N-lightenment

Something in you already knows.

4 Steps of Acceptance and Transformation

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4 Steps of Acceptance and Transformation

 
Phil Snider came up with a beautiful 4 step process for the real acceptance I am offering. Thank you, Phil for sharing this. This is very much the process that I go through naturally and spontaneously with pretty much everything that happens in my life now. But it took Phil’s generous sharing that helped me put it into words. Or he put it into words for me. This is a very powerful and life transforming practice so please pay attention and put this into practice in your life. This is why I see everything that I experience as a great blessing and teaching. And I mean everything. I certainly didn’t always do this. This only came about after my own awakening. But now it is my natural attitude toward life. So here are the 4 steps Phil shared.
 

1. Gratitude

Thank whatever shows up for showing up. This may take some practice when dealing with painful experience before it comes naturally, but do it. I promise it changes everything. Have an attitude of gratitude throughout your day every day. It is best to practice with the things you currently feel the least gratitude and the most rejection and aversion for, the “Oh no!”, “Why me?” and “What the F*ck!!?” stuff. When you can honestly feel gratitude for those things all the rest will be a piece of cake. Everything that shows up is entirely for your benefit and for your learning, so practice gratitude for it now, even before you realize this is true. It will open your eyes and your heart and help you realize the truth of it.
 

2. Realize

Realize you don’t know everything about what just showed up. This is an important truth of life that most people miss or refuse to accept. What we think we know is almost always wrong or at best a very limited part of the whole picture. Accept that you don’t know. This acceptance of reality is enormously freeing. You may have heard the expression: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few.” Often our accumulation of knowledge actually limits our true knowing, which is always open to whatever arises. So accept that you don’t know. It will improve your life and your true knowing, your wisdom.
 
All of my writing and teaching and healing and art come from this place of “not knowing”. From this clear, open and free spaciousness, all things flow spontaneously and effortlessly. It is like a water faucet has been turned on full blast, all the time. Inspiration comes from everything that arises in my life moment to moment. Because I continuously experience a beginner’s mind, I am constantly learning from everything. It was not always like this. I had a great deal of training as a writer and artist. I used to work at this very hard. I thought I knew what was right and I worked very hard to attain that. Now it just flows with no effort or even thinking at all. This is the benefit of realizing I don’t know and letting go of the belief that I do or should. Realize you don’t know. Let go of the belief that you should. And be free.
 

3. Ask

Ask whatever shows up what it has come to teach you. There is ALWAYS a lesson here. Every single thing that happens in your life is a LESSON. When your mind is open through gratitude and the realization that you really don’t know why this thing, feeling, situation or person showed up, you have the openness and space to hear the answer. Ask what this has come to teach you. Then be very quiet and listen for the answer.
 

4. Realization

When the first three steps are done with an open mind and heart, awakening and awareness will happen naturally. This practice will transform your life. When you do this enough times you will no longer doubt that everything that happens in your life is entirely for your benefit. You will see the world in a very different way. These are not difficult things to do. It just takes willingness. You may now have a thought that says, “I could never be grateful for this.”, say if someone should steal your car. But try it anyway. It is only a thought whether you are grateful or not. Go through the whole 4 steps and see what a difference it makes in your life. You can do this while you are calling the police and filing a report. It may take some time before you realize why someone stealing your car was actually for your benefit. You may realize this quite quickly or maybe never. This is a practice. And the more you practice the more you realize. Continue doing it with each thing that arises in your life until it becomes your normal experience. I can verify that it is a beautiful way to experience life. And thanks again to Phil for breaking it down into these 4 steps. It is quite vague for me to say accept everything that comes into your life. It’s far more useful to break it down into these 4 practical steps.

Zen Circle of Enlightenment

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Zen Circle of Enlightenment
Zen Circle of Enlightenment

Awakening from the dream of conceptual thinking follows a certain route and process. The Zen Circle of Enlightenment is a useful way of understanding this. This post does not cover the practices that help this evolve. It simply shows the route and process of what happens for freedom from the conceptual world to be directly experienced and lived. Click here to download this graphic: Zen Circle of Enlightenment

Zero Degrees – The Beginning

We begin in this map at zero degrees. We are completely attached to our thoughts. We see the world and ourself completely through thoughts, concepts and beliefs. We don’t yet realize that these are just abstractions of reality and not reality itself. We believe this conceptual world IS reality. We believe our thoughts ARE reality. In spiritual terms we might say we are living completely in a dream or illusion.

