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We need to understand that existential fear, the underlying unease that underlies so much of our personal experience, is not integral to the human condition. When we delve into the heart of this unease, this low-level free-floating fear, we discover the great sea of lack that undergirds all of our self-disappointment, as well as our seeking. This lack condition is a recent development in the human story.

Anthropologists have not observed this same lack phenomenon in pre-agricultural societies. So in this post we will return, again, to this world with the purpose of locating the very core root of fear itself. Perhaps if we can trace the origins of lack back to their beginning, then maybe we can better understand its manifestation in our life.

As I did in yesterday’s post, I will be using passages from my book Liberation from the Lie. This is, exactly, what makes this book unique among all books about the troubled self. Liberation does not rely on conjecture, but on the observations of many. Test what is written here with your own intelligence. Ask yourself, is this true? - is this true in my own direct experience unfettered by belief or second-hand knowledge. Evaluate what is said in this blog and ask yourself, repeatedly, is this true?

Child-Rearing and the Origins of Invalidation
While the hunter-gatherers lived in a world fully connected with nature and other members of their families and tribes, we live in a world of profound disconnection, set apart from both nature and the other people in our communities. While hunter-gatherers were an integral part of their environment, we are like visitors in a hostile land. Somehow we have migrated from a place of apparent peril where people felt safe and secure to a place of apparent security where we feel unsafe and insecure. How, then, can we account for the paradigm shift that has occurred in the modern era?
An explanation can begin by examining the differences in central beliefs regarding children and the role of parents. Hunter-gatherers regarded new human life as perfect in and of itself. Each child was seen as a unique being intended to follow his own, distinct journey through life. On the other hand, modern civilization sees children as flawed even at birth, requiring constant discipline and education in order to become fully functioning adults. In hunter-gatherer societies, children remain physically connected to an older person, most of the time their mothers, throughout most of their first three or four years. In today’s homes, most children are physically separated from their mothers from the very day of birth. Their life of partial isolation begins on day one.
The separation and endless correction that a child undergoes in modern times results in invalidation—the negation of ourselves as we are.
Our sense of self is most vulnerable when we are very young, well before we can understand words or express ourselves. Thus is the origin of what I call the Wound, our conviction that we are innately inadequate, insufficient, and worthless. This angst is the very signature of modern life. It is the source of our disconnected selves, those parts of us that struggle for completion and wholeness only to find persistent frustration.
The hunter-gatherer did not carry the burden of invalidation. He knew he was “as he is supposed to be” prior to any action or doing. He was not expected to prove anything; he didn’t have to justify his right to be just as he was.
Child-rearing philosophies tend to develop in order to reproduce a particular personality type that will be functional for adult life in the society at hand. Consider these differences between the way children were raised by hunter-gathers and how they are raised now:

• Hunter-gatherer children were raised without overt discipline; we “civilize” our children through punishment and other consequences levied when “rules” are broken;
• Hunter-gatherers perceived children as a creation of the same nurturing universe that supported and took care of the tribe; we see children as “little savages” who need to be domesticated;
• Hunter-gatherer children remained physically close to their mothers for up to four years, constantly held and carried; modern children are separated from their mothers at least for periods of time each day from birth onward;
• Hunter-gather mothers breastfed for three to four years; we usually wean within a year;
• Hunter-gatherer children slept with their parents for up to five years; most modern children sleep in a separate bed, if not a separate room, from their parents from the day they arrive;
• Hunter-gatherer children possessed the same power as anyone else; modern children are told in no uncertain terms that they are powerless and are often punished if they try to exert power;
• Hunter-gather children were raised in groups or clans, with many adults taking responsibility for parenting duties; modern children are usually raised by their biological parents alone, or with the help of a very few trusted relatives or hired caretakers.

The differences are many, but the most profound is this: Hunter-gatherer children were loved and respected just as they were. Modern children must earn the love and respect of their elders, on their elders’ terms. This is the origin of the fundamental invalidation that nearly all of us experience in our very first months of our lives. We are left alone at times; we are constantly corrected. We get the message that we are deficient burdens. Expressions of parental love are undermined by angry words, harsh expressions, indifference, distance, and punishment
Let me elaborate on some of the differences outlined above. While a personality is shaped by genetics, upbringing, and socialization, one of the most potent ingredients in that mix is one’s earliest relationship with his or her mother. For the hunter-gather, that relationship was extremely close, both physically and emotionally. Among the !Kung (and many other non-Bantu tribes of southern Africa), Australian Aborigine groups, the Berbers of the Middle East, and most Native American tribes of the Plains and Plateau region, children were virtually attached to their mothers for most of their first 18 months. When not in the arms or on the back of her mother, a young children was passed on to other people in the community who held her for extended periods. This provided contact and bonding with a much more diverse array of adults than would be found in an American household today. In the parlance of the well-known African adage, it takes a village to raise a child.
We, on the other hand, typically place children into their own rooms early in life, where they experience isolation and terror from being alone; often in the dark. This occurs at a time when a baby is utterly vulnerable and powerless to affect her fate. She screams in protest, but parents close their hearts to these cries in order to allow the child to habituate herself to pain and fear. Over time, as the child begins to cooperate, she is praised and rewarded for her compliance. This early trauma is relatively new to our species; the children of hunter-gatherers were touched, held, and comforted almost continuously for the first few years of their lives.
Consider another difference. While the hunter-gatherers considered each child to be unique, to be loved and respected for the individuality of his talents, life path, and story as it unfolded, modern parents seek to produce children who become “special” by dint of their accomplishments. But when some in a group are considered special, others, of course, will NOT be special. Indeed, the special ones continually run the risk of losing their special status. Children soon absorb this lesson and sever themselves from their innate, unique identities; instead, molded by external rewards and punishments, they strive to achieve the standards of “specialness” defined by their parents and society. In this competition for attention and esteem, children disown their inherent power of self and bow to the authority of those who can confer on them the coveted “gold star.” We innocently participate in our own powerlessness making.
The extreme pressure modern children feel to compete for accolades—indeed, for love itself—adds additional trauma to that already inflicted by separation and isolation. The Wound, source of our persistent sense of inadequacy and incompleteness, is deepened. And the resulting anxiety, turbulence, conflict, and unhappiness on an individual level is mirrored by our culture at large.
Tomorrow we will take a look at the final chapter in this series and examine the contemporary world and how it nurtures and sustains the Wound.

Tags: Child-raising, Fear

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This post is taken directly from my book - Liberation from the Lie. Issues like self-understanding, awakening, and finding the authentic self can be made much clearer when we understand the full scope of fear in our lives. It is what drives all seeking and what makes our lives miserable. This post seeks to begin the process of pulling fear up by its own roots.

