If you’re not sure what Conscious Mindsets are about, visit Conscious Mindsets, Part One.

Conscious Mindsets Part One, Intro and The World Temple

Conscious Mindsets Part Two, The Tourist

Conscious Mindsets Part Four, The Adventurer

Conscious Mindset #3 — The Magician’s Apprentice

Did you know that you can influence whether people are happy or unhappy? Try an experiment — take one day and walk around all day with a pleasant smile on your face. Be friendly to people, ask them about themselves, and go a little out of your way to be nice. Then notice whether you thought that most of the people around you were in good moods or bad moods. The next day, put on a perma-scowl, and just sort of trudge through the day. At the end of the day, note how the people around you acted.

This becomes more ‘magical’ when we become more subtle. If we’re just thinking warm, happy thoughts throughout the day, the people around us will tend to be in good moods; however,  if we’re in a foul mood, even if we try to put on a smile, most of the people around us will tend to be rather grumpy.

This isn’t really magic. It’s simply a matter of how we hold ourselves, our body language, and perhaps even the pheromones we produce when we’re in one mood or another. The important lesson is that our attitude makes a real and tangible difference in our ‘external’ environment.

This can be seen whenever someone who practices modern-day magic does a love spell. Invariably, the spell works, and people report that after the spell, they are approached more, asked on dates, and simply get more attention. Again, this might not be ‘magic’ so much as a subtly increased confidence delivered by the recipient thinking that they have magic on their side.

If you explore this, you can truly begin to work ‘magic’ in your life. Your attitude — as manifested in your body carriage, the amount of eye contact you make, your level of confidence, and the way that you approach each situation in life — is the ’secret’ behind working miracles in your life. Forget, for a moment, everything you know or think you know about the Law of Attraction and Intention-Manifestation, and do your own experimentation with the power of a smile or a positive thought.

In the Magician’s Apprentice mindset, you are an apprentice magician, and the world and people around you are your training-ground. Don’t expect any certain results at first — just experiment. Some methods of using this subtle magic work better for some than for others. I won’t get into any detailed instructions or advice at this time, but will simply suggest that you play with things yourself.

— Affirm each morning that you want to intentionally hold this mindset using the following thoughts —

I am an apprentice magician, and today my teacher has asked me to experiment with my budding powers. Results don’t matter — the only thing that matters is that I pay attention to my attitudes and thoughts, as well as any methods of manifestation that I attempt to use, and note what seems to work and what doesn’t. At the end of the day, I hope to have a better understanding of what methods of manifestation seem to have efficacy for me.

If you’ve ever experimented with Intention-Manifestation before, you likely ran into some pitfalls (if you didn’t, you’d probably be perfectly content right now and wouldn’t be reading this ) Many of those pitfalls evolve out of our own sense of fear and expectation. Using the Magician’s Apprentice mindset as outlined above removes us from fear and expectation — all that is important is experimentation, and when we’re experimenting, ‘failures’ are really successes, because they help us to understand what works and what doesn’t. Each of us has enormous potential to shape the world around us on scales that might seem unbelievable to us right now. This can be the beginning of your own experimentation and learning process as you discover your own ‘magic’.

Developing This Mindset

Keep a journal and note which techniques work for you and which don’t. There are many authors offering different techniques for manifestation, but your own inner wisdom can uncover your innate ability to shift and alter the world around you.

Even if you aren’t able to immediately create any ‘magic’ in your life, you’ll begin to get more in touch with the state of mind that you are currently in at any given moment, which is one of the first steps in the journey toward Awakening.

If you’re not sure what Conscious Mindsets are about, visit Conscious Mindsets, Part One.

Also Read:

Conscious Mindsets Part One, Introduction and The World Temple

Conscious Mindsets Part Three, The Magician’s Apprentice

Conscious Mindsets Part Four, The Adventurer

Conscious Mindset #2 — The Tourist

When we visit a new place, our minds are open to all the new sights and sounds and experiences around us. If we visit Mexico, for instance, we might be delighted by palm trees, coconuts on the shore, strange bugs, the food, and the people. We’ll visit shops, observe architecture, or go to educational programs.

Of course, when we live somewhere for a time, we start to be less amazed by our surroundings. This becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, because as we stop looking around us, we begin to create ruts, whereby we travel the same routes all the time and seldom deviate from our habits. Soon our environment can seem boring, because we’re always seeing the same places, the same people, and the same things.

To create the Tourist mindset, consider that everything is always changing. We might think that the drive into town looks the same as it did yesterday, but in actuality it’s quite different. Begin to imagine that you are a tourist in your own town or in the natural areas you frequent. Even, if you like, in your own home! Try some of the restaurants you’ve never bothered to go into, visit some shops you’ve always ignored, talk to some of the ‘locals’. Look on bulletin boards to find out what community activities are happening, and see if you can observe your surroundings as if you’re beholding them for the first time. When we do this, we are often surprised at the wondrous things all around us — things we ignored because we had adopted habitual patterns of observation.

— Affirm each morning that you want to intentionally hold this mindset using the following thoughts —

I’ve just arrived here in this foreign country, and I’ve never seen any of this before. I’m excited to experience and observe all the new things, people, and places that this country has to offer.

Thinking like this helps us experience the world from a fresh perspective, and helps to rescue us from our tendency to develop a sort of tunnel-vision that largely prevents us from engaging with our surroundings.

It helps even more to do this with a friend, child, or partner, who can point out things that you miss. At the end of the day, share your experiences, or if you like, keep a journal and take some photos to record all the things you experience. Take a moment to notice how much richer your experience is when you approach everything from a fresh perspective.

Developing This Mindset

With a little practice, we can permanently incorporate a sort of Tourist mindset. By observing the amazing changes that take place around us all the time — in our environment, in other people, and even in ourselves — we can begin to understand change, and become amazed at everyday phenomena. As this grows in us, we start to find wonder in raindrops, in clouds, in the way our fingers can move over a keyboard and communicate thoughts and feelings to people on the other side of the planet. Living life in amazement opens our hearts to every moment, and gives us a true passion for living.

If you’re not sure what Conscious Mindsets are about, visit Conscious Mindsets, Part One.

Conscious Mindsets Part One, Intro and The World Temple

Conscious Mindsets Part Two, The Tourist

Conscious Mindsets Part Three, The Magician’s Apprentice

Conscious Mindset #4 — The Adventurer

In the final mindset offered in this four-part series, it’s time for some fun. As adventurers, it doesn’t really matter whether we’re rich or poor. Security is thrown out the door in exchange for passion and excitement. As adventurers, we’re looking for experiences that take us a bit beyond our comfort zone. This might mean going rock climbing when we’re afraid of heights, going for a day-long hike and picnic, or trying something that you’ve always wanted to do even though you know it’s a little risky. This is one of my favorite mindsets, since it contrasts so beautifully with our usual attempts to keep everything as secure as possible. Security tends to lead to a sensation of clenching and fear, which creates more need for security, which creates more clenching and fear . . . you see how it goes. Being an adventurer, however, asks us to ‘live in the moment’ in the sense that we value unique experiences over security.

— Affirm each morning that you want to intentionally hold this mindset using the following thoughts —

Today I’m not going to live in fear. If something feels uncomfortable, I’m going to plunge right in. Today, life is about Experience, and if I ever feel even a bit of fear or trepidation, I’m going to stop, observe my fear, and see if I can’t challenge it.

This doesn’t mean we should do stupid things, but it does ask us to observe how often fear can limit our experience, even when it comes to such ‘mundane’ things as talking to a certain person, trying a new food, or learning a new skill.

Developing This Mindset

This mindset breaks us free of many of our ingrained patterns. The more you explore it, the more you’ll begin to lead an extraordinary life, and the more you’ll get in touch with the areas of your life where fear holds you back. The drive for security is seen for what it is — a fear-based response that holds us back from our passions and our dreams — and we find ourselves free to explore areas of life that before seemed too ‘outrageous’.

The four mindsets presented in this series are simply tools to play with — tools that break us out of our usual modes of thinking and being and show us, first hand, the powerful role that our attitudes play in how our days unfold. Whenever we feel like life is boring or ordinary, it’s not because life is boring or ordinary. It’s because we’ve become habituated to certain modes of behavior. We have the power, at any moment, to break free of those modes and to experience life in all its extraordinary splendor.

