have their own audi­ence — the psy­cho­log­i­cal “me”, the most zeal­ous of all believ­ers, the ulti­mate fundamentalist.

Wel­come to your own insane reli­gious sect … you.

But this is not who you are.

You are the hap­pen­ing, free of any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with any thought. Thoughts and sit­u­a­tions and sto­ries are more like the cloth­ing briefly worn by the hap­pen­ing. They come and go, but the hap­pen­ing that is you is always present.

The hap­pen­ing shines through every­thing, no mat­ter how seem­ingly hor­ri­ble and ter­ri­fy­ing. It sees through job loss, rela­tion­ship loss and every other tribu­la­tion that the body/mind suffers.

When we real­ize that we are the hap­pen­ing and none of its clothes, how­ever beau­ti­ful and fas­ci­nat­ing they may be, then the search ends.

Why Do We Continue to Seek?

Death note 01Why do we con­tinue to seek?

I think that is one of the most core ques­tions we can ever ask our­selves and I’m not just talk­ing about “spir­i­tual” seek­ing. I’m talk­ing about any com­pul­sive drive that demands that we be more or dif­fer­ent or bet­ter than what we believe our­selves to be. A com­pul­sive drive is an espe­cially pow­er­ful need. It’s some­thing we just can’t resist doing. The need itself feels like the most pow­er­ful thing in the universe.

My book, Lib­er­a­tion from the Lie, is based on this very ques­tion. The basic premise of this book is that because of infan­tile trauma we absorb our most deep-seated belief; “as I am, I am not adequate/sufficient”.

It is this belief that dri­ves all com­pul­sions. For most of us, it will move us in the “improve­ment direc­tion” — I will become “more”, “bet­ter”, “richer”, “enlight­ened”. But some­times it moves us in the oppo­site direc­tion; I will drown my pain in drugs. I will remove myself from the world. I am so depressed that I can’t drag my sorry body out of bed. I will kill myself. We can see that in the “bet­ter” cat­e­gory, the psy­che needs to refute the core belief. In the “neg­a­tive” cat­e­gory, the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the core thought has emerged, in a raw form, our liv­ing con­science and the suf­fer­ing is inescapable. Con­tinue read­ing

Watch This Video — Who Am Me?

After all these years, after all the stuff we’ve read, the videos we watched, the teach­ings we have attended, we still don’t know who we are.

This video makes our actual iden­tity clear, but with one pro­viso and I’m going to make this pro­viso very clear on this post. I’ve taken the next sec­tion of this post from my new book, The Lib­er­a­tion Way, which is still in being edited, but I thought this sec­tion was so impor­tant that I wanted it included with this post.

We keep on search­ing for me.
The search is fueled by the belief that there is a me that I can some­how find.

But who is search­ing?
Is that not me?

The seeker searches for him­self.
He becomes frus­trated when every self he stum­bles on he rejects as not being the “real” me.

After 30 years of this we still haven’t arrived.
When do we tire of all this activity?

Who am I?

I’m guess­ing that you still don’t know.

Let’s take one more look at this belief that fuels the search.
This is our last exam­i­na­tion of this strange energy.

We believe that we are not the seeker … that we are some­one else and it is this some­one else we hope to find one day through our med­i­ta­tions, watch­ing of videos, or of read­ing books like this one.

Why, I ask you, do we reject the seeker?
Why can’t we just be that person?

Is it because we don’t want to be a seeker?
Does that strike you as, per­haps, just a lit­tle pathetic?

As I’ve said a thou­sand times, we are self-rejecting.
We per­sis­tently mir­ror our own pri­mal invalidation.

We have taken the place of our well intended par­ents.
In a very well intended way we con­tinue the process of self-rejection and we do that by reject­ing the seeker and, all the time, seek­ing some­one else.

When we were inval­i­dated by our well intended par­ents, we believed that they were reject­ing a “thing” an “entity”, a noun.
We were that “thing”, “entity”, noun.

So we came to believe that the “me” is a “thing”, an “entity”.
And because this “thing” was rejected, we sought to become some­thing else.

And what was this some­thing else we sought to become?
It was a pro­jec­tion … the pro­jec­tion that we prob­a­bly absorbed by what we thought our par­ents wanted us to be.