Is it possible to live life without emotional insecurity? Historians and anthropologists say “yes.”
Modern human beings have been around for about 150,000 years. For about 140,000 of those years, survival depended on hunting and gathering. The time of the hunter-gatherers in the human cultural story is over; these societies, isolated from modern influences, have all but disappeared. However, scientists and explorers have studied and left detailed descriptions of what these societies were like prior to their demise. These observations show us a world that is very different from our own—a world in which individuals trusted life.
It must seem paradoxical to point to hunter-gatherers as models of security. To us, they lived in a world utterly lacking in the most rudimentary elements of security. Imagine waking up tomorrow with no food in your home. All the food stores have disappeared. You are living in a pure wilderness, without any ready source of sustenance. You are facing your own death and the deaths of everyone in your family from starvation. This is the world the hunter-gatherers faced every day!
Hunter-gatherers were nomads, possessing only the food they collected or hunted each day. Their societies lacked any form of food storage. And yet they survived, purely through their daily labor and ingenuity, even in the harshest climates on the planet.
Did the absence of food fill them with dread? Did their daily confrontation with starvation and death terrify them? Did their deep and persistent anxiety compel them to beseech the supernatural for good fortune? The answer is no. These societies had little apparent insecurity. They had no specific gods they felt the need to turn to for protection. They trusted nature implicitly, confident that it would provide for them.
Hunter-gatherers differed from us less in the shapes of their bodies and the development of their intellect than in the way they related to the world around them. While they had every reason to live in fear—fear of wild animals, illness, starvation, fear of competing groups, fear of natural phenomena like storms—the vast preponderance of evidence shows us that they trusted the world to provide for them and keep them safe. We, in contrast, have nearly every reason to trust our world.
For most of us, food is abundant; our living environments are sheltered from the elements and from hostile competitors; medical care is available if we become sick or injured, and we can expect to live into old age. Yet our actions demonstrate the belief that we face ruin unless we do exactly the “right” thing. Ironically, in our relatively safe world, we see danger everywhere.
The hunter-gatherers believed that their world would always take care of them. They returned this care with ceaseless appreciation and wonder at the world’s abundance and benevolence. They sang songs, fell in and out of love, laughed, and played, confident that their world would always provide for them.
Studies show that hunter-gatherers worked an average of four hours a day to sustain their lives. While each day’s physical survival depended on their well-honed skills, their working lives, compared with ours, were far less demanding. While women labored for more hours each day than men (some things never change), their work was made lighter by singing and talking side by side with friends and family as they made clothes, gathered seeds, plants, and herbs (the core of the Neolithic diet), and supervised their children. If the children were young (under the age of 4), they were strapped onto their mothers’ bodies and carried about throughout the day.
This lightness of being extended into their world view. In contrast with our culture’s obsession with achieving transcendence (for many through religion, but for others through meditation, mind-altering substances, public accolade, or material success), hunter-gatherers did not invest faith or fear in an overarching life goal or all-powerful deity. In fact, there is little evidence supporting any notion of the sacred in their world. Morris Berman, one of the world’s foremost experts in Neolithic culture, points out that when “Native Americans refer to the Great Spirit, they often are talking about the wind. This spirit is the creation itself: water coming off a leaf, the smell of the forest after rain, the warm blood of a deer.” No great god rules supreme. There is only creation unfolding.
This was a culture that lived, as Virginia Woolf put it, “between the acts”; alertness, not escape, is the sine qua non of a hunting society. The great anthropologist Paul Radin, who did extensive fieldwork among the Winnebago Indians, argued that for such peoples, reality was heightened to such a pitch that the details of the environment seemed to “blaze.” This, he points out, was not a sacred event. It was imminent, but not transcendent. It involved heightened awareness. In this world, the secular is the sacred, which is all around us.
In some small pockets of the world, this way of life has persisted into the current era. As observed by Colin Turnbull, author of the classic The Forest People, the Mbuti of Tanzania still today live within a “sacred reality” that is “no more sacred or esoteric than the forest in which they dwell.” There is a notable absence of any preoccupation with political power, magical rites, or “hidden realities.” The Mbuti regard all of these as superstitions. To the Mbuti, writes Turnbull, the forest alone is “presence” or “God.”
Tomorrow we will continue our journey into the roots of fear. I hope you’re along for the journey.

Tags: wound, Lack, Fear, seeking

Many years ago I read a small book that raised an incredible question. The questions was: who could have imagined this world - this world of endless strip shopping centers, the land gobbled up by vast swaths of single family homes, of the air and water hopelessly fouled, of the total assault on plants and animals, and all the rest of the life killing machinery of modern industrial civilization. Who could have imagined this world - what a great question.

This is one of the questions that I have sought to answer in my book Liberation from the Lie, but I would like to explore it in somewhat less depth in this post and several to follow.

I know of only one reliable method of inquiry and that is the Truth Way. This is a very simple method. It is based on only one rule and that rule informs us that we cannot know anything if we are relying on belief. Belief, we shall see, is based, exclusively on fear and my book and this blog has only one purpose; to expose fear - to see it exactly for what it is. Few of us have the courage to squarely look our beliefs straight on. Our beliefs give us comfort. Our beliefs give us hope. We are more comfortable with our beliefs than we we with what we can clearly see. So it’s probably best to sustain your slumber. If you’re very lucky you will be re-born and maybe you will be less likely to rest on your self-laziness in another life. But who knows if there ever will be another life?

As long as you clothe yourself in any belief, you will be living a lie. If you are ever interested in discovering your Authentic Self, you will need to fully explore every belief to the light of clear seeing. You must relentlessly ask yourself the question, “is this true?” and be willing to absorb and live the consequences of your inquiry. This is, ultimately, the only path, for only the truth will set you free.

We have only one God and that God is fear. We fear loss - loss of status, loss of possessions, loss of health, loss of a job, loss of our children, loss of our spouse, loss of our home, loss of our pride, loss of our friends, and loss of our own life. Fear is always the bottom-line. We dare not question the government or the media. We dare not risk the little we have amassed in this precarious life, because we could so easily lose it all.

So we hoard. We draw line between us and the ever-threatening world. We ceaselessly please those we project have power over us. We ceaselessly bully those who we project have no power over us. We are appeased through the shopping. We need to keep up with the neighbors. We need to assume that technology will eventually solve our ecological problems. Or we believe in a heaven, because our minister has told us that this world is sinful and is only a passage to the permanent place after death (how pathetic!). So we must placate our dangerous and powerful gods. That is living a humble and proper life.

In other words, we eviscerate ourselves on the alter of Fear. We have installed our beliefs in every aspect of our lives. Jesus might have said the truth will set you free, but we are so much more comfortable with our enslavement. We have forgotten that we are the light. But belief is the propagation of darkness. To truly be of the light we must see what truly is. But instead, we have become domesticated people and we believe that this is the only way.

Who could have imagined this world - who could have imagined this life?

When we are fully aligned with the fear-based personality, and let’s admit it, nearly all of us are, we are fully split from our Authentic Selves. We have lost touch with who we are. But the light that informs just this one, small seeing is the authentic self - alive in our life right now. It is still there waiting for us.

So what do we to remedy this problem? We do exactly what the power-brokers of this world tell us to do; we seek to transcend this word. We do this through sustaining our ignorance of how the world functions, we stay asleep by zoning out in front of our TVs, we stay asleep by going to church so we can be told how and what to think, we are drawn to eastern philosophies, which also tell us how to live and transcend the challenge of everyday life. The one place we tend not to check is ourselves.

We lose ourselves when we are invested in the external. We become the external.

We believe (this is a belief!) that we are not adequate to the task of self-knowledge. We must constantly seek externally. We must be told the how and what about everything. At least dogs unconditionally love, for we are no different from dogs, except our fear prevents us from loving unconditionally. We are loveless dogs.

How we love our leashes. How we love our masters. Our slavery has become so comfortable, so effortless. Please, please give me another treat. This is what our lives have become.

It need not be this way. We can wake up. But to truly wake up we need to fully see the play of fear in our lives. We must see every aspect of it. We need to disgust ourselves with ourselves.

In the next post, I will explore the roots of fear. When we are clear on the roots, we can pull up this weed of a life by the roots and take the first uncertain step to ourselves; a shining being free of fear, strong in her courage, steadfast in her self in this life.

Believe NOTHING in this post or any of my other posts. Test it all out for yourselves. That is the only reliable way. Be ruthless with my words.

Download post here: Fear1

Tags: Belief, Fear-self, Fear

When life is perceived as unjust, the result is anger. When anger is combined with powerlessness, the result is rage. Rage can rest in love or hate. Let's dig deeper.

Why did those pig bankers, the very ones that caused the recession, get billions from the White House? And now those pigs are showing their true colors by taking huge fucking bonuses with our tax money. If I had the chance, I’d show him where I stand by puttin’ a bullet between their greedy jew eyes.

The government is takin’ away my freedoms. I knew this would happen when a black man became president. This is a white country for christ’s sake. There’s nothin’ wrong about taken things in our own hands and defending our hard fought liberty at the barrel of a gun.

For god’s sake, I’m a goddamn veteran and put my ass on the line to defend this country that isn’t even mine anymore.

The rich and powerful get away with everything. I wonder if Bush and Cheney have lost a wink of sleep over killing a million Iraqis? I bet not. They couldn’t give a crap. They aren’t even people to them and they call themselves christians. What a fucking joke.

As an Israeli, and a jew who has suffered centuries of savage hate and exile, we have every right to use whatever force is necessary to destroy the muslim enemy. This is our country and not there’s.

The presidents of companies that foul the environment and doing irreparable harm to essential resources need to be treated as criminals or even worse, for the harms they are causing by their very actions are more injurious than those committed by people we call criminals.

White america must come clean on both slavery and the genocide perpetrated against the native people of the americas. Until there is fair reparation, I will continue to harbor rage against these heartless bastards. The day will come when they will pay for their crimes. It is only fair.

What all of these examples have in common is this: there is perceived unfairness and there is a sense of powerlessness. The combination is volatile.

The Rage and the Fury

We live in a time where rage is common and intense ... and it’s growing. People, who think of themselves as spiritual, often retreat from anger. It reminds them of their animal nature. It’s a negative emotion. The Buddha spoke at length of the toxic quality of anger which contaminates everything it touches.

But we are animals and we experience anger, as well as love. Anger is often an expression of passion and even love. Hatred can inspire acts of incredible bravery and sacrifice.

For me, there is only one decisive distinction: and that is belief. Anger and rage are horrific things when they are based on belief. When I believe that jews and rats are the same thing, I am empowered to design the industry of mass execution and Auschwitz is born. When I believe that Black people are less than me, I can act with privilege and deal with them in ways I would never treat a fellow white person. When I believe that the Koran is the one and only word of god, then I am free to wage jihad against the infidels. When I believe that people are not apes, then I am free to support my local school board when they insist that creationism is given at least the same status of evolution in our school’s biology curriculum.