As you explore and ponder your pathway toward Awakening, it can be lots of fun to play around with different “mindsets”. Usually, we operate with a default, Unconscious Mindset, based on the Standard Dualistic Model of the universe. However, you can adopt a Conscious Mindset — a mindset that you create in order to ‘frame’ the world in a way that is more fun, more productive, or more compassionate — anytime you want.  Adopting a Conscious Mindset can take a little work, since we’re pretty conditioned to our usual view of the world. But if you wake up each morning and devote ten or fifteen minutes to reinforcing your Conscious Mindset, you can have some real fun with this. Best of all, you can use and discard mindsets as you would put on and take off clothes — one day you can choose one, the next day you can choose another. This four-part series will suggest four different mindsets and tell you how to reinforce them in your thinking. Of course, you’re free to create your own as well!

Also read:

Conscious Mindsets Part Two, The Tourist

Conscious Mindsets Part Three, The Magician’s Apprentice

Conscious Mindset #1 The World Temple

In this mindset, we stop looking at the world as a place where we’re trying to provide for our own security or always trying to manipulate events so that things happen in a certain way. In the World Temple, you are a monk, and every experience and person is a teacher that can enrich our spiritual lives.

To create this mindset, consider that perhaps the meaning of life isn’t to acquire tons of stuff or to make things happen perfectly. Maybe the meaning of life is to grow and experience. Looked at this way, the world is a perfect temple, providing us with all sorts of fellow monks and various experiences to challenge us on our journey. You are a monk, and the world is your temple.

— Affirm each morning that you want to intentionally hold this mindset using the following thoughts —

Other people are my temple teachers. No matter what they’re like — friendly or mean, stressed or calm — they are teachers from which I can learn.  I don’t need to change anybody — I only need to observe them and see what they can teach me on my spiritual journey. If it seems that someone has nothing to teach me, I’ve missed the lesson that is hidden within them.

This point of view gives us a deep respect for others, and also helps us to increase our ability to recognize life lessons in others. Seen this way, someone who calls themselves ‘teacher’, and is willing to feed us lessons, is not nearly so great a teacher as the mean grocery store clerk who, like a wise Zen master, is making sure that any lesson we discover is found via our own inner wisdom.

Experiences are delivered to me in the temple in order to increase my spiritual understanding. I need not seek out happy events or disappointing events, since all events and experiences hold equal ability to enrich my spiritual journey.

This point of view allows us to see all experiences as equal. If we get in a car accident or our boss yells at us or we lose our keys, these are valuable experiences that we can approach with openness and curiosity. Likewise, if something very  happy occurs, this is not an experience to lose ourselves in — it’s an experience to observe with openness and curiosity. Nothing ‘bad’ can happen, since we eagerly open ourselves to every experience that emerges in our temple.

Developing This Mindset

This mindset can be refined and evolved if you choose to play with it for more than a day or two. It will begin to beg questions such as: “If I am open to every experience that emerges in my temple, why am I still seeking out certain experiences and avoiding others?” or “Why do I usually see other people as faulted when it is so easy to see them with respect and curiosity?” As you answer these questions for yourself, you’ll come to some interesting realizations.

Next time we’ll explore another fun and interesting mindset to play with. Until then, give the World Temple Conscious Mindset a try and see what transpires. =)

Often people ask what is the best way to achieve their spiritual aspiration. Should I meditate? Do yoga? Read self-development blogs?

My answer is usually this: Get Outside. The reason is simple. Humans don’t usually give good advice. It’s not beyond our capacity, but more often than not our advice is tainted by the particular biases and preconceptions that  have created our lives. It’s immensely difficult to correctly understand another person’s life situation and to give them truly valuable advice.

Getting out into nature is different. It’s just you and the woods (or desert, or mountain, or seashore, depending on where you go). Once you’re out in nature, away from the constant distractions and sensory input of cell phones, advertisements, televisions, traffic, and social demands, our minds have a chance to settle. Like a jar of dirty water that is let to sit, the impurities settle to the bottom and our mind takes on more and more clarity with each passing moment.

In this way, it’s not so much nature that is the teacher, as YOU. Nature serves to unclutter our minds, and our uncluttered minds can’t help but begin to exercise their natural awareness. As our natural awareness emerges, all the Zen nonsense about awakening will begin to come clear.

This is Wild Zen — it’s not about robes or chants or a certain number of hours of meditation per day. It’s the pure enlightenment found in birdsong and clouds. It costs us nothing except for the minor discomfort of breaking our usual routine and finding a tree to sit under. Sitting, our minds remember the ancient songs of wind and rain and living soil.

Take five minutes a day if you feel you can spare no more. Or, if the spirit strikes you, venture out into the wilderness for a longer time (after you’ve learned some of the basic skills of wilderness travel and living, of course =). The transformation will happen without any effort on your part. The thinking mind will quiet, and you’ll discover for yourself what dwells in the silent places of your mind.

A friend of mine has become a self-professed Farmville addict. In case you don’t know what that means, it involves sitting in front of her computer for copious amounts of time as she tends her virtual farm. She plants crops, raises animals, and builds her farm – even though all of her crops, animals and buildings are only composed of electrons.

Some of her family and friends feel that this is a waste of time. Instead of spending time in “real life”, she spends all of her time in a make-believe world. Instead of real dollars, she’s concerned with Farmville “coins”. Instead of real soil, her crops emerge out of imaginary soil. Instead of real problems, she’s dealing with fictional problems created by the programmers who made the game.

From my conversations with her, I think she feels vaguely guilty about all the time she spends in Farmville. “But it’s FUN!” she tells me, and guilty or not, she keeps playing.

Of course, the strange thing about Farmville is that it’s not all that different from another fictional game. This one’s called Realville. In this game, instead of real goods like food, players are concerned with fictional Realville “dollars”. Instead of emerging from real soil, players’ crops emerge from the Realville “SuperMega Grocery Store”. And just like in Farmville, players are entangled in fictional problems created by the programmers who made the game, and all of the crops, animals and buildings are composed of electrons. Of course, most of us are so immersed in Realville that we think it really is real, but just because almost every human on the planet agrees on a delusion doesn’t mean it’s truth. It just means it’s a very effective delusion.

This is one of the first teachings of Awakening – to stop and look around ourselves, to see through the illusion of Maya and realize that our world bears an uncanny resemblance to Farmville. Dollars have no real value unless you and I agree they do, and yet people starve and die for lack of dollars. Daily, we deal with problems that have more to do with human convention than with actual realities. We feel compassion for homeless people when almost all of us live in houses that could shelter many. Our SuperMega Groceries throw away boxes and boxes of food every day – not because it is rotten, but because it makes “financial sense”. All around us, if we stop to look with fresh eyes, we will see human actions that border on the ridiculous, and many of these actions cause genuine pain and suffering in others or in ourselves.

What would happen if we saw the nature of this Realville game we’re all playing, and began to question some of its rules? Does it really make sense to let people starve so that we can have more dollars? Does it really make sense to experience frustration and stress because the game isn’t going the way we want it? Or might we find a certain liberation if we recognized the workings of the game, and began playing with a sense of adventure and curiosity?

This is Realville. What will you make it?

Rebecca and I love horses, and are lucky enough to share our lives with a few of these animals. The picture below might look ‘normal’ enough, but in reality, it’s quite odd.

It’s odd because what we’re seeing is a member of the world’s most deadly predator species sitting on the back of a prey species. This begs a question — how is it that a horse is allowing this? Consider that if a horse was attacked in the wild, it would often be attacked on the back or the back of the neck.

Something remarkable happens when an animal begins to associate with humans. And it’s the same thing that happens when humans associate with other humans. What happens is that ‘natural’ behavior is replaced by training. With the horse or with other animals, this is easy enough to see. After enough conditioning and trust-building, the natural behavior (fight and run if something is on your back) is replaced with the trained behavior (allow a human to sit on your back).

However, when we observe ourselves, it can be more difficult to distinguish ‘training’ from ‘natural’ behavior.

