I’m the guy that had the accident, became aware of myself as the thinker of my thoughts, and then meditated for 50 years on what it taught me. My value to you is contained within the differences between your life experience and mine, and how that can inform your own journey.
Just as I had to, every ego must learn to find, and get to know, its own thinker. Whether that’s done on the phone, or by video, or in person—when clients are alone or in small groups I can personalize their instruction, which makes it much easier. But here, I must find ways to make the same subtle ideas into something more universal.
Part of that will be achieved by other formats, like the books, podcast, series or film, and even some new professional training programs I’m piloting for mental health professionals. But, as those things take shape, part of it will simply be a slightly different type of post.
I don’t think I could have written these without the benefit of my recent insights about how big the differences really are, between your experience and mine. I thank my recent crop of Advanced Class students, for my ongoing lessons in how deep and dense an ego appears to be when looking at it from the other side.
Without our ego’s ruminating thoughts, conjuring up problematic chemistry, we can simply be. And the best part about that is the internal peace. All of that other stuff stops, and things are still. We can even enact a loud and boisterous life and still have stillness, because it’s a clarity inside of us that makes things peaceful.
It’s kind of like the way we enjoy a movie. Where we can feel danger, and we can sound upset, but we don’t want to be rescued from it because we want to see how the story ends. Once we have that, yes, give-me-more, inner-clarity about life, will we start to feel attracted in directions that we’ll feel a very meaningful alignment with.
It’s that clarity and direction that most egos seem to desire. When I was a kid, a lot of people noticed that I have never really cared about other’s opinions of me. I have only cared about honouring my sense of Self, which was derived from my alignment with some form of internal guidance system within all of us. If that sounds like a strange way to conduct one’s life, the fact is, you do it too. You just don’t notice.
You eat when you are hungry, and scratch when you are itchy. You won’t hurt an animal because it ‘feels’ wrong. You can’t explain why you make friends with this person and not that one. Or love this good person but not that one. You just know. We have to be very abused as people, (or animals), before that guidance system is completely broken.
Of course, once our minds are quiet, living this way is much more like living through our animal nature. We are much more occupied with the present moment and what it can tell us. We neither regretfully ruminate about the past, nor anxiously attempt to predict some certain future. By living without attachments or expectations, we are free to feel our nature, and then flow towards any future that suits our spirit.
As you work towards these realizations, make sure you know how to tell the difference between guidance from your soul, from your ego’s thought-based, emotional, reactions. The latter has created all of the chaos in your life. But, if you learn to trust the former, you’ll soon learn that you’ve always been wiser than you’ve believed yourself to be.
peace. s