Mindless, unexamined belief is the element that makes anger toxic. And anger turns to hot rage when it is combined with powerlessness.

But anger and love can be perfect partners. It is my love for the economically disadvantaged that tells me that everyone must have affordable and quality healthcare. It is my love for the earth that tells me that those who poison it must be stopped. Love expressed as rage is righteous. It is selfless. It is based on connection with the all of our brothers and sisters and the source of life that unites us all.

In contrast, toxic rage is full of self. This is my country, the is my god, this is my land, etc. etc. etc. It negates our collective connections. It is founded in fear of loss and the use of force to express its inner belief in its innate powerlessness. It’s all about I, me, and mine. I’ve been fucked and now I demand justice on my terms.

When perceptions of injustice are based on direct observation, then we have the right and even a duty to act to make things just and fair. When a company knowingly fouls a community’s water, that is indeed a grave harm done not only against people, but against the whole of nature. Were it treated like a serious crime, I’m quite certain water pollution would be less of a problem. We can agree that slavery has never been addressed in the US. That reparations and large-scale efforts to balance the distribution of power and assets in the US, as well as formal apologies are way past due. We also know that the native people of this continent have not only lost all their land through naked violence, but have been victims of genocide intended and unintended. They are owed a very great debt.

Healthy rage is, indeed, healthy. It is, in fact, one of the very great challenges of our time - a time when the planet is dying, when the poor are sinking faster and faster into every more dire economic straits, and when the powerful possess for ever more influence to dominate and exploit the helpless and vulnerable.

We also need to see where we are unfair to others - when we act with undeserved privilege as a consequence of belief or just simple mental laziness. Anyone who has been a parent with more than one child, will have dealt with demands for fairness from one of their children - of charges of preferential treatment of one over the other. These are great mini-exercises in liberating ourselves from our own beliefs.

Liberation and justice are first cousins. Free of belief we are one with the world. Our touch goes to our brothers and sisters in pain and we begin the work of revolution - of justice. It all starts with simple and direct seeing. Let’s open our eyes together and begin letting the light of the Real illuminate our world. This light makes us Real.

Download post here: Rage

Tags: Belief, Anger, power

Yesterday I wrote that you are enlightened. Today I write that you are not enlightened. The decisive word in all of this is, of course, you.

How do we make sense of this?

You are enlightened when the personal identity in the personal Me/I ends and you are not enlightened, because it is realized that this word, you, is just a concept ... a projection.

When we believe in this concept, we have a story with a nice and neat beginning (birth) and an awful conclusion (death). Free of the Me/I concept the story is not taken very seriously. When we stop believing in the concept, the presence of this moment is, pretty much, everything. It is what is, free of resistance.

As Byron Katie is fond of saying, you can argue with reality, but you’ll be wrong only 100% of the time. So, go for it.

You as a concept is just an object, not all that different from the computer you’re looking at right now. An object can’t awaken from itself. It’s really that simple.

So you are both enlightened and not enlightened at the same time. How does it feel to be and not be all at once?

It reminds me of that Danish Prince who said, “To be or not to be, that is the question.” What’s your answer?

Download post here: YouAreNotEnlightened

Tags: Concepts

You are enlightened and the only reason you don’t know it is that you are identifying with your thoughts as who you are. If you’re ready to discover who you are outside of this incredibly narrow definition, then read on.

This post has the power to inspire enlightenment in you.

You say, “I am not enlightened. I need to see a great Lama who is visiting Los Angeles. From this Lama, I will learn secret techniques to advance my seeking. He is an angel.”

I reply, “all of that is a total waste of time with respect to the issue of enlightenment. But if you enjoy travel and chatting with guys from Tibet, then by all means, go for it. After all, you already are enlightened.”

Of course this person will never believe me. He knows that he is needy. He knows that he suffers. He knows that the journey is a hard one. He knows that only the very few and the very lucky ever achieve enlightenment. He really knows a lot and it is this knowing that holds him back.

But I reply, “you know nothing. You only believe you aren’t enlightened and that is your problem and it is that belief that sustains an infinity of seeking. Your seeking will never end, because you are attached to this belief. I ask you, Who are you without this belief?”

This person thinks that I am full of crap and challenges me by saying, “So do you think you’re enlightened?”

I answer, “yes, I know I’m enlightened and would you like to know how I know? Because everything is perfect prior to our thought and reflection about anything. Thought and reflection are the conditioned and cultural filters that we place on anything that captures our attention. See if that isn’t true for yourself. But the kicker is this; the reflection asserts a thinker and it is that thinker that holds the belief that he is not enlightened and must go to LA to meet with this esteemed Lama.”

“So what do you recommend I do?”, he asks.

“Nothing other than what you feel like. Just be yourself and give not a thought to the this projected thinker. Liberation means liberation from the belief constellation attached to the projected thinker. That’s all you will ever need to know. If I jump up and down and make grunting noises - then so be it. Now you are free to be as stupid, awkward, and lovable, as YOU choose to be. They are each just meaningless words. Enlightenment is the path itself. Whatever arises is it. The whole show is for you. There is no place to go. It doesn’t matter in this moment, whether it be some heavy talk or my throwing a cream pie in your apparent face.”

“But also know this: enlightenment is ruthless (or so the mind might think). Your gain or loss are immaterial to it, for only the “thinker” is consumed by gain or loss or impressing himself or others. In enlightenment there is neither gain or loss and there are no others to please or impress. In enlightenment, there is no place to draw the line between self and others. So dance the night away or read a book. Everything you do is an expression of the oneness whether it happens in a pristine natural place or a public toilet. It doesn’t matter to enlightenment. Also know that there are so many gifts that the oneness provides for your uniqueness. Why hold them back? Enjoy them and don’t be stingy. Spread the wealth.”

“The authentic self is natural to the moment. It is the path without tracks. It has no destination. Just walk merrily on and see where enlightenment takes you.”

In a moment of uncertainty the thinker asks, “could you give another example of enlightenment in a personally challenging situation?”

“Well, I’m happy to, but you know talk is just talk. Everything is integral to itself, so when we talk about examples, we are just talking examples. Enlightenment is endlessly creative. As they say, we don’t place our foot in the same stream twice. But, since you asked, let’s say you run into a man who calls you names and pushes not only your psychological buttons but your physical body. You’re always free to run, argue, or fight. From the viewpoint of enlightenment it really doesn’t matter what happens. Whatever happens happens. Your initial experience of fear, if it is what emerges in the moment, then that’s the way enlightenment is playing out. Our bodies are wired to survive, so where’s the problem? The thought “he’s such a dick” is a psychological assessment and is just a mindless utterance from the conditioned believer. But the bottom line is that from the perspective of enlightenment is it just doesn’t matter. It calls the shots. Whatever is is. That’s the thing about life - it IS and you are that life. You are that enlightenment.

“Of course, the deficient focused mind really is one HUGE ego. It wants to be exalted. It wants every moment of life to special and all the rest. Perhaps it is and perhaps it isn’t. To this point enlighten asserted that you needed to be just this assembly of thoughts. But, perhaps, the time has come to wake up to your authentic being. Perhaps, this is that call.”

“I will say this from personal experience, the moment we see through the thinker everything just flows perfectly, why not enjoy the journey no matter what briefly arises in awareness. Use your brain. Be creative. Kick butt, if that is what arises in enlightenment (not all that likely), just see the mind carry on its secondary assessment like some old schoolmarm that always knows what’s best for you.”

Everything you think about enlightenment is wrong. Stop identifying yourself with the thinker and none of your incredibly complex plans, agendas, and hopes will matter in the slightest. When death comes you might even say, ‘what took you so long?’”

Download Post here: YouAreEnlightened

Tags: Belief

“You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”̴ ̴ words attributed to Jesus Christ - John 8:32

Recently I have struggled with the problems that I have with neo-non-duality. But in the last several days a compelling clarity has filled me with its light and has shown me a powerful message that I would like to share with you.

I’m afraid that this post may appear disorganized and even random to some, but it contains the essence of what I have to say.

I have written before that I was trained in the Zen Mahayana tradition. A prominent teacher from that tradition wrote me that I had achieved awakening. At the time I did not believe it, for I didn’t sustain the glorious bliss that I’ve seen in the literature. I still had my moods, I could be crabby, and, although I dutifully meditated, I didn’t feel that I needed to meditate. I continued to think of myself as an unenlightened being. I now know that consuming ourselves with the struggle for personal enlightenment, is just another form of spiritual egotism. It isn’t for me.