We enjoy thinking of ourselves as having free will and making our own decisions, but the more time we spend in meditation, observing the processes of our own mind, the more we see that our ‘decisions’ tend to be reactions based on belief systems, learned behavior, and conceptual models that we’ve learned — most of which remain unexamined in our psyches.

Of course, these learned behaviors aren’t all bad. Rajah’s training creates a situation where he and I can have a relationship — a relationship that I enjoy, and that I imagine he might enjoy as well. My own training as a human allows me to type this post and interact with people around the globe. Yet I find that my training left out some very important things that I wish would have been standard in school — how to find happiness in life, how to find peace in each unfolding moment, and how to dance with every circumstance of life. Even things as basic as positive human communication, understanding our own mind’s functioning, and how to fully enjoy a bite of ice cream are left out of most human training programs.

Imagine, for a moment, if school trained us how to be happy, how to recognize our passions, and how to make our wildest dreams come true. Imagine if each child learned to close her or his eyes and observe each motion of their minds. Imagine if we were taught how to recognize our own tendencies toward preconception and prejudice, and given tools to turn preconception into curiosity, and prejudice into love.

This is training that we have to pursue ourselves, often as adults. By the time we understand that something was missing from our education, however, we’re often so stuck in our patterns that things like peace, love, compassion, and awareness take second place to things like earning income, preserving our egos, and procrastinating.

This is rather strange, because discovering inner peace brings us more happiness than ten million dollars, and re-discovering our natural sense of curiosity brings more adventure than thirty trips to exotic destinations.

One of the most remarkable tasks we can apply ourselves to is to observe our own training. We do it simply by sitting quietly and watching our mind, learning to observe until we can bring this observation into our everyday lives. Then we can see our mind’s actions each time we conceptualize an object, each time we have a preference, each time we make a decision. What we discover in our own minds is astounding. Let the journey begin!

Rebecca and I were asked, a couple of years back, to give a presentation on building Stonetrees at a yoga retreat. At first some of the yogis and yoginis didn’t understand why were were going to go down to the beach to stack rocks, but soon everyone was delightfully balancing stone on stone.

You see, to build a truly amazing Stonetree, you can’t think. We asked the participants to simply stand on the beach, look about themselves, and pick up the first stone that felt ‘right’. Then repeat. Carefully, feeling the balance points and the personality of each stone, balances that seem nearly impossible can be achieved. We asked everyone not to use small ‘placer’ stones to hold rocks in place (you often see these when people are trying to build Stonetrees, and in our way of thinking this detracts from the opportunity to discover each stone’s relation to the next). Sometimes a stone is set aside because it just won’t balance, but usually, with enough play, it will find its place.

Stonetrees like this can become quite spectacular, but the more spectacular they are, the more precariously balanced they are. Sometimes a gentle breeze is enough to topple them — other times the tides or a perching bird sends them scattering back onto the beach. A few days later, there is usually no sign that Stonetrees were built.

Stonetrees remind us that all of our creations — our thoughts, our bodies, our buildings, our tools — all of these are ephemeral. We attempt, through all sorts of mind-play, to imagine immortality in one form or another, but stop for a moment and imagine a Stonetree on the shore with cement  and wire holding it up. It may last much longer, but its life — the balanced relationship of stone on stone — is gone.

Death is one of the most difficult challenges for the human mind, because our mind wants to grasp and hold on to everything. And yet the beauty of life is found in its fleeting nature, and when the Stonetree falls it becomes part of the perfect Li from which it was created. Indeed, the ‘Stonetree’ is only a particular arrangement, in the same way that we might tighten our hand into a ball and pronounce our new creation a ‘fist’. The fist, though, is just a thought — a name we put on a particular formation. In reality, there is only the hand, and even that is only a formation of something else.

Stones on the beach come into relationship with a human being, and for a moment they create something together. Then the Stonetree topples down and all the potential is returned. The waves dance among the rocks and bare feet and Stonetrees without any prejudice. Whether we like it or not, this is the reality and the beauty of living. All else is trouble we create in our minds, built out of our desire for permanence.

Kara-Leah recently wrote a thought-provoking article on political correctness.  For those who don’t feel the word ‘disabled’ should be used, I’d encourage you to read her take on the subject. And now, I’d like to use that very ‘un-pc’ word to tell you something about myself.

I am disabled.

I first realized this when a friend of mine in college, who happened to use a wheelchair, told me one day that he wasn’t disabled.

“What do you mean?”, I asked, since he wasn’t able to move without his wheelchair and thus was clearly disabled.

“I mean that there are people who can’t move their arms or even their faces,” he said. “Compared to them, I’m super-abled.”

He had a point. I’d probably be considered super-abled compared to many people my age. At 37, I practice martial arts regularly, I’m a runner, and I tend to explore my environment with my movement, whether that means climbing trees, balancing on chairs, or running through the wilderness. Yet a friend of mine who is 46 can kick my butt wearing cross-country skies, and compared to the people in this video, I’m essentially disabled –

Perhaps it might be better if we didn’t try to box people into terms like ‘disabled’. After all, if we’re really going to be truthful, all of us are  ‘differently-abled’.  My friend in the wheelchair, for instance, was a wheelchair racer, and he had much more arm strength and endurance than me. He could do wondrous balances in his chair that were far beyond my ability. He was only ‘disabled’ because in our culture, we see a wheelchair and make an immediate judgment.

Some of us use wheelchairs, some of us can fly through the air as if we are weightless, some cannot move at all, and others can move their bodies just enough to walk about in the world and go for an occasional jog. What if we all celebrated our physical diversity? Even if someone is totally paralyzed, I’m sure I could learn something about movement from them if I took the time to approach them with the respect due to an equal. This way of thinking applies to anything we consider a ‘disability’ in our culture. In this article, I wrote about how we might view mental ‘disabilities’ differently.

For fun, here’s another example of some people who can move through space in a way that few of us can hardly imagine.

Instead of pigeon-holing people, or trying to teach respect or ‘tolerance’, what if we taught our children that every single person in this world is unique — each person has a different colored skin, different hair, different ways of speaking and thinking, different types of physical and mental and emotional abilities. What would happen if we all became curious about those differences — might the world be a more wondrous place if we celebrated our unique natures?

Rebecca and I invite you to visit our Adventure Journal!

Today is the day of turkey massacre. Here in the United States, we celebrate Thanksgiving, which is basically a day to give thanks for everything you’re thankful for. The holiday centers around a feast of epic proportions, at the center of which is traditionally the Thanksgiving Turkey.This means, of course, that a lot of turkeys meet their end in order to provide for the millions of Thanksgiving dinners held all over the nation.

While Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday for the humans, you can just image what it’s like in the turkey coops, with the great Turkey Prophet standing on a box and proclaiming, “Our time is nigh! The Great Decapitation is soon to come upon us!” Most turkeys won’t believe a word he’s saying, of course, and will just go about as usual . . . until the moment arrives.

We’re having a mixed crowd of meat-eaters and vegetarians over to our home for the holiday. Even as I type this, we have one of those unlucky turkeys roasting in our oven (the Prophet, perhaps?). And like every time I eat meat, I’ll be thankful for this animal that died to feed me. Indeed, this happens every time I eat plants, as well, because I consider them just as ‘alive’ as animals.

It all comes down to realizing that we kill in order to live. This can seem like a harsh statement, but from our immune system (which violently murders any intruders) to our dinners (where a single soybean has the potential to grow infinite fields of soybeans — a potential that is destroyed once we put it in our mouths), we must kill to live.

This sounds terrible just until we realize the beauty of it. We, too, will someday die and feed others, and all the atoms that make up ‘me’ or ‘you’ or ‘turkey’ or ’soybean’ will re-integrate into the whole and become new forms. It’s a sort of reincarnation, and right now your body is composed of atoms that were once part of mountains, waterfalls, clouds, people, foxes, dinosaurs, and mighty stones that have fallen from the heavens.

You’re all that.

So is the turkey we’re eating, and as we eat, that turkey’s legacy — all its past forms — become a part of us. What we think of as our consciousness is just a wisp, a ghost that we think we’re familiar with but who shifts and disappears beneath our gaze in the most confusing manner. Those who study this in enough depth come to the startling conclusion that it’s just an illusion.