90 Degrees – The First Step Toward Freedom

When we begin a spiritual practice, we move to 90 degrees on this map. We start learning new concepts,  spiritual concepts. We leave some of our old concepts and beliefs behind and pick up new ones. If we read and study The Heart Sutra, for instance, we might now say that Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form, where at zero degrees we were believing that Form is Form and Emptiness is Emptiness.

We can get very excited about our new discoveries. They feel very liberating. We find new friends who are also practicing these new ways of thinking and experiencing. We find new teachers who lead us deeper into these new ideas and beliefs. It’s a very exciting time. But it can also be a little frustrating. We’ve got all these new and exciting concepts and beliefs, but somehow we’re still not awake. Somehow we still experience suffering in our lives. We may even tell ourselves that we are free and awake because we’ve had some amazing experiences, but deep inside we know this is not true. Deep inside, we still experience an incompleteness.

That’s because, even though these are new and exciting thoughts and beliefs, they are still only thoughts and beliefs. Reality is completely beyond all thoughts and beliefs, even spiritual ones. Given the powerful conditioning we’ve all undergone, it may be hard to accept this. But eventually, through frustration and continued suffering if nothing else, we break through. We break through the barrier of thought.

180 Degrees – The First Glimpse of Freedom

In Zen koan practice, we call this The First Gate. The purpose of our koan practice is to introduce this impossible impasse, barrier or gate that the mind of thought cannot get through. No matter how hard we try, none of our usual mental strategies work. The only way through is without the mind. Finally, in that great breakthrough, body and mind drop away. Because this is beyond the mind, there is nothing we can say about it. None of our mental labels can describe what this is. In Zen, we call this Emptiness. It is completely beyond all words and thoughts. It is not nothing. It is not everything. It is not inside. It is not outside. It is not duality. It is not nonduality. It is not self. It is not other. It is not existing, nor is it not existing. There is absolutely nothing we can say about this.

Now we have come face to face with reality, but we don’t yet know what this is. All our words, concepts, beliefs, knowledge and previous experiences cannot touch this. All the spiritual knowledge and experiences we accumulated at 90 degrees cannot touch this at all. We are completely emptied out and all there is is reality itself.

Quite often people become a little unsettled and resistant to this complete freedom at first. They may quickly resort to thoughts in an attempt to exert at least a little imagined control. That’s unfortunate, but it’s the nature of the conditioned mind. The longer we stay in this freedom from thought, the more wonderful we realize it is. Here we are directly experiencing life, reality, without any thoughts getting in the way. The longer we stay here, the more we realize that this is the very source of the peace, love, contentment, freedom, creativity and wisdom we have been seeking. This is it. This is our True Self, even if there is not a thing we can say about it.

Because this freedom from thought is so liberating, we can also become attached to this stage and not move on and embody it in the world for the benefit of all beings. Eventually most of us do want to do this. We realize we are not separate from any being, unconditional love is our very nature, and so we move on.

270 Degrees – Embodying Freedom

At 270 Degrees, we’re free to use language, concepts, and thoughts without any attachment to them. They’re just language, concepts and thoughts. They have no reality or validity beyond that. When they’re useful, beneficial and appropriate, we use them. Otherwise we remain silent. Great creativity flows through some of us in this stage. But we’re not attached to it. It doesn’t even feel like we’re doing anything. It’s simply happening by itself. It’s simply life happening.

Some us find ourselves as spiritual teachers here. We feel called to help others discover this great freedom and liberation from suffering. Although people may become attached to our words, we never are. And we do our best to encourage them to see all our words as merely pointers to something beyond words and thoughts. It is never the words we are pointing towards. It is always the freedom beyond words and thoughts.

Although we’ve learned to use words and concepts again to communicate, the underlying emptiness and freedom remains. In the Zen tradition teachers often say things that sound like nonsense to the conditioned mind in an effort to help serious students break free of the prison of their conditioned thoughts. That’s the purpose of Zen koans. When we’re free of the conceptual dream world, what appeared as nonsense is completely understood as pointing directly at reality. It’s often a time of great hilarity, without any thoughts about why it’s so funny.

Here we’re free to use words, thoughts and actions in any way they are truly beneficial without having the slightest attachment to them. It’s like being a bucket without a bottom. Whatever pours in immediately leaves without a trace. In this way, we live in freedom. In the Christian bible, it’s called living in the world but not of it.