On account of that hollow experience, I continued along that path and eventually found the teachings of Nisargadatta and Papaji. I was particularly drawn to the writings and talks of Gangaji, Mooji, Chuck Hillig and later to Scott Kiloby (and others).

Ultimately what they said and wrote never really “resonated” with me. Until several days ago, I thought that I just didn’t have the good fortune to have the fireworks and cosmic uplifting sometimes described in the literature. Several prominent non-dualists said that I just didn’t “get it”. For whatever reason, the message of neo-non-duality was not part of my authentic self, although it is a powerful pathway for others.

Perhaps they are right and, perhaps, it doesn’t matter.

I suspect that I did “get it” many years ago in that Zen Temple and my spiritual ego still craved the certainty that death to the physical body is an illusion. That was the very fear that first attracted me to the path described in several traditions of eastern spiritual philosophy.

That is now all behind me. I must say in full candor, that I have absolutely not the slightest interest in non-duality, although I also know that much of what they have to say is absolutely true and valid. It just is an area of self-expression that now fails to motivate or excite me.

This realization has brought me back to the very heart and soul of my own direct work, which I am now calling the Truth Way.

I am not concerned by philosophy. Talking about ideas can be fun, but it is not the purpose of this blog or my book Liberation from the Lie.

The truth is all that matters. This statement does not refer to final truths, but only to this truth. So unlike non-duality, where the core question is “Who am I?”, the core question of the Truth Way is, “Is this true?” I believe that Jed McKenna made a similar remark a number of years ago.

The power of this question is to liberate us from the whole galaxy of thoughts and beliefs that now make up our false self, what I call the “Fear-Selves” in my book. The Fear-Selves are natural and inevitable outcomes of our primal wounding that occurs in our first weeks of life and were sustained and often strengthened through our families of origin, peers, school, and work. The Fear-Self operates on both the individual and collective level and is the bulwark of modern civilization as well as representing the psychological essence of who we are not.

We cannot find out who we are until we:

• see the many fear-based constructions that form the self that needs to: control life/self, please others, appear tough/spiritual/responsible, and the many other forms of the Fear-Self that are described in the text; and
• to recognize the awesome power of the Wound to form our social and cultural universe.

This is a complex topic as anyone who has read my book has come to learn, but they have also seen how the direct truth seeking process is the key to individual and collective transformation. The resolution of needless suffering and struggle, those ceaseless repetitive painful patterns of our life, are healed only through the truth realizing process.

How do we know when something is true? We know the truth when it cannot be debated. It is the “isness” of life, here and now. Let me present several obvious examples. One - it is cloudy outside right now. I can say that it is cloudy outside. This is true. Connection with the actual and immediate truth of life is powerfully liberating. This example may appear trivial to some of you, but its power to transform is vast.When we are connected with the immediate truth of life shorn of all belief, we are fully awakened. Here is my second example. I love music. I didn’t choose to love music. It is just something that is real in my life. My love of music is not based on any belief system. It is not something that can be questioned. Like the clouds in the sky, it is real and beyond dispute. I express my uniqueness as a human being through music (as well as other channels). Finally, I don’t love music to inflate myself or to impress others. That love is part of my authentic being.

The whole purpose of the Truth Way is to find the authentic self. This is the revolution of the self. We cannot be free until we find out who we are. This is part of who I am. It is true. What is truly true for you?

When this self is found one’s life is truly transformed. Now we are connected to not only the immediate flow of life as it is, but we have found our own unique song. We become ourselves! The whole second-half life of the person whose value is ceaselessly dependent on the assessment of others or one’s own internal tyrant is left behind. This is what liberation is all about. You are alive and vital not only to your own life, but to your own innate self.

Now let’s look at belief. We find out what is false in our lives by exploring beliefs as they arise in our Fear-Based self. If I say that it’s very important to please people and to be well-liked and respected, I would say that a powerful, fear-based belief system is at work. Why must I please others? Is this need to please others true? Why do I need to be well liked? Why do I need to be respected? If you read my book, you will discover how this line of inquiry will take you back to your own Wound and you will discover who you are not.

This is how we investigate our beliefs. You should discover that every belief, no matter how central it is to our core personality, is linked directly to the need not to experience your Wound. Beliefs are like walls. To find the authentic self, every wall must, ultimately, come down.

Also, beliefs can be seen as immediately different from our first two examples. They are debatable. They must be defended. If attacked, conflict will ensue. The cause of nearly all conflict between people and even between countries, is a difference in belief. If you tell me that it’s not cloudy outside, we won’t have a conflict. Instead, I will assume that you either have a serious vision problem or are crazy. If you say that there is something wrong with me because of my love of music, I will have no idea what you’re talking about and excuse myself from the conversation.

Beliefs need to be defended, but the truth is just the truth. It is the truth that will set you free. This is also a great way to locate our beliefs in our immediate life. Anytime we are called to defend something, we need to ask ourselves, “is this true?” It is likely that a belief is at work.

Let’s look at one more example. Let’s say that I support a woman’s inalienable right to have an abortion and I encounter a conservative person who calls me a “murderer”. He believes that abortion is murder and by my agreeing to a woman’s right to have an abortion upon request, I am furthering murder and evil in this society. In this case, who is right, what is true in this disagreement?

The clear answer is no one. This is disagreement between two belief systems. We can summon evidence to support either position, but we must understand that in such issues there is no firm and undebatable truth, no matter how passionately we might feel about the topic.

But there is a deeper way of exploring the abortion issue and it is this. We can explore what are the likely outcomes of allowing women to have abortions and contrast that with the likely outcomes when women are prevented to have abortions. As long as we use facts (data) and not mere belief as the tool of our investigations, we are likely to find a deeper truth through our shared exploration.

This is why I do not call myself a non-dualist. It is not true for me. This does not mean that it shouldn’t be true for you. What I write about is my journey and my explorations. Each of us is unique. What is true for our own self will always reflect the authentic self and your authentic self will be different from my authentic self. Perhaps our ‘eternal Self’, transcends these discussions, but I’m really not interested in transcending this life. Life is not to be transcended, rather life for me, and possibly you, is the channel through which we discover who we are.

Download Post here: TruthWay

Tags: Fear Self, process, nonduality, wound

This is another post about the difference between the state of awakening and that of trance-like sleep. It’s a shorty but a goodie.

In trance-like sleep state - perceived “things” (feelings, emotions, thoughts, objects, memories, aspirations) all happen to me. Notice that.

In awakening - perceived “things” (feelings, emotions, thoughts, objects, memories, aspirations) all happen, but not to me or anyone/anything else. Can you get a feel for that?

That’s it.

So, what does this mean for you?

Obviously nothing, because the “you” “you” think “you” are is just another perceived object, which is not happening to “you”. This is so decisive an understanding that it cannot be read carefully enough.

Practice: As you read these words or look out the window or wonder about the next time you’re going to get some nooky ... get a feel for the difference when the mind asserts that it’s all happening to you in contrast to it’s all happening but to no one or no thing. Just try it on one object. This computer is not be seen by me - it’s just an object seen - but not by me.

There is a world of difference between the two.

You will shine in the midst of all of these amazing happenings!

Download Post Here: HappeningTo

Tags: meditation, practice

If nothing else, the mind is quick. In this way, the mind is like a reflex.

The whole of the conditioned human being is expressed as this reflex. This is the “character” with which we normally identify. It is who we believe ourselves to be.

Is this true?

We can notice this voice and identity. And when the truth of this is absorbed, what happens next?

What happens is that we begin to notice this reflex as exactly what it is.

• Instantaneous judgment
• Need to so something right away
• Seeing (hearing, tasting, feeling, smelling) without really noticing what is sensed, because the mind is off to the next thing.

When we are identified with the mind (and who isn’t?), we can never discover the vastness of what overlies this lightning fast quickness.

This is not a call to struggle to do away with the persistent chirping of the mind. It’s there for a reason, but it is call to explore what “surrounds” this attention grabbing energy.

What overlies this place of chatter and restlessness is a place of rest and calm, which sheds its light on everything without the coloring judgment and compulsiveness of the conditioned mind. It is the silent background of all experience.

Severing your identity with the mind’s incessant ranting insistent quality and finding one’s self in the overlying quiet is the very essence of waking up from the habitual - all knowing self.

Download this post: FindingTrueSelf

Tags: self

This post presents a gateway to your awakening that is rock solid. I am not going to waste time with all of the background and analytical elements that I normally include in my posts. I’m just going to shout out the truth without unnecessary elaboration.

Imagine that one day someone gave you the gift of happiness. How might that gift be wrapped? How would happiness be handed to you? If, over time, you grew tired of happiness, how might you improve it?

These question are absurd and we know they are absurd. Happiness is not an object. And because it’s not an object, then we need to ask ourselves, what is happiness?