Yet in a sense, all of this is recycled, reincarnated, and perhaps it is the feast (the killing), the thankfulness, and our ability to recognize the beauty of it all that makes this dance so wondrous.

Whether you’re celebrating Thanksgiving or not, I’d urge everyone to take a moment today to stop and give thanks for the many wonderful things you have in your life, even if it sometimes feels that they’re few and far between. There might be friends, or a kindness someone bestowed, or your own ability to smile when a smile seems difficult. Perhaps things are very good for you right now, and your list will be long and delightful. Or perhaps you have almost nothing left, but you’ll have the ability to be thankful for this very breath that you’re taking.

That might be the most magical thanks of all — to experience this single breath, this single moment, and to recognize the wonderful magic that is you.

Growing up through my teen years, one of my favorite sayings was — “Perception equals reality.”  Since then, that statement has taken on new layers of meaning, and a recent study gave some additional validity to the idea.

This article in Wired Science describes how athletes were asked to try to kick field goals. After a series of kicks, they were given an adjustable model of the goal posts, and asked to adjust the model so that it represented the actual size of the posts (to scale, of course =). When a kicker missed kicks, they would adjust the model to represent a goal post that was smaller than the actual, and when they were successful, they would adjust the model to represent a goal post that was larger than the actual. The implication was that the kickers perceived the goal as being a different size depending on their relationship with the goal (in this case, their ability to kick successfully).

If this doesn’t shock you, it should. Or perhaps it shouldn’t, as it’s been around for a long time as an essential part of various ancient philosophies, such as the delightful idea of Maya.

The Big Secret of Life

This might be called the ‘big secret of life’. When we assume that the world actually is what we perceive, we get into all sorts of problems. Our minds lock down, and we form assumptions and opinions that are not based on any actual ‘reality’ so much as they are based upon our own ideas and perceptual biases.

It doesn’t take a scientific study for us to realize this. If we think about life, we’ll notice that all around us there are examples of misunderstanding, different opinions, and different tastes. All of us have probably experienced times when our own opinions on a matter changed, or a taste that we didn’t prefer became desirable after we tried it a few times. Here we find the same implication — that our minds and ideas have a lot to do with how ‘reality’ is perceived. On a deeper level, if we learn to observe our mind’s activity, we can watch this process in action as our mind fixes on an apparent object or idea, locks down a perceptual ’snapshot’, and then skips away to whatever is next.

Realizing this (or experiencing it if you are someone who enjoys observing your mind’s activities) can create immense life changes. If you observe human conflict, almost all of it derives from disagreements of perception. When we believe that our perception is indicating a true reality, we can then consider the other person ‘wrong’, and that’s a great excuse to yell at them, ignore them, hurt them, or even shoot them or drop bombs on them.

What if the problem isn’t who is right and who is wrong, but that we are all deluded into believing that our version of reality is the real one?

Think about this for a moment. That’s the basic assumption, isn’t it? I believe that my version of reality is the real one. If I’m ‘open-minded’, I might admit that I don’t have full information and that my mind can be changed if I’m shown the appropriate evidence. If I’m really open-minded, I might even recognize that I can never have complete information, and that my version of reality is always going to be biased. However, the truth is that most of us are emotionally committed to our version of reality, and we’ll defend it even if we are presented with strong evidence that suggests we’re wrong.  This is when conflict and violence really begins.

So No One’s Wrong?

It’s easy to see the problem with this train of thought. It implies that none of us are right or wrong, and from one point of view can suggest that any action or belief is thus acceptable. We want to rebel against this, because we feel that some actions are definitely bad. Yet we’re missing something here, because the real problem (and the real solution) isn’t found by dissecting our actions and arguing about who is right and who is wrong. This is what causes wars. The real problem (and the real solution) is found when we recognize in ourselves our emotional and intellectual commitment to Dualism. When we observe our dualism, recognize our own tendencies toward inner and outer conflict, and see our current mode of thinking for what it is, then we discover that the solution isn’t to harm or kill those who disagree with us, or even to try to change their minds. The solution is to attend to our own Awakening, so that we can cease to be a force for conflict in the world. Only then might we find true World Peace — when each of us attends to our own Awakening. From this perspective, this is the most important thing we can do with our lives.

Going Deeper

But wait! There’s more =) For in Awakening, we find true compassion, and discover the beauty of everything — including dualism. That’s the beautiful thing about Awakening, and it’s the very reason that it might be possible for the whole world to someday Wake Up. If Awakening saw dualism as bad or evil, it would be playing the same old game — dividing the world into the ‘Awakened’ and the ‘Asleep’, and making judgments or assumptions based on those divisions. Awake, we see everything ‘as it is’, without judgment, and that is why we can have love even for those who harm us (do you remember Jesus saying something about this?).

This is no different than discovering our own inner peace — when we think that anger is bad, we get angry at ourselves for getting angry! We create a cycle of violence that keeps turning around and around. But when we love our anger and approach it with curiosity and delight, it evaporates.

We can only possess conflict if our hearts are not overflowing with Love.

Reality Equals Perception

The deeper we observe, the more we discover that perhaps the only thing we can truly call ‘real’ is perception itself (for what else do we truly have evidence of?). Taken to its extreme, this seems very lonely. All that exists is my perception? The activity in my mind? Yet we can only feel lonely if we are still holding on to that most tenacious of illusions — the belief that there is a ‘me’ who is perceiving. If we sit and observe with awareness, this ‘me’ is nowhere to be found (though we can easily discover the mental structures we’ve used to create a powerful sensation of ‘me’).

Perception with a single observer is indeed lonely. But perception with no observer at all? At first this sounds nightmarish to our minds, but if we actually experience this pure perception, untainted with ideas and preconceptions, then we discover what so many people have tried to describe as Oneness or Awakening or Pure Awareness or Nirvana. Our words always fail to describe this state of being, simply because our words create ideas and this pure perception is idea-less (in that it perceives even ideas without assumption).

Here is where the magic lies — in pure perception. This does not mean that we need to silence our idea-making mind. It only means that we need to observe those ideas for what they are. We’re already awake, in the sense that we can’t get there via effort. Only through awareness — allowing perception to perceive. Just as we enjoy a piece of chocolate most when we put it in our mouth and taste it (a rather ‘passive’ activity that can be missed if our mind is over-thinking the experience or running off on other errands), we truly taste life when we’re allowing our natural awareness to Just Be.

In the Meantime

Until we personally unravel the secret of allowing perception, isn’t there anything else we can do? Why not have some fun with the idea of ‘Perception Equals Reality’? Once we start to notice how much our ideas and assumptions create our reality, it becomes a delightful game to start considering what ideas and assumptions we might hold that would create a more fun, harmonious, and loving world. I’ll end with two assumptions that many of us hold, and suggest some fun replacements.

Assumption: There are mean people in this world, and there are nice people in this world.

Replace With: ‘Mean’ people are the ones most in need of my compassion and love. Why not give them a friendly smile?

Or Even Better: Everyone is behaving perfectly. The world would be boring if everyone was nice. Still, it’s a fun game to try to get ‘mean’ people to become ‘nice’ people. I love to find creative ways to make this happen.

Assumption: Sometimes I’m going to be happy, and sometimes I’m going to be miserable. That’s just human nature.

Replace With: These ‘ups’ and ‘downs’ are what makes my life into a beautiful story.

Or Even Better: Why is ‘happy’ better than ’sad’? Every emotion is a wonderful thing to experience, and I’m curious about what each one ‘tastes’ like. In fact, I can’t wait for the next emotion to surface so that I can savor it!

The idea that our perception equals our reality is an enormously helpful idea to consider. Play with it a little, give it some thought, and see where it takes you. =)

Rebecca and I just launched a new site highlighting the different services we offer. As we were building it, I made a decision that surprised me — I decided to offer personal and spiritual coaching services. This has been developing for some time, and for many years I’ve been doing coaching for free. The only reason I hadn’t offered these services professionally is that I felt a resistance to charging money for them.