We have con­tin­ued this end­less jour­ney of becom­ing some­one we are not the whole of our lives.

So who am I?

Is the I a “thing”, an “entity”, a noun?

Is it the under­ly­ing empti­ness that many of the sages of the past seemed to imply … that which dis­pas­sion­ately observes and notices … the mys­te­ri­ous wit­ness on which the whole flow of exis­tence drifts?

I say we are not a “thing”, an “entity”, or a noun.

This means that if you con­tinue to strug­gle to find out who you are, if you insist on con­tin­u­ing being the role of the seeker then that is who you shall be!

Do you under­stand? You are what you are and you have some power to under­stand this process and you have some power to effect how you are in this world. The oper­a­tive word in that sen­tence is “some”. You can see and understand.

Is Death an Illusion? Is Life an Illusion?

Life vs death by treheeWhere am I?

Sounds, I notice them …
when
I notice them.

Even if I ‘know’ they are present …
I only notice them when the notic­ing of them happens.

What is notic­ing?
Am I the act of noticing?

In deep sleep I notice noth­ing, yet I awaken and “I’m” am still here!

So, I can’t be the notic­ing. Notic­ing hap­pens, just like every­thing else that happens.

What am I?
Who am I?

Could I be the life, the energy that is noth­ing at all?

Truly noth­ing! Already vir­tu­ally like death itself.

I began this long, long jour­ney over 30 years ago because of a pro­found fear of death.

And now, in this moment, I won­der and real­ize what I could never have imagined;

the dual­ity of life and death may be the ulti­mate illusion.

Per­haps we nei­ther die nor do we live, for I can truly not find any­one or any­thing here or there or any­where — just appear­ances hap­pen­ing, here, there, and everywhere.

Unborn wan­der­ing the world, I no longer fear any shadow as I walk in the Vally of death’s grand illusion.

Stupidity is an Illusion or What’s Your Beliefity?

Am i stupidIgno­rance is so depress­ing. Every­day I read the NY Times and sev­eral other news sites and I get just so depressed by igno­rance. Some­times it seems like nearly every­one is stu­pid. Except, of course, me.

But there are no stu­pid peo­ple. What appears as stu­pid­ity is sim­ply belief, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with a psy­che that clings to a belief that is con­trary to what is.

And the only dif­fer­ence between a Bud­dha and every­one else, is that a Bud­dha either entirely has fallen out of belief with the psy­che or takes it with a Very light touch, since the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the psy­che is the core belief that is con­trary with what is.

Those of you who have read Lib­er­a­tion from the Lie will under­stand how this age of extreme tech­nol­ogy spawns both incred­i­ble achieve­ment, as well as out­stand­ing igno­rance. The two go hand in hand. The rea­son­ing and the story are rather com­plex, but they are made very clear in this book. Some­thing I can’t quite do at this site. If I could I would.

What do you believe? What do you cling to out of psy­cho­log­i­cal neces­sity. Do you need to believe that the USA is inca­pable of being a global ter­ror­ist, that every baby is a bless­ing from God?, that tech­nol­ogy will save us?, that the world is com­ing to an end in 2012?, that if you only work hard enough and have the luck of grace that you too will become enlightened?

These are all beliefs that keep us weighed down in the mire of igno­rance. It’s the rule of thought linked to emo­tion which takes the form of iden­tity + belief.

Per­haps I should coin a new word … hmm­m­mmm … idbel … lieftity … belity, beli­efity — I like that one. What’s your beliefity?

The Ego Wakes Up

Bed

My Bed This Morn­ing w/Laptop

Fuck, it’s another freez­ing morn­ing, dark out­side. Oh god. I hate get­ting out of bed, so I won’t get out. But the fuck­ing dog has to be walked. Why the fuck do we have a dog? She’s just some­thing I have to walk so I can pick up her shit. What a per­fect metaphor of my whole fuck­ing life.

I pull up the shade behind my bed with­out actu­ally get­ting out of bed. Totally dark grey brown out­side. The leaf­less trees look dead. A freez­ing cold wind can be heard blow­ing through the branches.

I gotta walk the dog in that.