360 Degrees – Returning Home As Freedom

At 360 degrees on this circle, we have returned home. We live fully in the world, but without any attachment or resistance to any of it. We live in complete freedom. Now we can say that “mountains are mountains” without any attachment or belief in these words. The difference between saying “mountains are mountains” at zero degrees with attachment and belief and saying “mountains are mountains” at 360 degrees with complete freedom is profound. From the outside, it may appear that these are the same, but they are not at all. No longer imprisoned by our thoughts, no longer imprisoned by a sense of separation, we are free to be fully in the world and act in the highest benefit for all beings.

That doesn’t mean our journey has ended. In one sense it has just begun. But it’s no longer a personal self with needs and goals taking this journey. The journey is happening by itself. In every moment it is unfolding fresh, new and alive. Whatever arises in each moment is the journey. And each moment is fully complete in and of itself. There is no longer a desire to get something or get somewhere. The fullness of life is revealed in every moment. What more could be asked for? This is returning home.

 

 

 

 

Life and Death

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Life and death cannot be separated. They’re joined at the hip. When we try to separate them and celebrate life while fearing and rejecting death, we end up living an artificial imaginary life. This only leads to suffering as reality always presents itself no matter how tightly we cling to our illusions.

It’s important to accept life and death as one, as they cannot be separated. In this calligraphy, I painted life and death as one word LifeDeath. If we think of it in this way, we will not stray from reality.

We cannot truly understand life without understanding death. We cannot understand death without understanding life. The two cannot be separated. Instead of depressing us, our understanding, accepting and embracing death as a fundamental reality of life leads to a deep appreciation of every moment of life. It’s temporary. We might as well fully enjoy each and every moment as they won’t come around in exactly the same way ever again.

Our culture has conditioned us to celebrate and believe in youth, newness, and a youthful, perfect beauty that never changes or fades. We avoid images of death and decay because they expose our conditioned illusions. Our illusions crumble in the face of too much truth.

We don’t like to think our minds have been conditioned. We like to think that our thoughts are ours. Those of us who have spent time in the advertising industry or in other areas of mass media know very well the power of the media to condition beliefs, opinions, preferences and desires. Media shapes the way culture thinks and feels. It is unnatural for us to think and feel about life and ourselves the way we do. These thoughts and beliefs have been conditioned by our culture.

Conditioning

I admit to once being a Creative Director of a large advertising agency. I apologize for this. It’s a poor excuse, but it’s hard to make a decent living as an artist and I had a family to support. Knowing the powerful influence we had over the way the population thinks and feels, most of us imagined we were immune to this. One week I decided to test myself to see if this were true. I decided that if I had a strong desire to purchase anything I had seen in an advertisement, I would wait one week before acting on this desire. During that week I would simply watch my mind each day. I was shocked to discover that I was just as conditioned as anyone else. Not much different from Pavlov’s dogs. When the right triggers were given, I would salivate just like those dogs. After the results of my experiment, I began to take the responsibility for what I was doing far more seriously. Eventually I left the business.

Wabi-Sabi

The Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic is one way to de-condition ourselves and learn to live in reality. Wabi-sabi celebrates the impermanent, the natural, the changing nature of life. It sees that life and death are not separate. Where our contemporary culture celebrates youth and this idea that people and things can be permanent, wabi-sabi celebrates reality. Everything is changing. Youth become old age. The new car becomes the old one. There is nothing wrong with this. It is the reality of life and it is profoundly beautiful. If we can let go of our conditioning, the beauty of life as it really is becomes clear.

Where our culture attempts to cover up and hide the reality of death and impermanence, wabi-sabi celebrates it. Instead of turning away from the wrinkles in this woman’s face or attempting to cover them up with make-up or Photoshop retouching, can you see the profound beauty in these wrinkles, these symbols of a life truly lived. Seeing the beauty in this is wabi-sabi.

My Grandmother Rozie

My grandmother was an amazing woman. I was truly fortunate to have her in my life. As I knew here in her 70s and 80s, she didn’t act the way other women her age acted. She didn’t dye her hair or go to a beauty salon in an attempt to look younger. She never wore makeup. She barely combed or brushed her hair. It was usually a tangled mess. She cared nothing about the latest clothes. She usually wore the same sweater filled with holes. But there was an aliveness about her and great joy. It was wonderful to be with her and everybody felt that way. She loved people. She loved life. And she loved me.