If it’s not an object, then is happiness real? We can’t point to happiness. We can’t hold happiness. Yet we struggle to attain it day after day. What is really going on? Are we chasing a phantom?

Happiness is not an object. Rather, it’s just a word. At best, it’s a pointer to a quality of energy. But in and of itself, it’s just an idea - a concept. No matter how hard we search for it, no matter how diligent are methods, our attempts to attain it can never succeed.

Exactly the same reasoning applies to the idea of the self; you and me. You cannot hold yourself. You cannot give yourself away. You can’t point to anything and say, “this is me.” Like happiness, the self, you and I, is just an idea, a concept. The self is not real.

And just like happiness, you can’t improve the self. You can’t improve something that doesn’t exist. The instant we stop believing in the concept of the me, we are free. This is what Jesus meant when he said the truth will set you free. Psychological slavery is the mind’s predilection to assert a separate self that is never enough, that must always struggle in this life.

So this day forward, pledge that I will see through every form of conceptual reasoning that motivates us to get enlightened and to be a better me. I’ll say it again, you can’t change or improve something that doesn’t exist!

Now, if you see that the word self is just a concept, something that doesn’t actually exist in the universe, then you must realize that no other selves exist. Anytime you love or hate another, you, as an idea, are loving another as an idea. It’s simply the interplay of thought. Yes you might experience love or hate, but nothing is happening between two selves, because it can’t. It can only be the play of thought as thought. There is no self and there is no other.

Since there is no other, then there can never be anyone to blame or worship. No one is bad and no one is good. This doesn’t mean that you have to put up with annoyance, stupidity, or cruelty in your life. THIS will always provide a way out. This also doesn’t mean that pain will cease happening when we wake up from the conceptual. Pain is as much a part of life as pleasure. They are each happenings within THIS.

If you are ever to touch the truth of this moment, you must see through the error of establishing any concept as real. You, as a concept, do not exist in the universe. Even the universe does not exist as anything but a concept. The universe cannot be grasped, it cannot be seen - it is only a thought. There is no universe.

Nothing real exists as thought. Only thought exists as thought.

Where does that leave us, because, clearly, all kind of things are seen, felt, heard, and tasted. What is really going on?

This is where the wording gets really tricky. But we can see that there is just this ... with no you or me. There is only and always THIS. and this THIS is the Tao, or God, or Buddha mind or coca-cola. It can only be just this.

The transformation is all about seeing through the conceptual. Anytime we assert the objective reality of a concept, we enter the world of human-centric fantasy. This is being a slave to conditioned thinking.

What is the difference between a life lived conceptually and one lived awake? The difference is this: the struggle is over. There is nothing to attain and no one to attain anything. Can you see how incredibly amazing that is? Can you see the wonder in it? I truly hope so. There is, truly, no where to go. Only thoughts go places. There is THIS.

The problem in all such understanding is that we are attempting to capture the essence of real life and translate that into language. There is a great limitation in that. But just as we can see that happiness does not possess any objective reality, so we can see that the same understanding applies to “I”, “me”, and “other”.

This is not a matter of becoming silent, although it does happen that this profound understanding occurs in silence. But the silence referred to in these teachings is not an effort by the separate me. It couldn’t be, because there is no separate me. The silence refers to the din of thought that creates the universe of me and others. It is that which becomes silent.

Waking up means to see through the mind’s existence of thought which asserts reality to concepts. We move from delusional beliefs in the conceptual, to living the actual as the actual. Waking up means waking up from the dream of thought. Only thought can assert the objectivity of happiness, but this same objectivity can never be found in the actual world.

If you have questions about any of this, please contact me (eric@liberationfromthelie.com). I can help you through this.

When we wake up from the conceptual you and me, the opportunity to be passionate and creative explode. All of the energy we invested in making a better me or in struggling to change others ends. When that energy is freed up, a vast opening happens. It is so beautiful - Life just is and it is you and you are it.

Super Important Note: Don’t fall into the mind’s trap of spiritual and esoteric nihilism. When we talk about happiness, self, or other, we are talking about concepts. What we actually experience is the truth of THIS moment. It’s one thing to see through the illusionary nature of concepts and quite another to embrace the real. This is not a path of negation - it is the path of truth and what happens in your life, even thought, is the real of this moment. Don’t negate the beautiful tree or your incredible eyes, or that tick that’s sucking blood. That is the vivid, living truth of this moment. Even memories are real as memories. Love them. Have fun with them. Cry over them - but know them for what they are - the evanescent arising of THIS.

A very quick example: moments ago I walked my dog. The mind would have said that “I” was walking “my” “dog”. The mind translates the mystery of THIS into the quickly understandable domain of language. That’s how the mind works and it’s really great for that - but it is falling into the error of placing credence in concepts, if only for the sake of convenience. What really happened was THAT! It was the every-changing THIS happening. It was full of colors, sounds, encounters with other “dogs” - it all happened and now THIS is happening. When the concept of me and other (dog) is seen through as just the mode of the mind (of convenient communication), then there can never be a problem. Even if you don’t “get” THIS - your not getting it is also THIS.

Also, know that I write this for me. Don’t hear these words as coming from someone (a concept) who knows (another concept) to you who doesn’t know (yet another concept). I write these for my own clarity knowing that it is all dedicated to finding out what is false, so that the true shines, free of the obstruction of belief and psychological projection.
Download Post: TheGateway

Tags: Belief, Concepts

The Dao is the nothingness that has the potential to be anything and everything. It is the one.

The one gives rise to the two, which in Chinese cosmology assumes the complementing energies of yin (feminine principle) and yang (masculine principle). Through their interplay all things find harmony. This is another expression of the unity of opposites: a theme that we have encountered quite a few times on this journey.

And it is the interplay of yin and yang that creates three and this three gives birth to the ten thousand things.

In this way, the Dao expurgates the unity of all in one as One all arises and as nothing - there is potential (or nothing) in the absence of arising. It is within potential or nothingness that even the one arises in this fleeting, yet eternal moment.

In the translation by Addiss and Lombardo is it expressed this way:

Tao engenders One,
One engenders Two,
Two engenders Three,
Three engenders the ten thousand things.

The second stanza explores the world of two: yin and yang.

The ten thousand things carry shade (yin)
And embrace sunlight (yang) (my additions).
Shade and sunlight, yin and yang,
Breath blending into harmony.

Then the author applies this same understanding of the unity of opposites in the next stanza.

Humans hate
To be alone, poor, and hungry.
Yet kings and princes
Use these words as titles.
We gain by losing,
Lose by gaining.

Recall that in ancient China, the royalty of China would describe themselves as alone and poor.

A Dinè Peacemaker once said to me, “It is almost always better to lose than to win. Because when you win a contest anger and resentment arises for he who has lost. Thus the outcome of all contests is anger that will manifest again in life.” This story also points to why most American Indians cast a very wary eye at competition - a world that divides people into winners and losers.

The final stanza is a little elusive.

What others teach, I also teach:
A violent man does not die a natural death.
This is the basis of my teaching.

The statement “what others teach” refers to the ancientness and, therefore, the integrity of these teachings. A violent person is he who lives life unaware of the unity of opposites and who fails to understand that needing to win is a force with the darkest of consequences. Violence, for its own sake, is the darkest of the dark. It is all yang cut off from the harmonizing principle of yin. When we understand the two and can experience the balance that is implicit in every moment, we can live a life that is joyous.

Download Post: V42

Tags: union of opposites, yin and yang

How nimble is the mind. It jumps from here to there in a blink of an eye.

It’s restless. If you’ve ever tried to meditate, you’ve seen first hand just how active it loves to be. What is this restless mind? It is the accumulation of our years of indoctrination to our society, our culture, as well as the amazing outcome of our vast genetic heritage. But, for the most part, the mind is the past responding to the newness of the ever-present Now.

In my last two non-Tao Te Ching posts, Appreciation and Trust and Life as Awareness, I have sought to prepare the field for Verse 41 of the Dao De Jing (the alternative and more precise spelling). Let’s take the plunge together and see what the first stanza of this large-scale Verse tell us. From my favorite translators, Addiss and Lombardo:

The great scholar hearing the Tao
Tries to practice it
The middling scholar hearing the Tao
Sometimes has it, sometimes not.
The lesser Scholar hearing the Tao
Has a good laugh.
Without that laughter
It wouldn’t be the Tao.

Some readers see this stanza as ironic and are prone to relate themselves to the “lesser Scholar” - they link laughter with having awakened to the Dao. My own research into original sources indicates that this is not the intent of the text. This stanza is not ironic, but literal.