Since Zen-Inspired Self Development launched in 2006, I’ve had no ads and nothing for sale on this site. The reason for this is that I wanted to keep the site as clear and directed as possible, without distractions. I’ve also had a resistance to people who charge money for lessons on Awakening — or anything, for that matter, of a ’spiritual’ nature.

Why This Resistance?

A good friend of mine has been challenging me on this particular resistance. Why this resistance, she asked? And she’s urged me to re-think my ideas regarding money.

The problem is that I don’t particularly like money. As a hopeless idealist, I can imagine a world where everyone gives to each other freely. Too often, I’ve seen money act as a force to encourage people to toss aside their ideals, and people surely don’t need any more encouragement to create conflict-based actions. When it comes to things of a spiritual nature, which often claim that money is irrelevant to happiness or fulfillment (or whatever the spiritual path is offering), it’s always seemed odd that the purveyors of this spiritual information are busy getting rich on their offerings. The whole affair always left me feeling that there must be a better way to do things.

Examining Money

Though I still hold that the world might be better off money-free, at the moment money is a powerful force in our culture, and unless I feel I can change that, I felt it might be good to find a way to work creatively within the current context. Like a sword that can be an object of beauty or a tool of violence, money can work for bane or boon. Plenty of bloggers and coaches I greatly respect are charging for their services, and they’re helping a lot of people out in the process. This is because of two of money’s positive aspects  –  it encourages relationships and builds a sense of commitment.

Building a Sense of Commitment

Take coaching, for instance. There are times when a coach might ask you a question that you’d rather not answer — a question that shakes your core and encourages you to examine a long-buried belief pattern. If you are getting those coaching services for free, it’s very easy to simply not pick up the phone or type an email back. But when you have three coaching sessions left that you’ve already paid for, there is additional incentive to confront that question and do some real self-examination.

In effect, money can create a sense of pre-commitment, which can increase our tendency to follow through with our actions.

In all of my years of offering various services, whether it’s teaching martial arts, wilderness survival, or Middle Eastern drumming, I’ve found that when I offer services for free, I get a low turn-out and low retention rate. When I charge money, I get a high turn-out and high retention rate. This has been quite surprising to me, though I think I’m coming to understand this aspect of human psychology — it has to do with perceived value.

Encouraging Relationships

Another positive aspect of money is that it can encourage relationships. In other words, it sets up a system whereby one person is aware of another person’s services, and for most modern minds, having money in the equation adds a legitimacy to a person’s offerings. Sometimes putting our sign out and offering a service can create new relationships, bringing people together who otherwise might not have taken the time to sit down and see how they might enrich each others’ lives.

A Childhood Dream

In my childhood, I always dreamed of finding a martial arts master like the ones I saw in the movies — to gain entrance to her teachings, I’d have to wait outside the monastery for eight days with no food, and then I’d have to go through a series of rigorous tests to be admitted. Obviously there was no ‘$59.95 a month’ charge. I paid for my training with devotion.

For whatever reason (perhaps it’s of my own making! =), I haven’t found that ideal to be a reality in today’s world. An exchange of money seems to be ‘just the thing’ to create a feeling of balanced give-and-take, and perhaps the important thing is that the exchange is made in a spirit of honor. Though I’m charging for my coaching services, I’m doing so with the understanding that I’ll be giving my whole heart into the services I’m offering — and I trust that those who engage my services will find great value in their investment — value worth many times more than the dollars that were exchanged.

Spiritual Coaching

I’m quite excited about this. I’m offering these ‘Virtual Dokusan‘ services in one-month packages. My intent is to create an environment wherein you can ask any questions you like and get personal responses that are relevant to your unique journey toward Awakening. You can get details by visiting here.

Although the spiritual coaching will probably be mostly via email, I’m also offering phone, in-person, and I-M based services — you can learn more at www.kandrcreative.com.

Since I’m still exploring this issue of charging for these sorts of things, I’d love to hear what you think — do you feel that it is alright to charge for self-development, spiritual, or Awakening-based guidance? Why or why not? I’d greatly value your opinions and feedback =)

Most importantly, I’m looking forward to exploring this new opportunity with you. Although this blog can be a tremendous resource for ‘pointing’ toward Awakening, I’ve found that there is nothing like personal, one-on-one communication. I’d love to hear from you to begin our journey!

Hugs,
Kenton

Walking with Rebecca and our friend Jen the other day, we came upon a #2 pencil lying on the ground. It was the sort of pencil that had character — tooth marks suggested that its former owner had chewed on it, even going so far as to put tooth to metal, since the eraser sheathe was a bit misshapen.

I picked it up and looked at it for a moment. I had to resist the urge to put it in my mouth — in school I, too, had been a pencil chewer (the texture is oh-so-delightful), and since these days I use pen or keyboard, it had been some time since I had held a pencil in my hand . . . or mouth.

Inappropriate jokes aside for a moment (read that last sentence again and think with your ‘dirty’ mind), once I got past the chewing urge, a delightful thought passed through my mind.

“This,” I said to my two companions as I held the pencil, “is a story. It’s a scattering of poems, and it’s thoughts in someone’s journal.”

You see, our mind learns to see things in one way or another. To one person, a forgotten pencil might be just sort of nothing — something to pass by without a second glance. To another, it might be trash that should be picked up and thrown in the garbage. To the children I remember from my adventure in Nepal, it was a treasure — we’d often be approached by kids asking us for pencils or pens. And to someone else, it’s poetry and tales just waiting to be scribed.

The magic happens when we can observe our mind’s tendency to instantly label everything around us. This is good, that it bad, another thing is meant for such-and-such a purpose. Yet our minds could look at each thing so differently! What might it feel like if our minds did not lock down so quickly, but could see the pure ‘useless’ usefulness of every thing and every moment?

I set the pencil back on the ground. It looked rather pretty surrounded by grass. Besides, who knew if some thoughtful poet might walk by just a bit later in the day, pick up that pencil and set it to paper, and write a poem that would change the hearts of people throughout the world?

Magic, it seems, is everywhere. Even in a chewed-up #2 pencil lying in the grass.

Rebecca and I are taking part in a movie that’s being filmed in Wisconsin. It’s a sci-fi/horror type of film, and the experience has been a lot of fun, as well as very educational. Perhaps the most interesting aspect, though, has been considering what it means to be an actor. To really get into a scene, you have to ‘forget yourself’. Bruce Lee said that “The consciousness of self is the greatest hindrance to the proper execution of all physical action.” And when you are trying to act a part, this becomes especially true. You can’t ‘become’ your character if you’re worried about how you look. The very best acting we’ve seen comes when the actor ‘loses’ themselves in the role, if only for a moment.

One of my favorite myths describes ‘God’ in this way – as an actor who is acting in the greatest movie ever made. It’s a movie where God plays the role of every stone, every animal, every star and atom – in short, God plays the role of every apparently individual thing in the entire universe. Just like humans trying to act in a movie, God ‘loses’ itself in these various roles, and does so with such skill and cleverness that God can’t even remember where it put itself. Thus the stone in the river lives in perfect hiding, never knowing it is God. And the blowing wind moves over the landscape, never realizing what it truly is. The squirrel gathers its nuts in perfect hiding, and each of us lives our lives thinking we are individual selves. Just like the rest of the universe, we are lost to ourselves, playing our roles so beautifully and perfectly that we never realize what or who we are.

This myth suggests that humans have a special ability. Though we are cleverly hidden, and though the task is nearly impossible, if we look in just the correct manner, we can discover our true nature, find ‘Nirvana’ or ‘Awakening’, and come out of acting. We can still be playing our parts in the movie, but we can realize that we’re doing it, and no longer be hidden from our true nature.

The beautiful thing about this myth is that it reminds us that it’s really no better to ‘Awaken’ than it is to remain lost in our acting. The stone in the river and the human who is lost are both playing their roles perfectly – more perfectly, perhaps, than someone who ‘Awakens’. One young woman I know is a case in point. She can speak very lucidly about awakening, and is never confused by my or others’ pointing. And yet she pushes it all away. “I enjoy the drama, the sensation of being lost in my emotions,” she says. “I’d never want to ‘awaken’.” Is this a young woman confused, or is this God saying, “The point of the game is in the hiding. Why would I want to step out of the movie?”