Freedom From Fear

My grandmother gave me the greatest gift that any human can give to another. She taught me not to fear death. When she was in the process of dying and had at most a month left to live, she told me about her decision not have any medical attention for her stomach cancer. She said she had seen her friends go through surgery and treatment and it just wan’t for her. She told me she had lived a wonderful life (She was eighty-five at the time I think.) and she was ready to go. It was very clear that she had no fear of death at all. It wasn’t because of any religious belief or belief in an after life. I don’t think she really cared about that. She had enjoyed a long life and now she was ready to go. She accepted her death fully without any reservation at all. It was as natural as getting up in the morning and brushing her teeth.

I was in my early 20s at the time. Up until that conversation I had been influenced by the media and my society to fear death or at least think it was a negative thing. But my grandmother’s complete lack of any fear changed that. It wasn’t all at once, but it began a process of changing my previous conditioning. In all my media experiences of death, nobody every faced it as something completely natural and nothing to fear. My grandmother did. And I will always be grateful for that.

Until we can fully accept death as the natural process and inevitable end of our life, we cannot fully accept life either. That fear of death holds us back from fully living. My grandmother lived her whole life free of that. That’s why she lived so fully. That’s why she accepted everything in life. She accepted her aging gracefully without trying to appear younger. She accepted and thoroughly enjoyed every moment of her life. And she accepted her death just as gracefully, naturally and completely. My grandmother was a prime example of wabi-sabi in action. Her life itself was a work of art. I was very privileged to have seen it and been a part of it.

Love What Is

Wabi-sabi and Zen itself doesn’t reject youth in favor of the old. It accepts everything. It appreciates and is grateful for everything in every moment. Because of our conditioning we favor youth over old age. We favor wrinkle-free skin over wrinkles. We favor the shiny and new over the rusting, deteriorating and old. Because of this we are out of balance. We don’t need to practice accepting what we already accept. That’s already done. We need to practice accepting and appreciating what our conditioning has taught us to reject and fear. That’s where the Japanese aesthetic approach of wabi-sabi can help us. It can return us to a natural way of life, free of the conditioning that has forced us out of balance with nature and reality.

The thoughts we have that reject and fear some aspects of life are not our thoughts. We didn’t create them. We were conditioned by society, by men and women like me in the advertising and media worlds. We would never tell you that wrinkled skin is beautiful in a woman because there is no profit in that. Wrinkles are free. They are a natural part of aging. We would never tell you that the shiny new car we’re trying to sell you will begin to rust and need repairs in a few years. Rust and deterioration are a natural part of life. That’s reality. Advertising doesn’t deal in reality. There’s no profit in it.

To live a natural, balanced and healthy life, we need to live in the real world, not the world of our conditioned thoughts. When we accept, honor, appreciate and love life as it really is, whatever that may be, without trying to change it or wish it were different, we will live a life of true happiness. The world perceived through our conditioned thoughts cannot give us that.

 

 

 

Fear – the Main Obstacle to Awakening

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The Main Obstacle to Awakening and What to Do About It

A wonderful question that many spiritual seekers have. “Does a change of this sort mean jumping off a cliff and losing everything? I’m scared of drama and terrified of irrevocable shifts.” Just last night at Satsang someone asked a very similar question. “Will abiding in this deep peace mean that the life I have worked so hard to create will fall apart?”
 
I think many people have deep questions like these. It is natural and maybe inevitable. The nature of the egoic separate self-identity we call “me” is actually created of fear. Much of this is repressed so we’re not aware of it. But as the door to awakening comes closer, we begin to become aware of the true nature of the ego, and that is fear. So this is a very deep and important question. And I’m happy to honor it.
 

Answer

Thank you for this question as its authenticity relates to many people who have the same question. This is a very deep and honest question. Just last night someone in Satsang asked this very same question. I thank you for expressing it. I feel your heart in this. So it also requires a deep and honest answer.
Yes, it does feel like we’re jumping off a cliff and risk losing everything. That is the initial fear of surrender. And, yes, we have to be willing to do that, to jump off this imaginary but very real feeling cliff and to risk losing everything, to surrender everything. That’s why it takes great courage. Eventually we just have to do it. Jump off the cliff, surrender absolutely everything.
 
