Reflections on Freedom

Freedom and the Ego

2012-02-06T11:48:00.000-08:00

Relatively few people can actually liberate themselves from suffering by directly confronting and seeing the unreality of their own ego, their “I” or “me” thoughts. For most it is a gradual process, a gradual realization of: “Oh, I am not this thought that I believed I was all these years… and I am not this one, either…”

As you realize that you are not the story you have believed about yourself all these years—that you were telling yourself—you experience more freedom. After all, no matter how true the story once might have been, it’s now just a collection of ever-shifting and changing thoughts and concepts between your ears.

That freedom translates into a feeling of being more at peace, happier without any apparent cause. You are less troubled, less inward-looking. Your heart is more open, and you tend to look outwards, and focus your attention on the suffering of others.

Many are moved of us to want to help ease that suffering—which, as all spiritual traditions teach, is one of our true purposes for being here.

Your Thoughts Are Not Real

2012-01-30T09:10:00.000-08:00

‘Christ died for our sins’ is an example of a belief that probably is not true (we have no way of actually proving it), but if you are a Christian, then you take it on faith. The statement that ‘You are not your thoughts,’ however, is a belief that is true.

After all, you can observe your thoughts, even the ‘I’ and ‘me’ thoughts, and watch them come and go, yet you as an aware, conscious being—the watcher or observer of your ever-changing thoughts—are always here.

So, your thoughts may be true, like telling a story about what you did during the past hour, or they may be false, imagined, or unverifiable (like ‘Christ died for our sins’), but they are not real. After all, they come and go, arise and disappear, and what is real is always here.

You are real, in other words: you as an aware, conscious being. That, in a nutshell, is the very essence of ‘self’-realization.

You Are 'It'

2012-01-23T15:13:00.001-08:00

Feeling upset or conflicted right now? Someone has said something, or something has happened to cause as emotional reaction in you? In other words, you’ve taken something personally? You think what the other person has said or what you’ve imagined to be all about ‘you,’ this psychological/emotional ‘person’ you think you are?

If you really want to shift the upset and experience more freedom, the first thing you’re going to have to do is be really present with whatever is happening with you. So, breathe deeply and slowly, feel yourself in your body, feel your feet on the ground, listen to the sounds around you… Really be here now, in other words.

Then step back with your awareness and notice what’s happening in your mind. See if you can separate yourself—your true ‘self,’ the observer, or witness of your experience—from the ever-changing contents of your mind. Observe how your thoughts come and go—even the thoughts, “My God, this feels terrible,’ or ‘This shouldn’t be happening!’ come and go.

So, guess what? Obviously, you cannot be your thoughts! You are whatever is watching, observing, experiencing the thoughts. And what is that? Hah! Nothing you can think or say is ‘it.’ Why? Because you are ‘It!’

Why is it So Difficult to be Present?

2012-01-16T09:15:00.000-08:00

The present moment is all we have. Everything happens in the present. It’s the place of true creative power, and it is where our wisdom and love is shared. Those who embody presence honor the past, keep an eye on the future—including setting goals and making plans—yet live right here, right now.

Why, then, do so many people have difficulty being present? Simply put, they are distracted, preoccupied with the thoughts and stories between their ears—their anxieties, fears, obsessions, hopes, dreams, and wishes. In a word, their story. Their story about who they think they are, what they want to become, and what they’re seeking to avoid, what they’re running from.
But when people stand back and observe themselves, and realize that their thoughts, their story comes and goes, yet they—as this aware, conscious being—are always present, a shift may happen.

They in a real sense find themselves truly present. They are right here, now. The thought may arise: “So, this is what it means to be awake, present.” Then they just breathe, and relax it being, and smile at the simplicity of it all!

The Art of Being Supremely Present

2012-01-09T10:22:00.000-08:00

There is a mantra I used to repeat to myself over a period of a year or two before I finally realized the freedom that is our true nature: Supremely present, mind still, I breathe in the beauty of this moment.

This mantra always had a profound effect on me. Whenever I would say it, I’d become very present in my body. Whether sitting or standing, I’d be extremely alert, watchful of everything happening in and around me: sensations, feelings, thoughts, circumstances, the fullness of the moment itself.

I remember something Erich Schiffmann told me about J. Krishnamurti: “He was like an animal in his awareness.” It is like that whenever you are supremely present. You are like an animal—a jackal, a lion, a gazelle—perfectly still, all your senses alert, eyes and ears attuned to the unknown.

It is good to practice being supremely present. Whenever you do, you are one with the now.

Being a Spiritual Warrior

2012-01-05T20:02:00.000-08:00

My New Year's insight:

The main barrier to awakening, to complete freedom, is complacency, the lack of drive, desire to be free. You've got to be really vigilant, and the moment you feel slightly off-center, caught up in the 'me,' self-judgment, resentment, an expectation, you've got to jump on it.You've got to stop and realize you're lost in a thought, you're telling yourself a story.

And you are not that, you are not the thought or story. Why? Because they come and go, but you are always here as this supremely aware, conscious being. Being very alert and present in this way is what it means to be a spiritual warrior, regardless of whether you happen to be a man or a woman.

From my new book, END YOUR STORY, BEGIN YOUR LIFE

2011-12-29T12:37:00.000-08:00

Our true nature cannot be expressed in words. However, consciousness, awareness, beingness, and presence are some words that come closest to defining what we are, here, right now. We always start from this moment now, from the present.

So, what can be said to be real right now is you are alive, present, and reading this book. What is real now is your existence. You are conscious of existing, of being alive. Your true nature is consciousness itself. It is the one thing always present, whether you are asleep or awake, and whether you are aware of it or not.

What you are in your essence is the lucid, unchanging consciousness giving birth to everything in the world of the senses, including all your thoughts, stories, memories, and to your body, mind, and this unique personality called “you.” To understand this is to grasp the literal meaning of the words attributed to St. Francis: “What we are looking for is what is looking.” You become aware of yourself, your true nature, as consciousness, awareness, or presence itself....