It is the great Scholar (or leader or just you and me) that “tries to practice it.” We have seen through the dark veil of belief and identification with reflexive thinking and are open to the directness of the ever-present now. As I wrote in Awareness as Life (see above), the immediate future is the energetic force that molds and guides life. It is the Creator, although not necessarily, God. It can be likened to the Dao. The middling Scholar sometimes keys in to this immediate reality and the lesser Scholar has decided that whole endeavor is ridiculous. He is full of his certainty and his beliefs have mastery over him. So he laughs.

The great Scholar is perfectly okay with the laughter of others, for it is seen to be a part of the Dao itself.

The remaining stanzas of Verse 41 go into greater detail on the mystery and challenge of living the Dao. And here the usual irony of the Dao comes to the fore.

Therefore, these sayings,

The bright road seems dark,
The road forward seems to retreat,
The level road seems rough.

Why is the bright road seem dark, the road forward seem to retreat, and why is the level road seem rough?

There is a profound and potentially life-changing irony in these words. Please listen carefully.

If we examine how we experience the world and our lives, if we review how we go about making decisions, nearly all of us will see that we have developed a narrative of our life and who we are through the vehicle of thought. We are always thinking and we employ thought to make sense of who we are and to get a feel for where we are in our lives. Thought is the light and thought is the master. It is thought that appears to be the bright road, that which propels us forward, and that which appears level.

Thought comes so easily to us. It feels so natural and in a way it is, but it is just a very small part of the Dao.

That which is “dark”, that which “retreats”, and that which seems “rough” is that which is far less a matter of mindless, conditioned habit. Yet it is right before our eyes. It is called “dark” because we are blind to it.

Ironically, it is the “dark” road which is what we actually see. It is what we are seeing right here and right now. It is what cannot go away no matter how much we resist it or are blind to it. It is that which we can agree is real and true. We can think about what we see, but that is not quite the same thing. I need to thank Steve Hagen and his wonderful book Buddhism Plain and Simple for help with this issue. Awakening or enlightenment or Pepsi Cola (call it what you like) is awakening from the world of our thoughts and coming to our senses. Seeing is our primary sense, but we have others. When we are alive to our senses first and foremost and not to our thoughts, the conceptual “I/me” cannot be found. What is is just this living, breathing seeing. What we see, what is true - is the Dao.

Let’s move on with Verse 41.

Great Te (remember that Te/De means integrity, virtue and efficacy) seems hollow.
Great purity seems sullied.
Pervasive Te seems deficient.
Established Te seems furtive.
Simple truths seem to change.

The great square has no corners.
The great vessel is finished late.
The great sound is scarcely voiced.
The great image has no form.

Tao hides, no name.

Yet Tao alone get things done.

In these final stanzas the author of the Dao De Jing continues along the same theme as that explored in some detail. In the first of these stanzas the emphasis is on De and the second focuses on Dao.

Here is a simple and direct way to not only understand this monumental Verse, but to realize to all aspects of the integral Life. What happens to us and what we do in life assumes countless shapes and forms. Within this great complexity lies one over-arching truth. We can obtain lasting clarity in life by understanding the decisive distinction between simple actions which are integral to themselves in contrast to those thought and conceptual actions that are calculated to inflate the self. You must see the difference between these two categories of action.

I might learn Spanish for a job - that is a neutral action integral to itself. I might even study very hard to impress my teacher, but if I must study hard to impress the teacher and thus inflate my own self identity than I am acting from deficiency. This is not the life of selflessness described in the Dao De Jing.

Most of us, if we are rigorously honest and possess the capacity to see clearly must come to realize that we thrive on attention (or its absence), validation, and receiving accolade. While none of these things are, in themselves, a problem, when we personally identify with them and feel forlorn when they are not happening in our life, they become red flags of the deficient self. Living our lives as deficiency, we become all wrapped up in conceptual plans and cravings. We think, “THIS will bring me enlightenment, THIS will make all the pain go away, THIS will finally deliver me to my true self, etc., etc., etc.

We are prior to any thought. What we are is the ever-changing spirit - energy of THIS. This energy can witness thoughts as it witnesses these words. But all objects come and go. They are snapshots taken from the perspective of the body/mind. Thus the Dao is that which seems dark, seems to retreat, and seems to be rough. We will never think ourselves to clarity or contentment. Thinking is the shakiest of foundations.

But what we see ... there is the clarity we have always sought.

Download Post: V41

Tags: integrity, identity, deficient self

Can we imagine a question more basic than - what is awareness?

In recent years I have heard many people say that from the perspective of awareness not only does nothing matter, but nothing is happening. I’ve also heard that awareness has no preferences.

The first thought that occurs to me when I hear that statement is the question, I gotta wonder if this person would say the same thing if I started sawing off his fingers? Of course, our philosophical person would respond by saying, of course it matters to the body/mind but to awareness it’s all nothing - literally nothing.But let’s go there right now. Let’s just take a look at what is really happening right here and right now.

Well, I would like to explore whether that is what awareness really is.

I look around. Double click on the video file below:



What do I see? What do you see?

What you are seeing is awareness. The source of awareness and the content of awareness cannot be separated. They are one thing - one motion.

But let’s look just a little deeper. What is seeing? Isn’t it true to say that seeing also has an emotive quality to it? We see and in that seeing there is a quality of feeling. It could be positive, negative or anywhere in between. Thoughts arise spontaneously. I know what I am seeing or this is interesting or I’ve seen this a million times before. All of this is the content of awareness.

We can’t help but notice that awareness is so much than just seeing. We are not a robotic camcorder. We see with intelligence wedded to feeling.

Within this seeking there an energy of guidance. It feels like the immediate future draws our awareness into it. The Now is drawn, inexorably, into it. It’s not a product of thought. It’s all happening so fast that, if anything, it is that which produces thoughts and feelings, but is neither. “It” all happens even before it is seen by awareness.

Thus it is the motion of change through which thoughts and feelings are created.

Feel the next moment suck you into its being. It can’t be stopped. The birth of this next moment is happening at the speed of light - yet it is silent and unseen. If we open to its raw immediacy, we will see that this is enlightenment itself. It has nothing whatsoever with the “thought” of the individual person named Eric.

Enlightenment had nothing to with our thoughts about it.

It is the very “isness” of life that can only happen without any of our effort. This sucking energy holds everything. It is all-powerful. If the mystery has a key at all, it can only be found here and it is further seen that wisdom is held by this immediacy of change. Wisdom, action, are all manifestations of this sweeping energy.

It is not even a process. A process is something that goes from A to B to C to n. This is the unchanging - ever-changing wholeness moving. Where and how it goes, no one knows.

The freer we are of ALL belief, the more alive we are to this constant guiding motion. We never again need to worry or concern ourselves with the future, for we see - we see that our thoughts were wedded to a belief in a separate me that lived somewhere on the bank of Life. As we seen this all-powerful, irresistible movement propel itself, we see that no separate self could be found. Everything we “see” is really just the movement of Life. If you would like to call that awareness, then so be it. The belief in an observer is an add-on created by thought ... just another island in a stream.

And how are we to strip this living reality of belief? The answer is silence, but inner silence is just part of the story. We have to stop having it both ways. We truly need to question every belief that we would like to believe is true. Belief is a fundamental dis-trust to life as it is. Why?

Because life will violate every belief we hold as true. It is the Fear-Self that must hold onto its beliefs even when Life shows, time and again, that they are a pure consequence of our internal fears - our deficient self.

But if you really see - you will see that everything is along for the ride. It’s a ride of a lifetime.

Download Post: Awareness

Tags: seeing

Live cannot be known, but it must be lived. And since everything we think we know about life is wrong (everything), then something other than thought must come to the fore. All of your thoughts, without exception, having nothing whatsoever to do with the meaning or purpose of life.

What we think about life, what we think “we” know, is just a thought object that arises in consciousness; nothing more and nothing less.

So if what we think about life is just an object happening in life and has nothing whatsoever to do with “knowing” life, then how do we take the first step? What is the first step? Do we walk in ignorance? No - we walk in beauty.

The first step is no different from the last step. Really there are only two steps and, in the end, they are really just one.

1. Appreciate everything without exception that arises in life - including the seeming manifestation of your own ego and particularly the resistance that comes from your body in whatever life circumstance in which resistance arises. Appreciate it all.

2. The second step (and this is probably the more difficult of the two) is to trust everything without exception, that all is perfectly right for you at the moment in which anything happens.

Why trust life? Because we cannot know anything about life. Only life knows life. Authentic wisdom trusts life in all its manifestations. Your mind, if it’s anything like mine, will “think” that it knows more than life itself. This is just ego or whatever you’d like to call it. The words don’t matter. Just know that your mind cannot read the mind of Tao, so we are called to trust and appreciate everything exactly as it is, even brutal injustice, and know that it’s perfectly right for us.

We Trust and We Appreciate.