You don’t even have to imagine that you’re acting in a movie to understand what I’m speaking of here. Simply imagine watching a movie. A good movie sweeps you away, right? You get lost in the story, and forget that you’re sitting in a chair munching from a bowl of popcorn. When someone comes along and tries to ‘awaken’ you by telling you it’s just a movie, it’s easy to get annoyed. The whole point of watching a movie is to get lost in it!

The young woman who doesn’t want to ‘wake up’ isn’t very different from the rest of us. She may realize that she doesn’t want to awaken, but most of the rest of us actively (if unknowingly) resist waking up. After all, if we use the context of this myth, then we’re God trying to hide, and when someone (also God) comes along and tries to ’snap us out of it’, we realize on some level that if we achieved Enlightenment (or whatever you wish to call it), we’d be ruining the game.

Why seek out Awakening, then? This is perhaps the most profound question we can ask ourselves. Any answer we give only enmeshes us further in the ‘God-movie’, and will show us how our actions (wanting to Awaken) are serving to enhance our sense of self.

Why are we on this quest to ‘wake up’? What is our motivation? Perhaps the greatest magic lies not in ‘waking up’, but in fully embracing this beautiful dance.

Recently, a very dear friend of mine was the victim of a crime. For reasons of pending charges, I can’t go into too much detail, but the story that followed the crime is an interesting one, so I’d like to share it.  It brings to mind a quote by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, which is reminiscent of the quote I use at the top of this website –

What I know of the divine sciences and the Holy Scriptures, I learnt in woods and fields. I have had no other masters than the beeches and the oaks.

This story found me spending ten days in the woods, accompanied not by the victim of this crime, but by the criminal himself.  This might make more sense if I add that the young man was the son of a very good friend.

After the crime had been committed, I spoke to my friend the victim, and she assured me that she had forgiven the young man’s trespass against her.  Indeed, she wished that he might be helped in some way, since he was clearly on a downward path, but showed evidence that he wanted to turn his life around.  So I spoke to my friend (the young man’s mother), and we agreed that perhaps what he needed was a little time in nature.

A Little Woods Therapy

It was decided that I would spend ten days with the young man in the woods.  We would leave with no tent, no sleeping bag, no matches, no toilet paper, and no knife.  It was us and the woods. My thought was that I could serve as a guide to help him find his own sense of responsibility and his own sense of self-esteem.  Nature would be his primary teacher.  My thought was that this young man would provide some of our basic needs, such as fire and food.  The beauty of this approach is that I wouldn’t have to make rules and enforce them.  Nature made her own rules, and put them very simply.  For instance, if we didn’t provide for our own food, we didn’t eat.

A Foolish Endeavor?

I was told by some friends who work in the mental health field that it would be a mistake to involve myself in this young man’s life, but when I discussed it with my mother, who has long been a wise influence in my life, she suggested a different approach.

“We can’t be afraid of helping others,” she said.  “Even when it might be dangerous for ourselves.  That is why people don’t help the mentally ill — there is too much stigma, too much fear.”

Rebecca agreed, though it meant that we would be apart for ten days. “This could change his entire life,” she said.  “And besides, it will be a great excuse for you to get out into the woods again.”

Master Oak, Master Beech

As I had hoped, nature quickly took the role of teacher.  The young man had to learn to make fire without matches, and before he became adept, we spent a dark night and ate raw carrots as our dinner.  We built shelters to keep us from the rain and cold, and I taught him the foods that nature provided in the forests and the fields.  We were provisioned with some basic foodstuffs — carrots and potatoes and lentils — but there was little more in the way of comforts.

Nature created a perfect backdrop.  In the woods, you feel insignificant and powerful all at once. We sat in our shelters during a pitch black night and felt the thunder shake the ground beneath us.  We sat listening in the thick dark as something came creeping into our camp late at night on barely-heard footfalls.  We felt hunger in our bellies, and learned what it’s like to want water. The young man spent a day blind, awakening his other senses, and a day silent, awakening his ability to see the world without words.  We fasted for a day, and spent many hours perched in trees, watching animals or listening to the secret language of wind through leaves.

As the days passed, his churning mind slowed and quieted, and before long he learned to sit in long silences.  By the end of the adventure we both were having trouble leaving the woods, even though I couldn’t wait to get back to Rebecca.  He told me that for the first time in his life, he had something he could be proud of, something that gave a context to his life. He had found his place with the frustrations of trying to make fire without matches, found his place with the fear that comes when it’s pitch black and you have no source of light, and found his place with his own mind, that had always been ruled by impulsive actions.

Back to Civilization

Now that he’s back to civilization, I’m still waiting to see how long the forest’s influence will last.  It takes only a short time in the woods and our lives begin to take on a different flavour.  Enough time and we’re changed forever, made peaceful by the wild places’ influence. Whether ten days will have given him lasting change is still to be seen — he is writing the end of the story we began together in the woods.  So far, things are looking good.

Our Gift

Some people thought it strange that I’d take so much time out of my life to help a stranger — especially one who had victimized a friend of mine.  But is it not our gift that we can reach out to others, to make changes in people’s lives? Every day we have these opportunities, and if we seize them we beautify the world with our every action.  It is my hope that this story might inspire all of us to reach out to others, to recognize when we can make a difference, even if doing so might disturb the usual flow of our lives. Each of us can play the roles of angels and Bodhisattvas, discovering true compassion and applying it to our treatment of both ourselves and others.

Nature As Teacher

My role was simple enough — to provide a sense of security when the nights were dark and frightening, to provide an example that showed that humans can be comfortable as barefoot creatures in the woods, and to encourage this young man to see his mental ‘problems’ as potential gifts — if only he could learn to ‘gentle’ the wild horse that was his mind. We spoke only a little of Zen and Awakening — it was the falling leaves and the pattering rain that delivered the real lessons.

I hadn’t spent this much time in the woods since my teens, and the experience re-affirmed my conviction that nature is one of our greatest teachers.  I won’t soon be taking someone out into the woods again — at least not unless Rebecca comes along.  But I’d urge each of you, if you get the chance, to at least find a few moments to stop someplace where there are trees and green growing things, and to sit in their midst and see if you can hear the soft reminders they whisper — reminders that can lead us home.

Rebecca and I invite you to visit our adventure journal at www.kentonandrebecca.com/journal.html =)

A post with a title like this has a lot of potential to talk about how we tie knots in our lives, self-inflicting our existence with many of the problems that we usually consider ourselves to be the ‘victims’ of.  But really, this post is just about tying knots.  In rope.

You see, as an avid outdoors-person, you’d think I’d be an expert in knots.  Nope.  In fact, when it comes time to tie a knot, I’ll make a terrible tangle of things, twisting the rope this way and that, usually spending an inordinate amount of time accomplishing little more than making a mess.  But the other day I was seized with an unnatural compulsion, and I picked up a piece of rope, looked up YouTube videos on tying knots, and learned how to tie a strangle knot.  Soon after I learned the constrictor.  The clove hitch, sheep shank, timber hitch, and sheet bend were soon added to my list.  It didn’t take long for Rebecca to confront me with the news.  I had a problem.  A bona fide addiction.  I couldn’t stop.  And I wasn’t ready to join KA.  I was at 14 knots, and was just beginning.  Disregarding Rebecca’s warning, I got myself a book on knots, and plunged deeper into the obsession.

Tying knots isn’t a useless skill.  It can come in handy, really.  But all in all, many knots are rather redundant — just different ways of twisting rope in order to accomplish the same goal.  So why learn such a vast array of knots when knowing, say, 6 or 8 well-chosen knots would get you through life just fine?  Being a creature prone to self-examination, I soon had no choice but to confront this question.  And I think, in the end, it’s because knots are a relationship — it’s just you and the rope, and when you tie a knot well, it’s a beautiful thing to behold (many are designed for asthetics as well as utility).  The most beautiful thing about them is that they are imminently emphemeral.  My knot-rope has been tied and untied thousands of times now, forming itself into pattern after pattern, a little like Alan Watts’ description of the Vedanta ‘God’ — becoming different ‘thing’ after different ‘thing’, even though the rope never changes.  When I tie a beautiful Monkey’s Fist, am I holding a Monkey’s Fist, or a piece of rope?  When I tie a Lover’s Knot, am I looking down at a Lover’s Knot or a piece of rope?  Watts asked this same thing about our own fist — we make a fist and call it a ‘fist’, but is it our hand or is it a fist?  And if we’re sufficiently deep thinkers, we can apply this to any object in our world — both in a rational way (thinking of the relationship between ‘raw material’ and ‘final product’), or in that Vedanta God way — considering that somehow, paradoxically, a knot can be a knot, complete with a name and the power to amaze someone with its existence (people are always amazed to see a Monkey’s Fist), but at the same time it’s only a piece of rope.  Neither and Either.