The goal of spiritual or transformational work is to wake up from the dream. It is to break free of the internal dialogue. It is to see through the mind-created illusion of “me, myself, and my story,” the imaginary world you have created between your ears, making you feel separate and apart from others.

These stories, memories, and experiences have shaped your personality but they are still only your stories. They may have been real once, but are definitely not real now. They are an imaginary world existing inside your head, in the form of fleeting thoughts, beliefs, pictures, and ideas of “self,” with corresponding feelings and emotions in your body. And they are always changing, always coming and going, yet you, as the awareness which sees them, experiences them, are always here.

Every time you see the truth of this, your head clears, your body relaxes, your heart opens, and you experience a release from inner conflict, stress, and suffering. You become, in a word, present...

Awakening itself is realizing you are not your stories, not your thoughts, but you are the consciousness in which stories and thoughts—in which all existence—arises. You are not an object, a human being in space and time who has only intermittent glimpses of consciousness, the source of creation. You are not a wave, occasionally remembering your connection to the ocean. Rather, you are consciousness itself, viewing all of creation through the eyes of this human being called “you.” You are the ocean itself, manifesting in this individual human wave form.

As this realization occurs, you find yourself connected to an inexhaustible source of wisdom, love, and inner joy. Instead of living out of some myth or story about who you are and what life means, you live in awareness in the present. Meaning and identity no longer depend on beliefs, stories, or circumstances, but flow directly out of the beauty and dynamism of the life force itself. They arise from the sense of oneness, of the intimacy you feel with life—from the fullness and fragrance of being itself. You live in a state of openness, of welcoming everything that comes into your awareness.

With this awakening to the truth of being, the incessant chatter of the mind no longer dominates your consciousness. Your inner state becomes one of clarity and ease—at times, radiantly so. You become aware of a deep, vast silence, a universal spaciousness without center and without borders. You feel yourself to be one with that silence....

Awakening, as will become clear, means freedom from conflict and suffering. This is the promise of the inner quest. It doesn’t matter what your circumstances are, or where in this world you live—inner freedom can be yours, simply because it is your true nature.

The feeling-tone associated with being established in pure consciousness is one of relaxed ease, harmony, and presence, of openness and welcoming, of gratitude and appreciation. It is one of feeling the energy of aliveness in your body. Thoughts may or may not be present, but you are not identified with them. There is no “you” in the way. There is just the flow of beingness, what in Zen is called the “suchness” of life, and you are one with the suchness. Everything then happens out of oneness.

Truly, to know yourself as consciousness, and then to embody the knowing, is the greatest blessing.

(from Chapter One, End Your Story, Begin Your Life)

The Fear of Being Nobody

2011-10-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

The greatest fear spiritual “seekers” experience is this: who will I be without my story? The fear of being nobody came up for me a lot before I woke up and definitely most intensely during a “bad” psychedelic trip. I describe it in my new eBook, Before And After Awakening:

“In 1982 I ate a big, fat magic mushroom on a hilltop with friends, and it turned out the mushroom ate me. It took me on the most frightening inner trip of my life. It felt as if I was being sucked down Dante’s inferno. It lasted for several hours. As I clung desperately to the rim of the volcano with my finger nails, the fire down below threatening to engulf me, I heard my mother’s voice crying to me faintly: “Jimmy, what have you done to yourself?” I finally began to come down when Barb, my girlfriend, who had been at work, joined me, saw what was happening, and lay down and made eye-contact with me, and guided me back to safe ground. I will always be grateful to her for that.”

With hindsight, it is easy to say that if I had just surrendered to what was so, which would mean accepting the reality of the inner fire raging up my spine, my trip might have smoothed out, but the fact is that, at the time, I was terrified! I was terrified of losing this “me” that I thought I was, this “me” that I had built my whole identity around—as a Kiwi, as a former army officer who had served in Vietnam, as a rugby-player, as a chiropractor, and as a seeker of truth.

But when we really look at it in the clear light of day (not under the influence of a powerful drug like psilocybin!), the fear of being nobody is actually a paper tiger. When we peer inwardly—into our own psyche, our own consciousness—we can’t find this “I,” this “me” anywhere. Yet we, as the awareness which looks, are very much here!

This is when the real awakening begins, when you realize that no thought, concept, or story between your ears is real because they come and go. You cannot even find the “I” thought in your consciousness. It, too, is illusory. And yet, again, you—the seer, the watcher, the experiencer—are always here!

As you awaken to the freedom that is your natural state, your realize more and more clearly that what you were afraid of—“Oh my God, I can’t handle the thought of being nobody”—was an illusion, a story that you “believed.” However, the fear itself, when it was happening, was very real—which further reinforces the story of “Oh my God…”

This is why, in the nondual approach, we focus again and again on seeing that the thought or story is not real—rather than dealing with the emotional reaction which is real for as long as it lasts, but ultimately is fueled by the story.

When you undo the story by exposing it for the illusion it is any emotional reaction created in your body by the story, including the fear of being “nobody,” dissolves, and you relax. You relax into your true nature, and your overall experience becomes one of ease, harmony, and flow.

Let me conclude with a final quote from my new eBook:

“At the same time, it is vitally important to realize that thoughts are very powerful. Thought has created everything in the human-made world, beginning with the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the transport we move around in. When you understand this from the perspective of freedom, of being fully conscious—i.e. realizing you are not your thoughts—you have the key to transforming your own life for the better and to changing your world.

“Freed from its psychological and emotional aspects—the worrying, fretting “I” or “me”—thought becomes a powerful tool for communication, problem solving, creating, and expressing your true purpose in the world. It is the most powerful tool available to us, in fact.”

©Jim Dreaver, 2011

Before and After Awakening

2011-10-26T09:58:00.000-07:00

I have just completed my new book, titled Before and After Awakening: An Old Meditation Journal and My Experience Now.

In 1983 I was living in a four-bedroom house I owned in Santa Rosa. It had an in-ground swimming pool in a lovely backyard setting. I drove a brand-new BMW. I had a successful chiropractic practice. But, I wasn’t happy. Why?