I have to take a piss. So I drag my sorry body out of the bed and stum­ble to the toi­let. The whole piss­ing thing starts to slow down when you’ve hit my age. Reluc­tantly the piss expels itself from my body, it actu­ally drib­bles, while I watch in mourn­ful dis­gust. I’ve become hor­ri­ble, even to myself.

I look at the cute lit­tle dog in her crate. She’s des­per­ate to get out of there so she can take her piss and do her shit as she pulls me this way and that way through flat, frozen sub­ur­bia. Con­tinue read­ing

Freedom from All Fear: Continued

Build­ing on my post hon­or­ing the birth­day of Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., I uploaded a video dis­cussing these same prin­ci­ples, but from a some­what dif­fer­ent perspective.

You can see the video here. The dis­cus­sion starts kind of slowly, but it builds, so stick with it.

But I wanted to add this:

As you notice your inter­nal life and greatly reduce your atten­tion on the exter­nal world, you will see that your inter­nal being is a sea of dis­qui­etude and desire. The more you notice it and STOP respond­ing to the push and pull of desire (which will be impos­si­ble in the begin­ning — so don’t cre­ate unob­tain­able desire-based goals out of this), the true core of your Authen­tic Self (see Lib­er­a­tion from the Lie) will nat­u­rally arise. When this hap­pens, the illu­sion of the doer will cease com­mand­ing your life and every­thing will be changed.

Still­ness becomes your cen­ter. You will real­ize that every thought that is self-referential (rep­re­sent­ing a sub­stan­tial num­ber of all our thoughts), is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the drive for secu­rity where none can be found. Why can none be found? Because the self you believe your­self to be is non-existent.

I don’t want to say more.

Freedom from Fear: Dedicated to the Memory of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

There is noth­ing to fear, but fear itself. Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Of all the prob­lems we have in life, fear is the one thing that unites them all. We fear not being able to pay our bills, we fear los­ing a lov­ing rela­tion­ship, we fear lone­li­ness, we fear sick­ness, we fear get­ting old, we fear fail­ing in life.

In other words, we fear and we fear most of the time! Fear is like a nearly ever-present back­ground hum that is always ready to pounce on us when­ever the moment is ripe.

We love peo­ple like Mar­tin Luther King because he inspired us. He told us that we don’t ever need to be pris­on­ers of our fears. He showed us the way to live our lives on our strengths rather than cow­er­ing in the shad­ows of our terrors.

Is there a way to really deal with all fears once and for all?

Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks

There is and it is the truth of our own innate power that under­lies all fear. The great teach­ers of power, such as the Bud­dha, Gandhi, Crazy Horse, Joan of Arc, Rosa Parks, and Mar­tin Luther King have showed us the way.

What do their sto­ries have in com­mon? Is there a com­mon thread that can show us the way through fear?

We know that every­one, with­out excep­tion, is haunted by fear. It is, in fact, their expe­ri­ence with fear that pro­vided them with the moti­va­tion to explore it, learn from it, and finally to truly see through it. When we see through the dark veils of fear some­thing utterly new and vital is revealed and that is the power of our pri­mal selves.

What do we do when fear fills our life?

We panic, we resist, we med­icate, we flee to any dis­trac­tion that will take us away from the raw expe­ri­ence of it.

This is not the way. It is, in fact, pre­cisely how we sus­tain the power of fear in our lives. It is the way that we will always remain slaves to our fears.

What was their secret? What can we learn from these great teach­ers of the past?

If we are to see through fear, if we are to ever dis­cover the power that lies wait­ing for us, we must accept fear’s invitation.

What does that mean?

It means that we acknowl­edge the power of fear, that we cease avoid­ing it, that we com­mit our­selves to find­ing out what the storm of fear is really about. This means to open our­selves to fear in a way that is truly fear­less. Crazy Horse said, as he charged into bat­tle, “It is a good day to die”. This is the atti­tude we can emu­late when fear fills our own life. We let it be exactly as it must and we observe the hot emo­tions rise up and do their best to intim­i­date and destroy the observer.

These are the ter­rors of the soul. 995 out of a thou­sand will flee, but start­ing today be among the 5 out of a thou­sand who weath­ers the storm, who explores it, who observes it, who lasts it out.