This is not a place for careful, cautious stages. Surrender is a very bold move when the very nature of the separate self is fear. And it is. So the fear of doing this is natural and inevitable. The separate ego self identity is made entirely out of fear, fear of not surviving. And to surrender fully, we are saying, “Yes, even this. Even death.”
 

What We Lose and What We Gain

This all sounds like very bad news. It is what the ego is afraid of. The good news is we give up everything, we surrender everything, we lose everything, including ourself AND as a result, we GAIN everything. We have only really surrendered our attachment, an illusion. What we gain is reality. We gain the world. We gain relationships that were never possible before. We gain peace. We gain love. We gain a complete uninterrupted contentment, gratitude and joy. We gain freedom. We gain life. And we gain our True Self.
 
What we lose (illusion) pales in comparison to the unlimited magnitude of what we gain. So this news is very, very good. But you can only know this when you take the leap. My words are only encouragement if you take them that way. I’m saying, “Jump in. The water is fine. It’s wonderful.” But you have to jump. I can’t do that for you.
 
I know it’s terrifying to take that leap. Every awakened being has done this. And all have experienced this terror. It is part of the nature of waking up. And this terror is a big obstacle. Some never pass through it. In my case it was experience the terror and do it anyway. Not initially. I backed off many times. But finally, I took the leap. And then another. And then another. Eventually I realized this fear had no reality to it. I only realized this because I tested it again and again and what I feared never happened.
 
I gave up all my talent as an artist and creative person. The result turned out to be more talent and creativity than I ever imagined possible. I gave up my relationships or ever having a relationship ever again. The result was the flowering of all existing relationships and new relationships beyond anything I would have thought possible. Everything I gave up came back to me in abundance. How could I know this? I didn’t. I just surrendered.
 
I gave up a limited, vulnerable, separate self identity and realized This, the unlimited, infinite, beyond all possibility of identity. Nobody who has ever awakened to Truth said, “I wish I didn’t do that. Is it possible to return to illusion again?” No awakened being has ever said that. Nobody ever will.
 
It’s worth the leap. It’s worth all the struggle and seeking and suffering that helped to open this door. Even a single moment of this great presence is worth a thousand lifetimes. I know the fear, My Friend. And I know what happens when you leap anyway and discover for yourself what happens. Nobody has ever said all that went before was not worth This. Thank you for the wonderful question that so many also hold deep in their hearts.

Is Life a Dream?

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dreamAs spiritual seekers we enjoy listening to or reading theories of awakening and enlightenment. We want to believe there is some sort of step-by-step plan we can follow and understand with our minds. That’s the way we’ve learned everything else in our life. If we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that it hasn’t really worked, at least not yet. But there’s always the hope that the next thing will, or perhaps it will if we’re a little more diligent in following the path we’ve already learned. At some point in this process at least a few of us will realize that it’s not working and it probably won’t.
 
This is rather disillusioning. If all these spiritual books and teachers can’t help me, what can?
 

A Much Simpler Approach

Let me suggest a much simpler approach that perhaps we’ve missed. And very likely we’ve missed it on purpose. 🙂
 
The reason that all these wonderful new spiritual theories and step-by-step practices haven’t really worked is that they’re all based on thoughts. And thoughts are not the solution. They’re the problem. Not thoughts themselves, but our belief and attachment to them.
 

The Zero Point

Let’s call freedom from all thoughts the “zero point”. It doesn’t mean there are no thoughts, but no thought is believed in, no thought is attached to. Thoughts have zero importance.
 
In spiritual terms this zero point is often called Samadhi and sometimes Sat-Chit-Ananda (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss).
 
Ramana Maharshi has said, “When the Self is realized, the world disappears.” This is an interesting comment and very true. And there is a simple explanation for it that has to do with how we perceive the world. We perceive the world through our thoughts about the world and the objects in it. Our first experience of this zero point is often the apparent disappearance of the world and all the objects in it. All objects we were previously seeing appear to have disappeared into a pure light. This may sound frightening, but it is anything but. It is Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.
 

An Experiment in Perception

Years ago I spontaneously discovered a little experiment. After years of meditation and a practice of letting go of attachment to thoughts I called “don’t know” mind, I discovered I could look at any object and, layer by layer, surrender every thought I had about it, name, form, color, function, connection, etc. When this was complete for that object, that object would at first become very blurry and then disappear completely into the background. I could no longer see it. As soon as a single thought about it reappeared it would immediately snap back into sharp focus.
 