I’d had a profound taste of enlightenment in 1977, which I write about in End Your Story, Begin Your Life, and the experience had been so pure, so mind-blowing that after that, it was the only thing I wanted. I wanted to live in the ‘enlightened’ state all the time. I had always been a good chiropractor, but chiropractic was never ‘it’ for me. I wanted to become enlightened so that I could share it, teach it, and write about it. (I know, it may sound arrogant to some, but my intention was always pure!)

So, some time earlier, I’d resolved to sell my practice, sell my BMW, rent the house out, and travel to India and Southeast Asia to find enlightenment. (Ah, such naiveté, such an illusion to even think it was somewhere outside myself! But I am reminded of the lines from T. S. Eliot: ‘We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.’)

So, in the spring of 1983 I sold my practice and was preparing to embark, with my girlfriend, on what would be a nine-month journey to China, Bali, Nepal, India, Australia, and New Zealand. In that spring, while I was getting the house ready for the new tenants, and preparing for our travels, I kept a journal during my regular morning meditations. I would scribble notes on a yellow legal pad, describing my various states of consciousness, which alternated between time of great peace, clarity, and equanimity, and periods of extreme uncertainty, anxiety, and insecurity. After all, my identity was still very much tied to what I did and what I had and I was giving all that up!

I would type the notes at night (personal computers were only just coming on the market then), and I still have the 110 page manuscript. It is funny too, because I always knew that meditation journal of mine would find its way into a book, and now, almost thirty years later, it has!

Yesterday I finished in-putting the entire manuscript into my laptop, and at various intervals along the way, in I write up my experience now: what I see or know now that I didn’t see or know then. I think it is a book that will help a lot of people. It is certainly the kind of book I would have wished I had back then.

And what do I see now that I didn’t see then? Back then, I still believed that my stories, and my sense of “self” was real, and that “I” had to find enlightenment, presumably, I thought at the time, through the practice of meditation.

Now I see that nothing between my ears is real—no thought, no story, not even this “I” and “me” I take myself to be. Why? Because thoughts and stories come and go, but we—as these aware, conscious beings we are—are always here.

Stories may be true, or they may be false, but none of them is real. What is real always here, always exists. We exist. We are real, independent of our ever-changing thoughts, stories, feelings, emotions, events, and circumstances.

To know that, to embody the knowing, is to be free. It is to be one with the natural ease, harmony, and flow of life.

The Real Meaning of 9/11

2011-09-09T10:48:00.000-07:00

To commemorate the 9/11 attacks in New York ten years ago, I offer an excerpt from my new novel, The Unexpected Goddess. It appears after the first chapter, and speaks to what I consider the real meaning of the attacks:

David, who is fifty-five, is a reasonably happily married with three kids, a successful stockbroker, a Republican, and, since his marriage, had become an ever-increasingly devout Jew. Now though, in part because of my influence, my brother is beginning to question his beliefs. We speak on the phone about once a month and during our last conversation, he announced that he had just finished reading You Are Not Your Story, and that it was, in his words, “a mind-blowing book.”

Then he asked me what my intention was in writing it, saying: “Are you trying to turn the whole world upside down, Steve? I mean, Judaism’s been around for over 5,000 years and you are trying to say that it, and all the traditions and practices handed down to us by the great rabbis, is just, essentially, a story? My God, do you realize the implications of what you are teaching?”

“Yes,” I said to him. “Judaism, like any other religion, is just a story… an ancient, beautiful, and complex story, with very practical teachings that work well in the world, but a story nonetheless. I’m teaching people to see that they have a story, but they are not their story. I’m showing them how to awaken to the reality of what is, to realize their true nature right here, now.”

I paused to allow the silence between us to be felt. We were speaking on the phone, he in New York, me in California, but we were sharing each other’s reality, as if in the same room.

“So that means Islam is just a story too?” he said after a minute or two. “And the 9/11 hijackers who flew those planes into the twin towers were driven solely by their anger towards America, as well as their fundamentalist Islamic views? They were totally caught up in their personal and religious story, in other words… And you’re saying that if they were free within, if they had done the practice you describe in your book, they would have lived in reality as it is here now, and would have felt some kind of brotherly love for mankind instead?”

My brother’s brokerage firm was within a mile of Ground Zero and he was at work when the attacks happened. Like most New Yorkers, like most Americans, he had been shocked by 9/11. He had lost friends, people he knew who were working in the buildings that morning. He had been traumatized for months after.

I was living at home in Sebastopol when 9/11 occurred. A friend called me and told me to turn on my TV. As I sat there and watched the planes striking the towers, my heart went out to the passengers aboard and the people in the towers, but I was not surprised by the event. After all, a radical Islamic group had a attempted to blow up the World Trade Towers before. I just thought—and I wasn’t alone in thinking this, of course—that they had finally figured out a diabolically ingenious method of doing it.

“Yes, David, that’s what I am saying. People who are awake and free within feel the oneness of all of life, and so they don’t hurt other people. That’s one of the key messages in my book. But the hijackers were fervent believers, victims of their Arab and Islamic culture. They were totally identified with the Islamic story between their ears. You could say that they were driven by an almost robotic behavior, and it led to disastrous consequences for America on the morning of 9/11.”

I paused briefly. “The same thing can be said of other fundamentalist religious groups, however, whether it’s Judaism, Christianity, or Hinduism. Clinging to a fundamentalist view creates robotic-like rituals and actions, no matter how sincere the actions of the believer.”

David was silent for a few moments, as if taking in what I said. Then we moved onto other subjects, and spoke briefly, as we occasionally did, about our parents, and especially our mother, and the anguish she still lived with.

Don’t Take Your Emotions Personally

2011-08-29T11:35:00.000-07:00

What becomes clear on this path of awakening is the more you hold onto the need to have things be a certain way, the more you insist this isn’t right, or that should not be allowed, the more emotional charge you are storing up.