This is the essence of Maya, the secret behind the relation between object and perception — when we see that it’s our own labels that create the world we invoke around us.  We are all magicians, weaving knots in the rope of ‘reality’, and the beauty’s all in the dance, whether we realize that we’re tying knots or whether we’re so absorbed that we don’t realize we’re doing it.

As for me, I think I’ll keep tying.

If you want to learn knot tying for yourself, this site is a great one to start on — I’ve learned a lot from it.  Also, be sure to visit this week’s Adventure Journal at KentonandRebecca.com!  Rebecca wrote it, and it has some great advice for ’seeing’ the world.

Have you heard of the mirror test for self-awareness?  Animals are shown their reflection in a mirror, and based on certain criteria, it is judged whether the animals recognize the reflection as themselves.  If you read up on it, you’ll discover that it’s a rather ‘elite’ group of animals who can pass this test, including elephants and magpies.  Writer Nicole Branan, in a Scientific American article, states that: “When you look in the mirror, you know you are seeing yourself.”  But many other animals just don’t get it.

Wait A Minute!

Of course, one could equally observe Ms. Branan’s statement and note that the primate known as Homo sapiens is also mistaken when it looks in the mirror.  Her statement holds a lot of truth – when a human looks in the mirror, it does indeed ‘know’ that it’s seeing itself.  Or at least it believes it’s seeing itself.  That’s the illusion we’re experiencing, but the obvious truth is that we’re seeing a 2-dimensional reflection – we’re not seeing ourselves at all.

Sure, But Who Cares?

Herein lies the basic flaw in our perception of the world.  We see symbols and take them for the ‘real deal’.  We look in the mirror and say ‘I look terrible!’ instead of ‘That reflection looks terrible!’  This distinction may seem irrelevant to us, but it lies at the root of Maya. It’s not just in mirrors, but in every facet of our lives that we mistake symbols for reality.  Using the mirror example, consider what happens if we see a distorted image of ourselves.  Let’s pretend that our bathroom mirror makes us look overweight.  This could create considerable stress and agitation in our lives, perhaps influencing our outlook so strongly that we go on a diet or start a weight-loss program, all because we’re mistaking the symbol (our reflection) for ourselves.  Usually, we try to solve these problems by getting a new mirror – in other words, changing the symbol-world.  But we could do even better if we simply recognized that the reflection is not ourselves.

Ubiquitous

This mistaken view of the world permeates our lives.  When someone tells us that we’re stupid, we often forget that the person is saying something about themselves (regarding their current perception, biases, and world-view), and nothing whatsoever about ourselves.  When we feel emotions, we often attribute them to some outside influence, instead of our own resistance and inner conflict.  Indeed, everywhere we look, our mind is busy laying symbols over the world, essentially hiding the ‘real deal’ from our gaze.

But What About Those Dumb Animals?

I sometimes wonder if instead of doing mirror tests on animals, we should do them on human beings.  Only, in place of glass mirrors let’s use the mirrors that are all around us – other people, our perception of ourselves, or the computer monitor or LCD screen you’re looking at right now.  How many of us would recognize ourselves in a pine cone, in our neighbor’s car, or in an ice cream sundae?  Our own self-awareness is faulty indeed, giving us the impression of being a driver in our head, controlling (or struggling to control) the actions of our body and mind.  This, of course, is a highly symbolic sense of self, akin to mistaking your reflection for your real, actual being.

It’s an amazing journey when we begin to see what the reflection in a mirror really is.  And from there, we can continue on to realize the nature of many of the other ‘things’ we see around us.  The result is an organic world-view quite unlike the one we know now.  Here’s your invitation to take the journey yourself.

This is a Deeper Understandings article, and is directed toward people who have already begun a practice of one kind or another and are beginning to ask questions about some of the key elements of ‘waking up’.

Often on this site I talk about how Awareness is the key to discovering our natural selves.  This might seem like a simple and straightforward statement, but what exactly does ‘Awareness’ mean?  This question was brought to the forefront by a reader who recalled a quote of mine: “All of the symbols we’ve placed on the world around us dissolve in the same way – by the application of observation.  All we need is awareness.”

Take a look at that quote (I can happily dismember it since it’s mine), and notice how it sets up a rather impossible puzzle.  It suggests that the ‘application’ of observation will work some sort of magic.  Doesn’t this seem to be asking us to do something?  To somehow apply observation or awareness to a situation?  And yet, elsewhere in this site, I’ve suggested that the type of awareness we really need is a ‘no effort’ awareness.  So how do we do something (apply effort) without applying effort?!

This is the big trouble with awareness, and it’s the puzzle we all face in attempting to discover our natural selves.  Our very language and methods of thinking are built around this ‘effort = results’ type of world-view, and we’re hard-pressed to transcend the limits of our language and thinking.  How the heck do we just be ‘natural’?

Naturally Occurring Naturalness =)

There’s a fun transformation that happens to people if they’re living out in the wild.  When our lives are lived without schedules, cell phones, television, music, and all the other distractions of society, our mind starts to go through some powerful shifts – it’s usually after about a week in the wild when people’s minds suddenly slow down and begin to develop a new awareness.  Thinking slows, and the endless repetition of thoughts and songs and everything else careening through our minds begins to dissipate.  Our minds, often without any special practice or urging, begin to see ‘what’s really going on’ around us.  I sometimes dream of opening up a wilderness retreat where people could come to experience this for themselves, but until that day, I’ll do my best to help people realize this same awakening while they’re still living in our world of plastic and cement and noise.

So How Do We Get Aware?

Let’s cut right to it.  How do we get this awareness that will dissolve our symbols and let us see the world ‘as is’?  What’s the darn recipe?

This, of course, is the question that has spurred so many answers.  Zen is one answer, and Advaita is another, and Eckhart Tolle is offering another, and the list goes on.   All of these ‘ways’ are offered because they all appeal to different types of minds.  Depending on how your particular way of thinking is structured, each of these ways will have different assets and liabilities.  You only need to beware when any path claims that it is the ‘only’ or the ‘best’ – that’s a sure sign that what they’re offering is not a path to awakening, but rather a path to becoming one of their followers.

The trick that any of these ‘ways’ has to face up to is to find a way to get our minds to stop trying.  Yes, it’s really as simple as that.  But we’re so used to thinking in our effort=results manner that we immediately want to ask a question.  How?  How do we stop trying?  And then we have to laugh at ourselves, since we’re asking how (implying some effort on our part) we can create a state of no-effort.  Aaargh!

But these sorts of things aren’t that foreign to us if we stop and observe our lives.  We can’t fall asleep by forcing it.  Falling asleep is a release.  We can’t get totally immersed into a movie or book by concentrating on it.  We have to ‘let go’ into the story.  Indeed, all of life is like this – we taste foods most exquisitely, experience emotions most deliciously, and immerse ourselves in the moment most completely when we ‘release’ into the experience.

Why is this so tough when we’re trying to ‘see the world as it is’?  The answer is that we tend to make ‘awakening’ into something big and grand.  Falling asleep is one thing, but ‘waking up’ – well, that’s like Zen Enlightenment, the Meaning of Life, the Accomplishment of 1000 Lifetimes!  And we’ve been taught quite well that big things require big effort.  We’re not going to get the Grand Prize if we just sit around and do nothing!

Get Me the Grand Prize, Then!

