Freedom and Happiness

Imagine a life free of mental conflict and emotional suffering, so that you can express your wisdom, love, and creative power without fear or limit. Here are two simple tools to achieve this, and eventually to make your realization permanent.

The first one is the practice. Read this short paragraph first and then do the practice… Close your eyes, breathe deeply and slowly, and then imagine, or visualize, empty space inside your head. Breathe into that space… Be the space… Relax into it, and let the feeling of pure emptiness linger for a few minutes…

Then open your eyes and notice how you feel…

The more you do this simple practice, the more you have the direct experience of your true, spacious nature. It renews you in body, mind, and spirit. You see everything with new eyes. Your intuition opens up, and you’re guided as to what to do next. It is quite amazing in its simplicity and power to connect you with the deep freedom and happiness inside you.

Why does it work so well? Because when you imagine empty space inside your head, the brain is flooded with alpha waves, the healing energy of the meditative state. Do this practice often, and you’ll find many physical problems healing themselves, in addition to the mental and emotional clarity and harmony you’ll experience.

But to really become one with the source of freedom and happiness inside you, you need more than this practice. You need to understand, and eventually embody, or live, the teaching, which is the second tool.

The teaching, fortunately, is also simple, though somewhat harder to live and to embody in daily life. This is because the conditioning to believe you are a “somebody”—a “person” with a psychological and emotional history—is deep-rooted. We get very identified, in other words, with the “story” of who we believe we are. But don’t worry. The more you do the practice, the more you naturally begin to realize the truth of the teaching…

The teaching is that while your thoughts are very powerful—after all, they have created everything human-made—they are not real. Not even your “I” and “me” thoughts are real. Why not? Because they, like the conflict and suffering they produce, come and go, but you, as an aware, conscious being—this alive presence, the empty space you are, the watcher of your thoughts—are still very much here. The more you realize this, the lighter, freer, and happier you feel.

Then self-centered thinking gradually falls away, because you realize that this “self” you’ve taken yourself to be is an illusion! It frees you up to use thought for the powerful, creative tool it is, and right action tends to flow naturally. As your freedom deepens, your heart opens and life becomes rich in beauty, love, and meaning. When you share your love—your caring presence—with others, miracles happen…

The practice and the teaching combine in an approach to awakening that is elegant, clear, and do-able by anyone. Practice imagining empty space inside your head, and grasp the teaching that you are not your thoughts, not even your “I” or “me” thoughts, and the simple truth of happiness will eventually be yours…

Freedom and the Ego

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

‘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'

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?

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

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

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.