Then, when expectations are not met, there is pain and suffering. If your position is exposed as being hollow or false, you might experience sadness or embarrassment. If someone belittles you, puts you down in some way, or betrays you it may express as resentment or anger.

So the work is to welcome, or at least accept your suffering, and then look at what you are inwardly holding onto, the beliefs, expectations, pictures, and ideas. Look at the story you are telling yourself about who you are and what you need to be happy. Begin to see it is only a story, a story you are making up. It is a story entirely of your own creation.

Realize you are not the story, but the luminous ever-present consciousness which looks at the story, which creates the story, and you’ll have a genuine experience, a taste, of freedom.

After all, the story you tell yourself keeps the emotions in a volatile state of readiness. As I said, when you cling to any point of view or psychological position, you are generating an emotional charge.

Freedom comes as you see the story for what it is: a figment of your own creation. When you’re not holding onto any idea or image of yourself, there’s no build-up of emotional energy. You are simply open to life in the present. The secret is in emphasizing awareness itself, having all your senses alert, and not getting lost in thinking. Then your head will be clear, and you will feel the deeper energy, the deeper beauty and power of creation itself, and it will nourish you. Then your emotions will come into balance. They will arise spontaneously and authentically.

You will feel sadness at the loss of a loved one, or perhaps in a moment of being confronted with the tremendous suffering of so many innocent people in our world. Or you might feel anger whenever you are reminded of the terrible injustices still taking place, the brutality, the subjugation of one group of people by another.

But none of these feelings will be taken too personally. The “I” won’t jump in and make some new kind of story out of them, such as a victim story, as in, “Woe is me, the world is too awful and I am too sensitive to live in it.” People who really believe they are victims are always telling their tale of suffering to anyone who will listen, and this constant reinforcement of their story just keeps them stuck.

As you grasp this teaching and let go of the attachment to and identification with your own story, you begin to know yourself as awareness, the pure consciousness behind everything. You start to free yourself. Emotions still arise and pass, but now they happen more spontaneously. The paradox of awakening or enlightenment is that while you feel very deeply, you don’t take your feelings personally. Once you let go of the identification with your own story, you learn to let go of the attachment to other peoples’ stories as well.

Then, in the clarity of your true nature, you see what action, if any, needs to be taken. If something needs to be done about the situation triggering the emotional response, you’ll know what to do, and you’ll do it. But you won’t make a big drama out of it.

From End Your Story, Begin Your Life, Chapter 6, by Jim Dreaver

Getting the Message Out There

2011-08-03T15:39:00.000-07:00

As a teacher committed to getting my message of true inner freedom out there, I am always on the lookout for new ways of doing it. As a writer, one of the ways I use is through writing fiction.

Even though the essence of my message is seeing that we are not our thoughts or stories, which—like the unsettling emotions they trigger, come and go—but rather the awareness or consciousness that is always here, we are nevertheless as story-telling people. As such, our stories are important. In fact, the whole word runs on stories in one form or another, and the whole of history is one vast, complex ‘story.’

I maintain that the freer you are of your story, the better story-teller you become. With that in mind, let me tell you about my new novel, The Unexpected Goddess. A female friend told me over 25 years ago that I should write a spiritual-erotic novel, that it was sure to be a best-seller. Well, the best-seller part remains to be seen, but I kept her idea at the back of my mind, and even made a few attempts at starting such a book.

Then, when I was in Manila last summer, visiting an old friend who happens to be Jewish (my own heritage is WASP), an idea began to form: I would make my main character (me) a Jew. I wanted to get into the Jewish mind. I had already researched the main female character and her Mormon background, and over the rest of the year, a story gradually developed. I wrote the novel in just a few months, at the beginning of this year, got feedback from friends who read it, made revisions, and voila…!

The Unexpected Goddess is set in northern California in the summer of 2008, and tells the story of how the narrator, Steven Bergman, a successful writer and teacher of the art of awakening to spiritual freedom, met and fell in love with the beautiful Annie Morgan.

As Bergman writes in Chapter One: “Like any good story, it has elements of drama to it, because Annie was in the last stages of recovering from a broken heart and shattered trust when I met her. So, in many ways, this is a story of healing and redemption, but it is also a story of self-discovery and self-realization, of sexual awakening and spiritual liberation, because Annie was living out of a very confining story when we met, a story that had been programmed into since before she came into this world.”

In the italicized pages between the book’s chapters, Bergman also tells his own story: how he was born to Jewish parents in New York; how his mother, the sole survivor of her family in the Holocaust, lived with her own inner demons, and eventually, when Bergman is away at college in California, commits suicide; and how he then joins the army, goes to Vietnam, and experiences the ‘baptism by fire’ he wanted there.

He then returns to the U.S. attends Chiropractic College, gets married, and becomes a successful chiropractor in Sebastopol, California. During this time he embarks on his own spiritual journey, to which he dedicates himself, with the result that he finally becomes enlightened, or free. But then he suffers a major stroke, which turns his life upside down. How he handles this event is lesson for anyone experiencing a crisis.

The “story” that was programmed into Annie was the Mormon story. She was raised a fourth-generation, very devout Mormon woman. She graduated from Brigham Young University, where she met her husband, Warren. They had a sealed marriage in the Provo temple, and set about starting a big family. But although Annie had three pregnancies, she also had three miscarriages. Because she cannot give him any children, Warren, after ten years, demands and gets a divorce. Annie is devastated by this turn of events.

Now, a year after her divorce, she has decided to come to northern California to find herself. She is questioning everything she has ever been taught, including all her religious beliefs. As part of this questioning, she is reading a book she bought at a spiritual bookstore in Sebastopol—You Are Not Your Story, by Steven Bergman.

When the novel begins, it is this book, his book, that Bergman finds her reading when he walks into Lucas Wharf Restaurant in Bodega Bay for lunch on a mid-week afternoon, and sees her there, sitting in the lounge area.

Thus begins their tale…

The novel is short, 118 PDF pages, and is available for purchase for $9.95 at www.unexpectedgoddess.com.