And what about injustice? If you are alive and you appreciate and trust everything that happens as it happe, then what happens next will be exactly the right thing. Nothing more needs to be added. See everything as perfectly right and therefore utterly trustworthy and because it is a gift intended only for you, appreciate it with all of your heart.

Appreciate and trust; that has become my only teaching.

Download: appreciatetrust

Tags: Appreciate, trust

Who am I?
Isn’t that the key question of all spiritual inquiry?

I don’t really want to repeat what has been written a million times. Frankly, I just want to make a very small point in this post.

I wonder if I am the mind, that which thinks, sees, hears, and breaths this body or something else - perhaps something that is aware of the mind. What does direct observation tell me about this problem?

I know that I am not my body. I also know that I am not my thoughts or feelings. So what is left?

What I discover is that what is left is attention. I notice that my mind attends to things, thoughts, and feelings. My MIND attends to these objects.

What do I notice through this observation? I notice that attention is allied with the mind. The mind and attention are one. I can see that.

If I can really see that - I must ask myself, when I “attend” to the question of self-identity - is attention just noticing itself?

Frankly, I don’t know the answer to that question, but I know that a world of potential exists that does not occupy my present attention. Even though it is not ‘seen’ by attention, I know that it is there. There are great mountains in the West. I know they are there, but I can’t physically see them. They exist as knowledge connected to this body/mind.

Who is this knower? Clearly, it is not just the immediate quality of attention. Is it a function of the mind? My gut response is yes, but I’m not really sure.

Thus even while I focus on the thoughts that guide this post, where are these thoughts coming from? I suspect they come from the inventory of experience that this mind already possesses. Thus, it too would be a function of the mind.

Or could it be that I am the ‘potential’ for everything that is, was, or could be and that attention simply brings that anything to the light of this body’s mind through the energy of attention?

If this were true, then everything I experience through attention is me. And if everything is me, without exception, then Source and me the same? There is no where to go and nothing to know. All is revealed by the light of being and all of it is me.

If we identify ourselves only with the energy of attention, we then carve out of this immensity of potential experience one infinitesimal slice and say this is the “mere” me. But if we are potential, the potential to be anything, then this energy of attention, this infinitesimal slice is simply the emergence of me happening to and with my body.

Does this make sense? Attention is just the light that brings “me” to awareness. I appear in a zillion different forms, sounds, feelings, vibrations, memories and all the rest. Ahhh, this is me as a bad driver ... ahhh, this is me as the sound of the me violin making those beautiful me sounds.

Could this be?

In deep sleep, I am that deep sleep and nothing more needs to be added to this experience. If dreams happen, then I am clearly them as well.

Let me know what you think of this inquiry. Does it ring true for you. I am not claiming any special knowledge or realization through these words. This is just inquiry.

Download: AttentionIdentity

Tags: Attention

Here is the most simple way I know to express the living reality of multiple simultaneous universes: we never have need to indulge in a Concept of who we think we are. We are everything that arises - including our egos and any thought/belief that contradicts this truth is a thought of personal separation, although it too is as much a part of us as anything else.

But everything we perceive also creates its own distinct universe and we are a part of that universe as well. Thus the dog laying beside me possesses her own universe that is separate from my own. This is a universe we can never know or experience, BUT it can be honored as it expresses itself as US!!! Your experience is different from mine, but just as you are in me - I am in you. These worlds touch, but how they touch can never be put into words. Love, to me, is to respect both: the ceaseless universality of this experience of me as everything and you as everything.

Download: Iameverything

Being and Non-being: Verse 40 of the Dao De Jing

Only four lines, yet these four lines convey the key to the the whole of the Dao.

Verse 40 is divided into two short stanzas. Here is stanza one translated by Addiss and Lombardo:

Reversal is Tao’s movement.
Yielding is Tao’s practice.

Reversal refers to going back to the essence - the very ground of being. As we grow up and learn about our world and obtain a place for ourselves in society, we undergo a complex process of creating and adding on. So when Laotsi talks about reversal, he is talking about a return to the being that is there prior to all of this adding on.

This being is always with us. We couldn’t get rid of it if we tried. This understanding takes us, seamlessly, to the second line, for we come upon this being through yielding.

We yield to everything. Every thought we might claim about the world and, even more importantly, every thought we harbor about ourselves - every one - we yield to it all. Thus we don’t fight or struggle against anything perceived or thought. We allow everything to be exactly as it is. This is yielding.

What is left when we yield to everything?

What is left is seeing. We see it all. And we don’t just see now and then. We are always seeing (even when our eyes are closed). But because the mind is restless for identity, it will aggressively seek to re-establish thought patterns and concepts which it “knows” and which it enjoys to maintain its identification with objectivity. If we are truly to reverse, we simply see how this process unfolds as it happens. It’s all about seeing without anything added to it.

Seek nothing and continue to seek nothing, for the habit and energy of seeking is very strong. Just yield to its strength, but refuse to claim it to yourself.

This is the truth and the method of the Dao.

The next two line ...

All things originate from being.
Being originates from non-being.

Everything we see is that which is. This is being. Our body is. Our thoughts and feelings are. The universe is. All things originate from that which is seen.

But (and this is a very big but (only one T)), that which sees has no apparent being. It is the one and only thing that cannot be seen! This is the mystery - the ground of being.

So when you see without the conceptual insertion of the thought that an “I/me” is doing the seeing - this is the Dao itself. Just see - free of every concept.

Brief Discussion

Any idea, like happiness, is conceptual. It’s just a word. We cannot possess happiness. It’s a state of being that comes and goes. Now take the next step. Your sense of personal being is no different from happiness. It is a concept. The qualitative sense of self also comes and goes. It’s here one moment and gone the next. Notice how your sense of self tends to arise most strongly when you think about it. We discover, through this investigation, that thought generates an “I” that thinks and a “me” it thinks about.

We can also think about happiness and generate the same “I” that wants more of it. We can think about any concept. But the one thing every concept has in common is that they are all objects of thought. You can sense happiness and you can sense the “I/me” thought, but each is clearly seen as an object. In the case of happiness we learn not to claim it for ourselves. We understand that it is a feeling bundle that is transient. But in the case of “I/me”, we learn to claim it for ourselves. That is the decisive difference. So when you sense the personal “I/me”, unlearn the personal connection. This is the process of reversal and yielding in your own immediate life. It’s just sensation, no matter how compelling the sensation might be.

Download: V40BeingNonbeing

Tags: identity, seeking, seeing

In an earlier post, I pointed out core issues in neo-Advaita that, I believe, fail the test of direct experience. In that post I used Greg Goode’s Standing as Awareness as my source for what I found wrong in neo-Advaita. In this post I will continue my rant using Greg’s book, but I want to make it clear that I have absolutely nothing against Greg. To the contrary my communications with him, although brief, have never failed to be engaging and delightful. I have the utmost respect for him ... I just don’t agree with him. One of the key purposes of the Liberation Blog is simply to explore experience and points of view.

We should also remember that how we interpret the words of others, if not our own, can be more an issue of misunderstanding than one of clarity. So I leave open the possibility that I have misinterpreted Greg’s work and I invite correction from others, if not himself with my apologies.

In this post, I am making a simple point about cause and effect. First, let’s see how Greg deals with this issue. On page 26 of his book he writes:

• Arising A comes and goes.
• Arising B comes and goes.
• Arising C comes and goes
• Arising D comes and seems to make a claim: “Arising A was a trigger, because it came up then caused B and C to appear.

But notice that claim in D is itself an arising. And but by the time D appears, A, B, and C are on longer in evidence. There is no present proof that they occurred.

Let’s now take a look at how they might work out in the real world.

• Arising A - we see a tree.
• Arising B - we notice strong winds
• Arising C - we notice the tree leaning.
• Arising D - we notice the tree falling and crushing my car.

This is an actual example taken from my own life. In this narrative can you see if A (the tree), B (the wind), and C (the strain on the tree) are no longer in evidence? No. In fact, we can quite clearly see the chain of connections that link the outcome of this sequence, D - the crushing of my car with A, B, and C. Were we to claim that A, B, and C are no longer in evidence we would be ignoring what is clearly seen and experienced and imposing our belief on a situation.

What is the error in this example of neo-Advaita reasoning? It is this. The mind sees and experiences the world as a series of snapshots. Language further reifies this experience by labeling distinct events with nouns. It is the mind that experiences the world as an endless series of arisings. It is, also, the mind that links arisings with outcomes. Sometimes the links are very clear and logical, as in this example. But at other times the linkages can be tenuous and, finally, in other examples they can a function of illusion, if not madness. It is, in fact, this third, fully belief driven, mode of thinking that causes not only illusion, but great hardship.

Thus Greg makes two apparent errors. One he throws all sequences of sense impressions into a single vessel (A thru D are made separate, when they are, in fact, whole and one) and two, he takes the mind’s proclivity to see the world as snapshots as how the world actually is. We haven’t explored this second point, but we will momentarily.