The trick to discovering your natural awareness (for it is indeed natural and effortless, going on right now whether you’re realizing it or not), is to start watching things as they go through your mind.  First of all, realize that although Awareness is effortless, you’re going to be stuck (at least for the moment) using a lot of effort to try to ‘get it’.  Don’t be ashamed of that – just accept it as a momentary fact and jump right in.  Observe (go ahead, make an effort observing) the effort!  You’ll watch your mind trying to do all sorts of things.  It will try to concentrate on one thing (A single breath, or a candle’s flame, or a mantra), it will try to relax (Come on!  Just relax!), or it will try to calm its thoughts and achieve moments of stillness.  These are all strategies offered by many of the different ‘ways’ we mentioned above, but the secret is that none of these strategies are meant to actually ‘get you there’.  Instead, they’re meant to show you how pointless it is to try to make an effort-full attempt at non-effort.  Those teachers who understand their ‘way’ will know that these strategies are simply ways of letting students experience, first-hand, how pointless effort is.

It’s all and well to deliver riddles about how ‘we’re already there’, or ‘the Way requires nothing’.  But for most of us, our minds just don’t get this.  These riddles have their purpose, but sometimes it’s best for us to just jump into the act of ‘trying’ and to observe where it gets us.

Meditation, mantras, navel-gazing – go for it!  These are not bad things.  But notice what these things do in your mind.  Do they get you results?  And if they do, what do you imagine those results will amount to?  Discover what you think your destination is, and consider how your efforts will get you there.

Herein lies the value of trying all these methods.  They get us further in touch with our effort-full attempts to reach a destination that most of us don’t even understand.  But as we get intimate with these processes, we’ll learn to recognize them working, and eventually a time will come when we’re ready to try ‘not-trying’.  And when that time comes, our past efforts will reward us – we’ll have trained ourselves in the skill of observing our mind’s effort-full activity.

Time to Not-Try

When we’ve put in some good efforts, developing the skill of observing our mind’s effort-full activity, we might then begin to wonder just what this ‘not-trying’ or ‘non-effort’ nonsense is all about.  And it’s exactly that – nonsense.  In other words, our ‘sensability’ – our thinking mind – can’t figure it out.  This is the time when we’re ready to embark on a new and fabulous adventure – and it’s all about getting in touch with our natural selves.

Nature As A Teacher

It’s important to understand that when I speak of ‘nature’ as a teacher, I’m not merely referring to walks in the woods or fields.  YOU are natural.  Often we like to think that we humans are spiritually different from other animals – more highly evolved or containing souls or higher on the reincarnation scale – and I won’t challenge those beliefs just now.  But there is something magical that happens when we just see ourselves as mammals, no different spiritually than a squirrel or a rabbit.  Nature is inside of us – is us, and we don’t require any special formulae to find our pure awareness.

Get Natural!

Pure awareness is something that is as natural as sleeping.  It’s disturbed only by our thinking minds and the world-view we’ve constructed.  Being out in the wilderness, as I mentioned in the beginning of this article, can have a wonderful way of opening us up, but if it’s not feasible for you to spend a lot of time in the woods, consider exploring your own natural landscape – the landscape of your mind and senses.  The exploration is both the end and the means – concerned with a destination, we’ll try to focus our efforts, but engaged in pure exploration, we’ll begin to accustom ourselves to Awareness – the pure observation that sees even the myth of the observer.

If there is one single gift we should give ourselves in this life, it is this natural curiosity – this delight in our pure awareness.  This is the Grand Prize itself – there really is nothing more.

As I’ve often noted before on this site, there is a lot that goes on ‘behind the scenes’ in our minds, and this unseen background activity accounts for the majority of the way in which our lives unfold. One of the greatest ’shapers’ of our lives is our unseen drive for comfort.

This drive serves a natural purpose.  It encourages us to keep our bodies and minds in an efficient state so that we can make the most efficient use of our resources.  In essence, it’s a survival drive, urging us to keep food in our bodies, seek shelter so as not to die of hypothermia or heat, and maintain an emotional equilibrium so that we can attend to the necessities of life instead of spending all of our time attending to our emotional highs or lows.

Comfort in the Wild

In a wilderness setting, this drive is quite useful.  During my time in the woods, the pain and annoyance of mosquito bites urged me to find shelter from them, and perhaps helped me avoid getting bit by a mosquito that was carrying a disease.  Gnawing hunger kept me looking for food, thirst reminded me that I should search out water, and loneliness kept me seeking human or animal companions.  However, in the wilderness, the range of what we’d call ‘comfortable’ becomes very broad.  Because there isn’t always enough food or water, and because there aren’t too many other humans in the woods, and because it is difficult to control the temperature of your environment, you become conditioned to extremes of sensation that would seem intolerable to a ‘civilized’ person.

Let’s Go Comfort Crazy!

As is the case with many natural drives, our comfort calibration gets all out of whack when we live in civilization.  In fact, most of civilization seems to center around making life as comfortable as possible.  Instead of being a natural, helpful drive, the quest for comfort becomes our life goal, despite the fact that we’re all going to die in the end (a fact which makes most of us so uncomfortable that we just try to ignore it until death comes knocking on our door.)

So we go comfort crazy.  Most of us live in climate controlled buildings, most of us never have to be really hungry (food is readily available whenever we want it), water is just a turn of the faucet handle away, and even our emotional state is moderated with self-help books, drugs, movies, music, or websites like this one. If we observe where this quest is going, it almost seems that our highest aspiration is to live in a cocoon where nothing ever changes and everything is perfectly safe and comfortable all the time.

Get Me Uncomfortable!

Of course, many of us soon find that perfect comfort is rather cloistering, and start to seek out ‘uncomfortable’ situations, whether that means watching a horror movie or challenging our fears.  Usually, we’ll choose culturally sanctioned discomfort (the movie), because we consider the primal discomforts (pain, hunger, thirst) to be very terrible things. But it is these primal discomforts that have the greatest ability to open up our world. How many of us have actually experienced real hunger?  How about real thirst?  How about going without sleep or being really cold or really hot?

Now that I’m back in civilization, I know that my own range of comfort tolerance has become pretty narrow. I like my shower to be ‘just right’ before I step in, and I think I’m pretty hungry if I miss even a single meal.  Most people would consider my life to be much ‘better’ than it was when I was living in the woods, but in many ways my life now feels much less rich and vibrant than it did when I considered a broader range of sensations to be acceptable.

Living Wild in Civilization

We are able to experience this vibrant way of living even if we’re surrounded by comfort.  As you can see by my own example, however,  it’s difficult (after all, comfort is SO tempting . . .).  I do it by two methods — seeking out discomfort, and allowing discomfort.  Seeking it out means simply to challenge your ideas of what is pleasant to experience.  It means stepping out into the rain and turning your face to the sky.  It means turning your shower from hot to cold and feeling what it does to your flesh.  It means skipping a meal so that you can feel what it’s like to really want your food (hunger really is the best sauce). This is not about becoming an ascetic.  It’s simply about exploring sensations that are not usually encountered in our civilized lives.

Often, allowing discomfort comes into play when we encounter emotions that we’ve been taught are ‘bad’.  When we feel anger or annoyance or fear, it means really allowing ourselves to experience those sensations. ‘Negative’ emotions are discovered to be just what they are — resistance to experience — and we discover a whole new way to experience our emotional lives.

Something magical happens when we seek out and allow discomfort.  Our ideas of comfort change, and our focus in life shifts away from a blind drive to seek comfort, and instead becomes a focus toward experiencing life.  This is when our judgments begin to fall away, and we notice that emotions and sensations that we avoided before are actually the very things which make life rich and wondrous.

Coming Full Circle

As children, most of us accept a broad range of experience.  As we age, however, we narrow that range until our life experience has to fit very precise definitions in order to be acceptable to us.  To come full circle, our journey into true adulthood means coming to see the enormous potential for experience that lies about us all the time, if only we’re willing to venture outside the bubble of security and comfort we create around ourselves.

Let’s experience life!

Rebecca and I invite you to visit our latest Adventure Journal, as well as our Wild About Nature blog!

Looks innocent enough,

wreathed in a halo like some saint of old –

but these worn eyes can’t tell a cup of mud

from a nice glass of milk tea,

and the tea’s no good for making bricks.