One reader, Ken Dvoren of Santa Monica, CA, said this about it:

"A great story and the only one I've read that so daringly combines the spiritual with the explicitly erotic… The sex scenes are hot! "

So, that’s how I got the message out on this occasion!

The Less You Resist Your Suffering…

2011-07-08T10:11:00.000-07:00

The less your resist your suffering, the sooner it passes.

A simple truth, but a profoundly liberating one. Non-resistance forms the basis of the first step in the practice of freedom I teach. You have to accept what is happening if you want to be free of it. Ultimately, you have to welcome it because it is showing you where you are not yet free.

If you avoid, reject, or try to deny your suffering—whether it is anxiety, fear, resentment, anger, guilt, loneliness, or something else—you only make it worse. Or, as the old saying goes: “If you run away from a ghost it will chase you and haunt you for the rest of your life, but if you stop and turn and face it, it will disappear, because ghosts aren’t real.”

As an example of what I mean by non-resistance, I want to share an excerpt from a new book I am writing. I kept a meditation journal 28 years ago, at a time when I was in the process of selling my chiropractic practice in Santa Rosa, and getting ready for an extended trip through South East Asia, which was really spiritual journey for me. It was a time for me of great uncertainty, anxiety, and insecurity. I was still many years away from realizing my true nature,

The book’s tentative title is Before and After Awakening: An Old Meditation Journal and my Experience Now. This excerpt is from April 26, 1983. The journal itself is enclosed in quotation marks, and my comments today are in italics.

“Barb and I fought last night, a “you’re wrong and I’m right” clash as all fights are. I think I was the wrong one though, the instigator. My inner voice always tells me what’s so and yet I still persist in ignoring it, in being “right” anyway. Sometimes I just don’t want to hear the truth about myself. Sitting as I am now, just being here, feeling ever more light and free, all I feel is love for Barb. Now it doesn’t matter what she says or does. What happens at those other times then, when one or both of us falls apart?”

“Falling apart is the clue, perhaps? Here, now, I am not falling apart. On the contrary I am coming more and more together.”

“This is the quality of energy—whole, intact, indestructible—I want to experience more of in my daily life. Not just when I am sitting.”

I was still very attached to feeling good, whole, at ease in those days (as opposed to feeling contracted, uncomfortable, lousy), and it wasn’t till I let go of the attachment to how I felt, in my body and my psyche, that I finally began to taste true freedom. Of course, this is the ego at work, the “I” that wants to feel this particular way (whatever makes it feel “good”), and resists feeling that way (whatever makes it feel “bad”).

Basically, the ego is a judging machine. It is forever judging what is in its best interests—and the physical body that it deems an extension of “it.” But when the truth is realized—that we have an ego, but we are not our ego—then the whole body/mind relaxes, and we find ourselves in the natural state.

We are always, for the most part, relaxed, at ease, and in the flow. And when there is discomfort, or even a major health crisis, like the strokes I had at the end of 2003, we just deal with what’s so, and flow with it as best we can. But we always remain calm, clear, and present.

“When I am very still, as I am right now, there is an extraordinary sense of lightness and my awareness is unobstructed, translucent. There is nothing in the way. It is as if every cobweb of memory, every trace of thought, has been blown or swept away and there is just this refreshing clarity. How easy it is to “lose” it though, to drop back into the mind state with all its needs, desires, fears, regrets, hopes, doubts, obsessions. It that what the “fall from grace” really means?”

The “fall from grace” is actually the descent back into the ego, the “I” or “me.” The problem, I would eventually realize, is not the mind which, left to itself, is an amazingly brilliant instrument for reflection, creativity (everything made by humans began as an idea in someone’s mind!), and communication.

But it’s as “we,” as the ego-self, get identified with the mind that all “our” problems—and all suffering—begins. Freedom is seeing that we’re not this “I,” this “me,” but rather this ever-present, aware being that gives birth to the idea of “I” and “me.” This has to be seen again and again until we get it, realize it.

The Essence of Awakening

2011-06-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

We are a story-telling people, but it is important to understand the connection between our stories, our thoughts, and the emotional states that result—especially those that cause suffering like anxiety, fear, guilt, shame, self-judgment, resentment, anger, and so on.

Making this connection is vital to freedom or liberation, and forms the basis of the inner, spiritual journey as we seek to discover who and what we really are beyond all our ideas about ourselves. Eventually, if we have the courage to journey deep enough and face our fears, we realize that we are in fact not our thoughts, beliefs, or stories. These—like the emotions they trigger—come and go, yet we, as the ever-present, conscious beings watching, witnessing, and experiencing life, are always here.

Understanding this is the essence of awakening, enlightenment, or self-realization. It happens through a perceptual shift, when we finally, after much self-inquiry, see the truth: that the “I,” the ego, the psychological and emotional “person” that we always believed we were only appears to exist, but we cannot actually find it anywhere! Like our beliefs and stories, it is not real—in the sense of being always here—and never was.

This realization produces great and enduring relief, a freedom (as free as any of us can be) from all inner conflict, fear, and suffering. Such a gift! Our endless seeking for who “we” are comes to an end. We now know who we are.

And what do we know? Essentially, that there is no separation, that we are One with everything, and only this present moment—right here, right now—exists. Our true nature, in other words—our true “I,” or Self—is pure, spacious, timeless consciousness expressing through these bodies, minds, and personalities know as “us.”

As we allow this realization to sink in, it’s like breathing pure oxygen. We feel exhilarated, rejuvenated, and empowered. We’ve reconnected to pure existence itself, our true, authentic nature. Our emotional state is one of ease, harmony, and flow—and an immense gratitude for life.

Now the outer journey begins in earnest, learning to embody this presence, wisdom, and love that is ours in the busy marketplace of daily life. We use the power of thought, of story, to ponder, communicate, create, and above all connect with others, with our community, in a deep, conscious, heartfelt way, so that we can collectively celebrate our joys and address the challenges facing us…

Working with the Residues of Grief

2011-05-31T16:16:00.001-07:00

Recently I saw a woman, whom I’ll call Alison, who admitted to me that she wasn’t very “free.” She had chronic fibromyalgia, which meant she was in constant pain on the right side of her body, and this affected her ability to work. She worked as a dog-walker for an agency, and they called her at all kinds of odd hours.