Hitler linked the profound depression afflicting Germany in the 20s and early 30s with communism and the Jews. This linkage was made possible by the vigor of his beliefs. Reality as it actually presented itself was both complex and failed to present a channel for him to express the hate his ego and self-hate needed to manifest. This is a good example how belief trumps reality, when our fear-based psychological self resists the complex texture of our actual life. Thus Christian zealots see every muslim as a potential threat and every muslim zealot sees every Jew as sinister and hateful. Stephen Colbert said it perfectly when he said that he never lets facts get in the way of his opinions.

Now let’s take a look at the second error. Both scenarios I presented are, in fact not valid, although the second much more closely mirrors reality than does that presented in Standing as Awareness. We saw that mind experiences life as a series of snapshots and that is made possible through its reliance on both language and belief. But that is just “my” experience of reality. It is assured that yours’ will be different. We take different snapshots of reality and not only of the “same” sequence if we are both experiencing it at the same time, but we will even create differing sequences depending on our mood, energy level, and other factors with the same basic sensed material.

The mind, in this way, acts as a filter - a simplifier of the complex tapestry of experience that is always presenting itself. Viewed in a deeper way, we can see the limitations of our own mind. Reality does not possess separate arisings - it is one arising in constant flux. Thus there is no A, B, C, or Z. There is always this and even this can never be pinned down. This is the very “oneness” described as the Buddha mind. If anything, this is true Advaita.

This does not mean that we must reject the interpretations of the mind. What we project as our own being, is itself a manifestation within the one arising. Our purpose here is to separate the wheat from the chaff and, perhaps more importantly, to observe when our own precious beliefs work to bend reality to their preference. This is a portal allowing for the entry of distortion and conflict in our lives. As the brilliant Steve Hagen points out, we can agree on what we see - this is actual reality. But we may argue over our opinions. This too can be seen.

Awakening or enlightenment is simply seeing free of all concepts. And when I say “seeing”, I mean just that! The deepest and most persistent concept is the I/me thought, but this too can be seen, but only as a concept. It needs to be understood that “seeing ourselves” is no different from seeing any other thought. Thus it is ultimately seen that we can never see ourselves. What we experience is our reflection in the every-changing oneness that is Life. We are the root of our own universe. If we are ever truly free of the “me” concept, then that is awakening. It is always there, but it is obscured by the me thought. This is the bedrock concept. Once free of it we are truly free.

Download this post here: CauseEffect

Tags: Cause and effect

Imagine that you could understand the language of the plants and animals. There you are underwater amid a glittering riot of silvery fishes. They are singing with joy and power, but several whisper in your ears, their shame filled voice belying their silvery beauty, “how worthless I am - how deficient I am - I am pathetic.”

There you are in central India and a magnificent tiger ambles, menacingly up to you. There is no where to run, you must hear her words. She says, to your surprise, “look at me. I am ugly and awkward. I am so ashamed of myself that I could just eat you out of sheer self-hate.”

Then wandering the forests of Minnesota a magnificent spruce trees seems to call to you. You approach its primal majesty only to hear, “aren’t I ridiculous? I am a fool among the smart and intelligent. Please don’t laugh at me.”

Of course, as best as we can know, only human beings think like this. I hope that what I’m describing about the fish, tiger, and tree strikes you as absurd.

Why do we think like this?

Go back to the getting from here to there post. Notice that here is the location of our self-disappointment. It can take a myriad of forms from self-hate to mild frustration, but it will oscillate between these two poles depending your life circumstances. This is, precisely, the energy that drives the I must get out of here to get there thinking.

We reject ourselves.

This is the fundamental lie and it is the dark force that makes this earth destroying civilization possible (see Liberation from the Lie for how this iclearly seen to be a perfectly valid statement). Inadvertently, our parents rejected us, our educators reject us and there comes a time when we adopt the very same belief. We, ultimately, become our most forceful self-rejectors. We sustain a culture of rejection with our own children. Invalidation is an internal force that passes between people in space and time.

Thus we are always driven to get from here to there. The mind will always project a better tomorrow, if we only do such-and-such. Doing “such-and-such” will always take the form of validating the underlying deficiency belief. It is, exactly, in this way that we sustain our own self-contempt.

Let’s return to our glittering fish, powerful tiger, and majestic spruce. Are they not perfect. If there is a god, do they not show her fingerprint? Are they not the miracle of beautiful life on this very special planet?

You are no different from the glittering fish, the powerful tiger, and the majestic spruce. This realization must be first and foremost in your living consciousness.

Don’t go looking here and there for a better you. That very seeking is the energy which maintains the rejection poison. You are already perfect. It is only the underlying belief in your deficiency, a belief brought to life by your invalidation as a young infant, that sustain this lie. This must be seen. You can only find what is already there, when you cease the deep process of self-illusion.

Drop the belief system (for it is a system - a rather complex constellation of thoughts (and again my book is a kind of manual for identifying the false self in its multitude of guises)) and you will know, first-hand, of your own perfection. You are perfect.

Download: YouArePerfect

Tags: seeking

Many years ago, when I first started with this spiritual trek, I joined a Zen monastery. The main activity at the monastery was meditation. We meditated about 16 hours a day and we’re strictly supervised by more advanced meditators.

It didn’t take long to see that if I was ever to get enlightened, it was going to take lots of hard work. Meditation takes a toll on the body. My legs would fall asleep, my spine became rigid and uncomfortable, and my knees felt like they would explode. But the pain either passes or it is endured. The contest is on and may the best meditator get the golden ring of enlightenment.

This is the program. Or so the ego would like to believe.

We are trained to believe that getting anything is a competition. In most cases it’s a competition with ourselves, whether its the ceaseless battle against the ever-burgeoning waistline, the self-full drive of self-improvement, or the biggest contest of all, personal enlightenment. The motifs of struggle against all but insurmountable odds fits well with our mythology of what it takes to succeed. We have to fight for what we “want” - how ironic this is. Did not the Buddha say that desire is the root of suffering. Yet we persist with our struggles and hope that through sheer effort and goodwill and we will, one day, obtain our very own golden ring and we can finally rest.

But the spiritual journey shows us something very different. What it shows us is that this paradigm is the very symbol of personal futility. It’s this struggle that is the problem. It’s the wanting that is the ego. The deficient self hates its own deficiency and assumes a set of beliefs designed to show it a way out. Whether its meditation, attending satsangs, or reading 500 books, it must find the way - it must discover the trick - to escape the self. We become desperate. We cling onto nice sounding phrases and start believing that everything is love. We will do anything to convince ourselves of the merit of our beliefs and projections.

All a waste. All nonsense. All, just the same belief system but operating in the realm of projected spirituality.

It’s all a game of trying to get from here to there.

There is no valid here and there is no valid there. We do this game with every aspect of our lives. Each moment gives birth to a new “there” and so the wheels are set in motion. We gotta get from here to there.

“We gotta get out of this place.” Eric Burdon of the Animals shouted and so our ego proclaims.

But I tell you now - this is the old paradigm. Its the story of always needing to work harder of putting your nose to the spiritual grindstone.

I repeat - there is no getting from here to there. There is only this and we never need to go anywhere, because life itself is ceaseless changes. Life becomes the carrier of our lives.

Would you like to know how FEAR manifests in your life? Find out for yourself. It’s in the ceaseless projects your mind invents on how to get from here to there. That is how fear works. We must reject ourselves to find ourselves.

Only thought believes that it can get from here to there.

There is a way out. First see how you struggle to get from here to there all the time in your life, whether its struggling against a traffic jam or seeking enlightenment. Just see the whole process. See how it repeats itself in a million contexts.

The solution is first to see and then to trust. It’s a matter of implicit trust - trust in life.

Allow the battle to cease. If you are prompted to struggle in this life - struggle against injustice - struggle against pollution, struggle for justice - then do what you need to do, but you - the deep - authentic you, needs never to go anywhere. It can’t go anywhere. Just watch it in everyday life. You’ll see for yourself the truth of these words.

It is the very nature of self-slavery to constantly being fleeing here to finally arrive at a projected there. That is the life of bondage.

Give it up. And the moment you give it up a huge sigh will emerge from your body and psyche. The journey’s done. You’ve arrived. And even if painful things happen, and they will happen, maybe they are happening right now, that’s just the way life is right now. You can and will carry it all, whether you like to or not. Or rather, it’s life that carries it all. You are that life. You are the All.

This is not a giving up. It’s not resignation. To the contrary this is a full engagement with life exactly as it is. It is a rejection of the universe of thought and psychological projection into the apparent reality of this very moment.

Download: HeretoThere

Tags: struggle, ego, seeking