For who weath­ers the storm with­out flee­ing from it? Could it be any­one less than the pri­mal power that is you? Is that not the power of total truth and lib­er­a­tion. Could it be any­thing else but the power that can weather any storm?

Every moment presents us with an oppor­tu­nity to dis­cover who we are under all the lay­ers of fear, for noth­ing is more gen­er­ous than fear. Nearly always it is present. So every minute is an invi­ta­tion. The trick is this: Fear tells us what we need to be, how we must change … truth tells us that who we must be we are already!

Is this not your fully awak­ened, authen­tic self? When you finally see that you don’t ever need to be a slave to your fears, then you are free and you and your world are reborn.

Find out for yourself.

I Am An Asshole

Me SnapseedI am an ass­hole, a jerk, and a loser.

These are some of the thoughts that occur to me about who I am. They occur to me quite frequently.

And, they are true!

I really am an ass­hole, a jerk, and a loser. I also think that I’m rather kind and com­pas­sion­ate, but can also be rather judg­men­tal and cutting.

But there is a caveat here. They are true to the extent that they reflect my own Wound, my own pri­mal inval­i­da­tion expe­ri­ence. They are accu­rate and reli­able rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the ear­li­est beliefs I had about myself and because they are so old and so well-established, that they tend to also be the most persistent.

All of these thoughts reflect my fam­ily of ori­gin and how I was raised.

I also think that I’m intel­li­gent, rather intel­lec­tual, of mediocre appear­ance and ath­letic abil­ity, a so-so writer, occa­sion­ally funny, urbane, fairly sophis­ti­cated, and I really like arti­chokes and Mahler.

But these some­what more com­pli­cated thoughts are not quite as “deep” as the first level … the ass­hole level.

But there is a layer that is even deeper than the pri­mal level and that is the level of life itself and we are all that. That is the deep­est level. It is deeper than all belief.

For a thought to have impact, it must be believed. So, when I say that I am an ass­hole, there must be a part of my per­sona that buys into that thought. With­out the believer, the thought has no power. It’s just ran­dom noise and noth­ing more.

So, do I believe that I am an ass­hole? Not really … okay, now and then I do believe it. But mostly the thought now brings on a know­ing chuckle and lit­tle more.

Do I believe that ass­holes are real? There are plenty of dicks in the world, so there really must be ass­holes as well. I would go as far to say that every­one has ass­hole poten­tial. It’s all part of the dis­tinctly human repetoire. Why should I exclude myself? Am I special?

When it is real­ized that we are, ulti­mately, not any thought, that, in fact, we are so much LESS, then we are free. For noth­ing can be freer than Life. Every thought is its own lit­tle prison. The bars are made of belief. Break out now, before it’s too late!

BTW — you can see my lat­est youtube video by click­ing here.

The Me: Foreground and Background — An Exploration Into Our Deepest Identity

Composition tips2Below is a short dia­logue I had this morn­ing with a Face­book friend. It brings atten­tion to the back­ground of expe­ri­ence. The vast major­ity of time we are entirely wrapped up with the fore­ground of con­scious­ness, but awak­en­ing is the real­iza­tion that the whole of the fore­ground is lack­ing in con­tin­u­ous sub­stance. It’s all just a vast, com­plex hap­pen­ing, which is, simul­ta­ne­ously sim­ple and obvi­ous. Self-limitation arises when there is full iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the fore­ground of expe­ri­ence. Total poten­tial­ity exists when that iden­ti­fi­ca­tion ends.

Friend: Eric i was read­ing your blog yes­ter­day piss­ing myself laugh­ing in the library at some of it espe­cially that jesus guy. I’m assum­ing he’s made up lol

Me: oh yeah, I remem­ber meet­ing him.

Friend: So he’s a real guy ?

Me: Appar­ently so

Friend: I was read­ing what makes some­one a dick and that seem rel­e­vant to the Wound, to what i feel inside right now
I keep say­ing it is a block when i tell people

Me: Some­times the writ­ings resonate.

How is it a block?

Friend: But a wound sounds pretty damn good way of describ­ing it.
It’s like a pain, an agony, yes like i can’t go beyond it. Con­tinue read­ing