When she walked the dogs, she was usually experiencing pain from the fibromyalgia, and while she loved the dogs themselves, because she loved all animals, she mostly obsessed about the pain she felt. Then she was always thinking about the one-person show she had developed, and had performed a number of times (she was an actress). The show was really her life story, and it was in an ongoing state of development. It was her ultimate goal to be performing her show full-time. She wanted to make a professional living from it.

When she saw me the grief in her eyes, her look, was obvious. She told me the story behind it. Her mother had died over two years ago and she missed her terribly, having frequent sobbing fits. I asked her about the thought, the story she told herself when she had these bouts of intense grief. She told me it was always some version of, “I miss you, Mom…”

Then I asked about her cat, Petals, with whom she had been very close for many years, before she died last year. She said it was the same thing. Like her mother, Petals had been a true and constant companion in her life, and now both were gone. As she relayed this story to me, and the emotional memories they evoked, she started sobbing again. She said, through her tears, “I just miss Petals so much…”

I invited her to breathe deeply, slowly, and consciously into her emotional pain, and as she did this, she gradually became more relaxed and present, the weeping stopped, and after awhile, she smiled.

“What’s happening now?” I asked.

“I just feel more present, more here,” Alison said. “The smile was because of a memory, the way Petals always looked at me first, whenever I fed her… It was as if she was asking my permission, like ‘Is it okay for me to eat now?’”

“Tell me a similarly happy memory of your Mom,” I encouraged her.

She thought for a moment, and then smiled again. “Whenever I would worry about something, Mom would always stroke my hair in a particular way, and reassure me… And it always worked. I’d feel reassured, comforted…”

“Good,” I said, and then I invited her to just relax into silence, to experience her true nature as love, peace, and the harmonious flow of being.

After awhile, she smiled again, a smile of contentment. We just enjoyed each other’s presence.

“So, next time the grief comes up” I said, “just be in the pure experience of it, without any story, without telling yourself ‘I miss Mom so much,’ or ‘I miss Petals so much…’

Just allow yourself to surrender to, to honor, the pure feeling of the grief and I promise you, the grief will gradually leave you, and then you’ll have only the warm, feel-good memories of your Mom and Petals.”

I added: “Because we are not our stories, our memories about our departed loved ones… We have stories and memories about everything, of course, but freedom or self-realization is discovering we are not our thoughts and stories, but rather we are always this… This clear, luminous presence that is right here, right now…”

She smiled again as she heard my words. The presence between us was palpable, an exquisite sense of an alive, vibrating current.

“And guess what?”

“What?” she said, leaning toward me.

“As you stop living in the past and become more established in your true nature—in other words, in present-time awareness—the fibromyalgia pain will diminish, if not clear up all together. Either way, it will be manageable, tolerable. Everything becomes tolerable when you live in freedom.”

Testing My Patience

2011-05-16T11:17:00.000-07:00

I have a friend, whom I'll call Roger, who is about ten or twelve years younger than me. He works as a handy-man and occasionally works for a trucking firm, loading and unloading trucks. But these are difficult economic times, and he doesn't have a lot or work, so he is behind on his rent. Fortunately, he has a very forgiving and understanding landlord, otherwise he'd be out on the street, and maybe homeless.

We've gotten together a number of times, usually to take a walk at the beach together. Afterwards I always offer to treat him to a meal and/or a drink, which he has difficulty accepting. As he says: "I have a problem with receiving gifts."

It's a common problem. Many others have it too, but it's not a problem I have. As I've written elsewhere, "If someone wants to give you money, or treat you in some other way, welcome it, open yourself to receiving their generosity, unless you really don't need it." Learning to open yourself to giving and receiving is part of the secret of flow, and of creating more abundance in your life.

The reason why I hang out with Roger is that we have a spiritual connection, a heart connection, and because he gives me a special gift: he tests my patience. How so? He is obsessive-compulsive, and his obsession manifests in an a particular way.

Whenever he gets into my car, he always leaves one leg outside the door while he bends forward, closes his eyes, rests his head on his hand, and breathes short, rapid breaths until his kundalini energy is 'just right,' and he can finally pull his leg in and shut the door, and we can drive off. This process can take a few minutes, or as long as ten minutes or more. Of course, the same thing happens when we get to our destination, and he goes to get out of the car!

Now, if I was the type who could be driven crazy, I would of course be driven crazy by this behavior! But I am a free man. I am awake, conscious. I live in the present. But, I am still very much a human being! So, I do get irritated, impatient with him, especially because this is not the only way his obsessive-compulsive behavior manifests.

Whenever he walks, he has to walk in a particular pattern, always clock-wise (I think!), and when he gets to a drive-way, he has to go back, or around it some way... I'm not quite sure, but I know I say to him a lot, "I'll just meet you at such-and-such a place!" And of course if it has been raining, he cannot walk over any wet ground, so that necessitates even more circumvention!

Why do I bother, you may ask? As I said, we have a heart connection. He is essentially a beautiful guy. When I pointed out to him the last time we got together that he spent much of his time preoccupied, and therefore wasn't really present with me, he denied it at first. But I explained myself. "You're preoccupied because you're always having to think about the route you're taking."

Then he got it. It was like an epiphany. It gave him something to really think about. I had offered, at the outset of our relationship, to help him, in whatever way I could, get free of his OCD.

Maybe this was a start.

Try To Be Kinder

2011-04-29T11:15:00.000-07:00

My friend, Gil Younger says that as we extend our caring presence to another, we wake up more to the unity of our own true nature.

Extending our caring presence is a beautiful practice, and Gil's wisdom is exactly aligned with my own teaching around truth: that the freer and more conscious we are, the more we connect with everybody in a kind, loving, non-judging way. In short, in a caring way.