This was fascinating to me so for a while I experimented with this with many objects in my perception. What it taught me was that I could not physically see an object as something separate from everything else without thoughts about that object. Without thoughts I could not separate an object from the background it appeared in front of. Without a thought, that object ceased to exist to my perceptions.
 
This also explains why the entire world and all objects cease to be perceivable at the zero point, Samadhi, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. As Ramana says, “When the Self is realized, the world disappears.”
 
If you have not yet experienced this, then this will only be another thought to you. This is why all words are only useful as pointers, not Truth. Hopefully these words can point you to a little expansion, a little less attachment to and belief in words as Truth. And also a little better understanding of what your perceptions (sight, touch, sound, smell, taste, etc.) are made from, as well as a little better understanding of your thoughts and feelings and even sense of self.
 

All Matter is 99% Empty Space

Let me add here that physicists have long known that what we see as solid matter is actually 99% empty space. Hopefully this will give you even less confidence, attachment and belief in what you see and believe as reality. That is certainly what the experience of the zero point, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, awakening or your True Self will do for you. It will leave your mind forever free of mental knowing. And this freedom is bliss. It is peace. It is unconditional love. It is True Knowing. It is Presence to what is in each moment.
 

Integration

The initial experience of this freedom from thoughts, what we call awakening, is so radically different from everything we have ever “known”, which we now realize was just a thought-based waking dream, that it takes some time for integration. Some rush this integration and too quickly develop thoughts and theories about what it is. They let their initial discomfort and unfamiliarity with being in a thought-free state of complete not knowing trigger them back into a thought-world, although now it is a “spiritual” or “awakened” thought-world. But this is still a thought-world. It is a new dream, but it is still a dream.
 
There is another option.
 
Obviously remaining fully in the zero-point / Samadhi is not going to work for functioning in this material plane. Without perceiving objects, we cannot function with them. So that is not really an option, at least not for long. We might call the practical second option a Middle Way or as I like to call it:
 

Living Awake

In Living Awake we are fully aware that our thoughts are not reality, are not Truth. They are just thoughts. In this way we live free of thoughts. We are fully aware that all our perceptions depend on these thoughts and so none of our perceptions are real. The world we perceive is an illusion, a dream depending entirely on thoughts. I understand how disorienting this will seem to those who still believe their thoughts and perceptions. What is there to trust? What is there to depend on? Nothing in the dream. But for one who has experienced the zero point, Samadhia, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, the True Self, this is a life of complete freedom.
 

Living In The World But Not Of It

This is what it truly means to live in the world but not of it.
 
The world will always appear as a dream because of the way our brain and perceptions function. Reality can never be understood with the mind, thoughts or perceptions. When this is realized it is accepted. When this is accepted the dream no longer affects us, no longer causes any problems or suffering. Living Awake is living free.
 

Practical Applications

I understand that very few people have experienced the zero point as described above. And of the few who have few have spent enough time to fully integrate it. Of those who have not yet experienced this, there is a great deal of misunderstanding, attempted and believed mental understanding and flat out fear and resistance to letting go of the thought-world that completely.
 
Yet there are very practical applications for this understanding in every stage of consciousness and attachment.
 

True Healing

True and miraculous healing happens as soon as someone lets go of their attachment to the thoughts that create their suffering. It’s not something people are used to doing. But it is far less challenging than it might seem. I have helped many people do this with amazing results. It is only necessary to work with someone who is already free of thoughts.
 

Byron Katie

You can see how well this works in The Work of Byron Katie. Simply questioning these thoughts already gives some freedom. The more this freedom is experienced the more insight arises from direct experience about the true cause of suffering and freedom from suffering.
 

Presence and Mindfulness

As soon as anyone is free of thoughts, they are instantly fully Present. It might be said that Presence, mindfulness and being free of thoughts are the same thing.
 

Short Moments

It’s not necessary to experience full zero point. Even a short moment of freedom from thoughts is healing.
 

The Mantra

The most powerful mantra I know of is “I don’t know.” If understood and accepted fully this mantra brings instantaneous freedom. We have been carrying an enormous burden of layers of thoughts. Each year of our life we have added to this burden. We call it knowledge. The simple understanding that these are nothing but thoughts, and that thoughts are only representations of reality, not reality, can free us instantly from this burden. The freedom of this mantra “I don’t know”, fully understood and accepted, is amazing.
 