The word 'kind' is key here. To speak of 'loving yourself' or 'loving everybody' is really a tall order, and not very specific. You may well ask yourself, what does love really mean? How do I love myself, let alone love everybody else? But to contemplate being kind to yourself, and being kind to others, is manageable, do-able.

After all, what does it mean to be kind? It is simple: to be kind means to be gentle, compassionate, patient, polite, considerate, courteous, gracious, thoughtful, tolerant, understanding... I could go on, but you get the picture. These simple virtues I have just described are really the essence of love. As you embody them, you become a loving or caring person.

Speaking of kindness, I was a fan of Aldous Huxley, the famous British author and philosopher of the last century, for a number of years. It was through Huxley that my own spiritual journey began. I was reading Sybille Bedford's biography of him, and she wrote that Huxley, when asked by a radio interviewer which books he would want if he were marooned on a desert island, said that high on his list would be the Commentaries on Living by J. Krishnamurti.

Bedord then went on to describe Huxley's friendship with the well-known spiritual teacher, whom he met in Ojai, about an hour and a half north of Los Angeles, where Krishnamurti lived. Intrigued, I sent away for the Commentaries on Living and when I received them, those three volumes changed my life, started me on my search for truth, and resulted in the person I am today.

Anyway, Huxley, when asked at the end of his own life what wisdom he had to share with people, said this: "Try to be kinder." Try to be kinder... Indeed, if we could all achieve that, the world would be a much better place for all living in it.

Merging Wisdom with Love

2011-04-07T10:26:00.001-07:00

I saw this quote at someone’s house recently, from Helen Keller: ‘The best and the most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with heart.’

Then there is this one, from Nisargadatta Maharaj: “Wisdom is knowing I am nothing, love is knowing I am everything, and between the two, my life moves.”

And, finally, this proverb: “The longest journey a man must take is the eighteen inches from his head to his heart.”

So, what do the above quotes have to do with what I want to write about? A new theme, or awareness, or focus of energy, is emerging from the depths of my being, and I got more clarity around it last night, when I attended a satsang, a meeting in truth. The satsang was given by my old friend Krishna, whom I’ve known since the Jean Klein days, when we were both students of his. It was a beautiful gathering of about twenty people, and Krishna was simply present with all of us. The energy of the group was exquisite: relaxed, flowing, deeply harmonious.

Krishna invited people to share. Someone talked about the realization of emptiness as an essential feature of awakening, and someone said how life was fundamentally meaningless. Then someone else said how the only real meaning was love, and that reminded me of the Nisargadatta quote above.

What is emerging from within me is a deeper understanding, a deeper embodiment, of the relationship between emptiness and love—my own journey from my ‘head to my heart,’ you might say!

We have to realize our essential nature as emptiness in order to free ourselves from conflict and suffering, but then the only thing to ‘do’ is to love… to share our love and light with others, and with the world.

This is how the healing of humanity will occur: as each person realizes their natural divinity, the luminous emptiness of their true nature, that realization will move them to take loving action in their daily lives.

The three-step practice of freedom as described in my book, end your story. Begin your life… is a powerful, simple tool for helping with that realization. When we are truly present, with no story or agenda distracting us, then our heart is open, and we can ‘feel with our heart,’ as Helen Keller says. We can feel the pain and unhappiness of others, and we can also feel the love underneath the ‘story’ and the suffering it produces.

That unwavering connection of love is what heals all wounds, brings balm to our suffering, and fresh, new creative energy to our lives.

Discovering Your True Purpose

2011-03-28T11:00:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I noticed myself feeling slightly "off," not quite in my usual flow of peace, harmony, and well-being. I haven't felt this way in a long time, so I knew my energy needed to shift. There were vague, ill-defined "stories" tugging at me, and of course I know I am not my story, but nevertheless, I am all too human, and so am still subject to these residues of the ego-bound "me"...!

There are a number of changes happening in my life right now, and so they are potential distractions. For example, I am seeking a new apartment; my 26 year old son, Adam, is planning on coming to live with me; I am wanting to be in a relationship after seven years, and have been connecting with several new women; I've been feeling chillier this winter in Los Angeles, and have even thought about moving further south...

But I knew none of these distractions was the real issue. So, yesterday afternoon, Sunday, I decided to drive to the beach near Cross Creek in Malibu about an hour before sunset and get stoned, something I hadn't done in a while. As I wrote in end your story. Begin your life... :

Many years ago I was sitting on the deck outside my cottage, enjoying the feeling of being stoned. I was thinking about what the word “pot” meant, and had a revelation: it is an acronym which stands for “perception opened totally.”

Certainly, that was what it had always done for me. It invariably gave me a rich flow of creative insights which I didn’t get in my normal state. The practice in this book, for example, arose out of one such session. It also, of course, enhances kinesthetic sensation, which means it can heighten the experience of activities like movement, dancing, love-making, and listening to or playing music.

But “pot” has another, darker meaning. Your life can go to “pot” if you do it too much. You forget things, make mistakes, and it can destroy the motivation to achieve or accomplish anything. In short, you go unconscious. So, caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware. As with all things in the material world, balance—just the right amount—is the key to maintaining a healthy, vibrant well-being.

I knew that a few tokes would clear my energy and give me the insight into what was going on with me. And indeed that did happen. I realized I had strayed from my purpose in life, my mission, the only reason why I am still here: to serve others, those who are receptive to it, by teaching them the practice of freedom.

And so I was instantly connected and in the flow again. I got out of the car and walked on the beach to watch the sunset. More insights flowed in, but all around this question of purpose. Of course, I've known my true purpose for years now, ever since my awakening in 1995, but this time the knowing was at a deeper level.

Then, while I was on the beach, a woman friend called from Sebastopol, someone whom I hadn't heard from in ages. She was calling for clarification around an issue she had... and I gave her some feedback, and thus fulfilled my purpose! Then later, at dinner at Abuelita's in Topanga, I connected with a couple of people who were having varying degrees of suffering... and again fulfilled my purpose. That's why I moved south to Los Angeles, to get my message out to more people. And it is happening, gradually and slowly.

The practice of freedom, which is the basis of my book, is designed to help you uncover your true purpose for being here. Until you know what your passion, your purpose is, you are like a ship without a rudder, and you don't really know where you are going. You don't really know what to do with your life.

But once you know your true purpose, then you are on fire. You live with a passion and a focus that magnetizes opportunities in support of your mission. Truly, there is no happier way to live than this.

How To Have A Near-Death Experience (NDE) Right Now

2010-12-10T11:11:00.000-08:00

The recent film Hereafter, directed by Clint Eastwood, stars Matt Damon as a reluctant psychic who, whenever he touches people in a certain way, has jolting visions of loved ones who have recently died.

I liked the film so much I saw it twice. One of the minor themes is the suggestion that people who have had an NDE have much less fear about death, because they have seen the "other side" and know that somehow everything is okay.

This brings me to the subject of self-realization, or enlightenment. In every spiritual tradition, it is described as a kind of ego death, a dying before you die, a death and a rebirth.

Who or what dies when you become self-realized? It is obvious to anyone who is realized: the little "me," the ego or "I" is what dies, or rather, is seen to be the conceptual illusion is is. Yet we, as the conscious or aware being who is present, are still very much here!

We still have an ego, an I or me thought, but now we know we are not those thoughts. We know that we are not any thought, in fact, but rather the ever-present awareness or being-ness behind our thoughts, our stories.

Once we know that (which is the essence of "self-realization"), then we use thought consciously as a powerful, creative tool, free of any "self" (or "me") interest. Then we can truly contribute to humanity in the ways in which we are drawn.

As we approach the Winter Solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year, it is a good time to contemplate your own "death" and rebirth. A good subject to meditate on is this: "What if this was my last day on earth? What would I want to do? With whom would I communicate? What do I want my state of mind to be?"

Above all, be present right now. Welcome whatever is arising right now. Remember always: presence is the true power in life, because it brings you into right here, right now... the starting point of any new creative venture.

Riding the Wave of Excitement

2010-04-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

Excitement is a natural and healthy part of what it means to be human, but there are definitely different levels, or forms of expression, of excitement.

When we are very young, we get the most excited about good things happening in our lives, hence the expression, "she was beside herself with excitement." When are in our twenties, thirties, or even forties, we may still let out yelps or even screams of delight, but when we're in our fifties or older, the tendency to get excited is still there, but often it's a quieter, more mature expression. Maybe our eyes light up, and we grin with anticipation.

That's how it is with me now. Recently I got news that an insurance settlement that I first applied for four years ago, and that six months ago I was sure I was not going to get at all, may be arriving as early as next week. That will give me much more freedom financially, and I am already planning a 10 day trip to Manila, in the Philippines. I will stay with a friend of thirty years, and I will enjoy, I am sure, the many delights of being a single man, a Westerner, in an exotic Asian country.

So, when I think about my trip, I get a little excited. Yes! But I don't think too much about it, because that would be to dwell in the future, to live always thinking about anticipated events, and of course I don't do that. I live fully in the present, in this timeless, flowing moment of now... I honor the past, keep an eye on the future (including, occasionally, indulging a brief fantasy about my stay in Manila!), but live right here, in this very moment that you are reading this...

Now, is it my ego that gets excited, or is it something deeper? It is both, I feel. It is part of our human personality, which includes the ego, to get excited at the thought of anticipated good things. But the freer we are, the more awake or enlightened, the less identified with any of the thoughts or stories inside our heads, especially ego thoughts. We are simply present here, now, identified (if even we can speak of "being identified") with all that is.

This is how we ride the wave of excitement.

Making Friends with Your Ego

2010-04-05T15:30:00.000-07:00

My book, end your story. Begin your life... was written as a complete statement on what is needed to awaken to and embody inner freedom or, as it has more traditionally been called, enlightenment, self-realization, or liberation. And, as a statement, I am well-satisfied with it. It is now going out into the world, albeit very slowly, and is already having an effect.

As I wrote elsewhere, the musician, Carlos Santana, of Black Magic Woman fame, evidently bought a copy at Open Secret Bookstore in San Rafael, California, and on March 22, quoted me on the Wall of his Facebook page. A few days later, I received an email from his assistant. We spoke and she said Carlos loved my book so much he bought ten copies for his friends. I've never actually been to a Santana concert, but someone told me he is a very spiritual guy and always appears onstage with a photograph of his guru.

Now, what does all this have to do with making friends with your ego? Everything. Two young seekers of truth, my son, Adam, aged 25, and Cameron, age 26, are both right now engaged in varying degrees of struggle with their ego. I've written this post to clarify things a bit more for them. We will see what kind of a job I do as I wing this post!

As I say in my book, I am a marketplace, as opposed to mountaintop, teacher. An example of the latter is Ramana Maharshi, or Ramakrishna. Krishnamurti was somewhere in between. Jean Klein, my guide, was closer to the marketplace. Marketplace teachers fully acknowledge the role of the ego in their lives. We use our egos to get things done.

I am right now in the middle of setting up a series of workshops with the Krishnamurti Foundation in Ojai, Agape in Culver City, and the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Los Angeles. All this requires writing, planning, communication, persistence, and patience. When I email someone about a proposal, there is a "me" doing it. I am promoting my own work. You might think that I am promoting myself, my ego, but you would be wrong.

Once you are free, and are fully awake to your true purpose for being here, then your purpose comes through you, and your ego is there, as your ally, your friend, to help shape it and guide it into manifestation. You, as consciousness, the whole, use the wonderful tool that is your ego to facilitate the workings of your creative mind, and thus bring your dreams into reality.

All this is explained in different words in Chapter Four of my book, in the section titled Toss the Ego a Bone. As I say at the end of that section: "Acknowledge your ego's existence, and let it go. Come back to simply being open and aware in this moment now. Then your ego need not be a problem."