Do not worry. We don’t lose this knowledge. It doesn’t vanish. All we lose is the illusion that this knowledge is anything more than layer after layer of thoughts. In this realization and acceptance, we are free to experience the truth of life as it is without the heavy filters of thoughts that were in the way and prevented us from experiencing it. We were taught that the more knowledge we had the closer we would come to Truth. Life shows us that the opposite is true.
 

Thoughts Are Not the Problem

It doesn’t mean thoughts are not useful. They are. This is how we learn. This is how our culture was and is created. This is how we form our personal separate identity. The problem is that we believe these thoughts are more than thoughts. We believe they are reality. We believe they are Truth, just as we believe what we perceive with our eyes is reality, not a dream created with our thoughts.
 

The Dream

All spiritual seekers have heard that life is a dream. Perhaps now you are beginning to understand what that means. It’s not life that’s a dream. It’s our thoughts and perceptions of life that are a dream. It we want to truly experience the miracle of what life is, we only have to let go of our belief in and attachment to all the thoughts we have about it.

Freedom from Thoughts = Freedom from Suffering

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freedom-from-thoughtsThe reason I live free of thoughts is not because I no longer think, not because my brain no longer creates thoughts. It is because I completely understand what thoughts are. I experience thoughts as thoughts. I no longer mistake them for reality. And this is why I live free from thoughts. And freedom from thoughts is freedom from suffering.
 

Freedom from Suffering

If any experience of suffering, no matter how subtle, should arise, I open to it fully without resistance. It always leads back to a thought. In doing this thousands of times over the years with myself and others, this has never failed to happen even once. Sometimes the thought is deeply repressed and unconscious, but without resistance to the feeling, it bubbles to the surface and is set free. It’s set free because it is always realized as just a thought and, once it is let go, all suffering immediately ceases.
 

Resistance to Truth

This is very important to know. I realize how resistant most of us are to accepting the truth of this. There is very strong conditioning to experience thoughts as more than thoughts, to experience thoughts as reality, as truth, or at least as “my truth”.
 
And there is great resistance to accept that ALL suffering comes only from these thoughts that are believed as truth.
 
It seems that most of us would rather continue suffering, no matter how bad that suffering is, than accept
  1.  that thoughts are just thoughts, not reality, and
  2.  that ALL suffering is created by these thoughts mistaken for reality.

Freedom from Chronic Pain

I have helped many people experience complete freedom from chronic pain that has gone on for over 20 years, not because I’m a great healer or have some special skills, techniques or practices, but simply by helping them reduce their attachment to certain thoughts. This freedom from pain would be complete and permanent if the conditioning to believe their thoughts was not so powerful that it arose again within a few days of seeing me or sooner. For some this does happen. But for most the addiction to and belief in their thoughts is too powerful, so pain returns again along with the belief in their thoughts. It takes practice for this to be complete. It’s almost never a one shot deal. It depends on motivation and readiness more than anything else.
 
There are many simple practices to help free us from our addiction to and belief in thoughts. Most spiritual practices are for this purpose in one way or another. Only in this way can we experience Truth. But we must be willing to do this.
 

Suffering

When our addiction is very strong, as it is in most people, we are not yet ready to surrender this addiction. We must hit bottom first. That is the reason for suffering. That is the gift of suffering. It helps us hit bottom. For most of us it is necessary to hit bottom before we are ready to give up such an entrenched and reinforced addiction. Society looks down on alcohol and drug addiction, but it completely supports addiction to thoughts. Without addiction to thoughts we could not be manipulated or controlled by others.
 
Just as it is possible for a drug addict or alcoholic to be free of their addiction, it is possible to be free of addiction to our thoughts. It begins by understanding what our thoughts really are, not truth, not reality, just a thought, a limited, abstract representation of truth. When we no longer believe our thoughts are truth or an accurate representation of reality, we are in a position to see them as they are. Just accepting this, we can let them go, let them be what they are, and no longer an obstacle preventing us from experiencing life as it really is.
 
There are many simple practices on this website to help free you from this addiction to thoughts. But the first step is recognizing that the addiction exists. That’s always the hardest step. As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, “Denial is not just a river in Egypt.” If you ever experience suffering, no matter how subtle, hopefully you now know where to look for the true cause.