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.

Rebecca and I have a dog named Suka.  A few years ago, Suka tore her ACLs in both back knees.  Being an extremely active dog, she likely injured them during a chase or a jump, probably in pursuit of something small, quick, and furry.  The result was that our young dog suddenly seemed like she was at the end of her life.  She would struggle to get to her feet, and could barely walk well enough to get outside.  We knew that something had to be done, so we took her to the University veterinarian in the Twin Cities — where some of the best care in the area can be found.  They sedated her, took a good look at everything, and came out to tell us the bad news.

“The ACLs are both torn,” the vet told us.  “Not all the way through, but significantly enough that we feel an operation is in order.  Here are your choices.”  And he went on to describe two sketchy-sounding options, both of which would have put us out thousands of dollars, and both of which had dubious success rates.  After much debate, we simply decided that we’d take her home.  The vet told us that she’d never get better on her own, but the surgeries were just too expensive and too risky.

For months Suka suffered.  We’d help her to her feet, and she’d slowly make her way outside, where she could lie in the grass and watch the birds and the clouds, and smell the tempting scents drifting in from the forest.  But her days of chasing rabbits were clearly over.  Some days she would seem a little better, and then she’d try to play with our other dog, Gryphon, and an hour later her knees would be giving out.  She could never heal because as soon as she felt better, she’d re-injure herself by playing too hard.  We did our best to limit her movement, only allowing her to walk when on a leash, but we couldn’t watch her all the time.  And if she felt good enough to try to play, she always would.

One day when she was feeling quite well, she pushed open the door, wandered out into the street, and was hit by a car.

When we found her, she was in rough shape.  We took her to the vet and x-rays showed that miraculously, nothing was broken, and they didn’t think she had any internal injuries.  But she was bruised and battered and cut, and for the next month she could hardly move.  We took the best care of her that we could, but it was many moons before she was back on her feet and ready to go for a walk.  Even then, her walks were slow and aching, and it took her a long while to build up her strength and spirit.  It was then that we discovered something wonderful.

All of that time laying and resting from the car accident had been enough to heal her knees.  The stronger she got, the more she began to play and run, and soon we saw her matching the speed and agility of Gryphon once again.

Being hit by a car is one of those things that is clearly bad.  We might add a host of other terrible events to that list, such as being raped, losing a loved one, or having your house burn down.  But the rape victim might go on to become a caring counselor for others who have been raped, and the loss of a loved one might open your heart to give room to loving someone else.  And when our house burns down, our life might change — become simpler, or find us moving to a new location that opens new opportunities.  What would happen if we could encounter life like this — with a curiosity about what new adventures await us, even when we’re in the midst of terrible events?

It is our preconceptions that life must be a certain way that give us so many feelings of frustration and disappointment.  There is true magic in opening to life’s surprises, and finding the magic that lies in every moment we experience.

Do you think my mind doesn’t wander at night,

thinking of important things?

Who I must call tomorrow, or how certain words might compose

the perfect poem?

My mind wanders, and I wander with it,

hand in hand, delighted in the company.

No use in writing down that perfect poem before I forget it!

It was lost to begin with!

One of our very best friends, Jen, recently took us out to a secret locale where she had made a fabulous discovery — a small cave that was the home of a red fox vixen and her kits.  We sat for a long while, watching the kits play.  They attacked leaves, sticks, and each other.  They bit each others’ tails.  They balanced along the edges of cliffs and along the tops of logs.

Naturalists will often observe how play in young animals prepares them for adulthood.  These little foxes were learning skills that would make them effective predators.  They were honing their agility, learning how to bite and shake prey, and becoming more aware of their surroundings.  As humans, we similarly encourage play in our children, as it helps them develop important skills.

But play is much more important than that.  Indeed, it may be one of the most important (and most neglected) skills that we can carry on to adulthood.  From one perspective, you might say that everything we do in life is play — except that we’ve forgotten that we’re playing, so life takes on a feeling of serious weight.  A woman I was recently speaking to via the internet shared an article she had written about parenting, and I was especially taken by her description of doing yoga with her children.  They weren’t exactly cooperating, and she considered what situation might have evolved if she had flowed with the kids’ propensity to play.

Sometimes, as grown-ups, it can feel like play is lost to us.  We might try regaining a sense of play through various exercises, but the quest can be self-defeating, because play is one of those things that has to be done just for its own sake (sound similar to meditation?).  Once we play in order to ‘better our lives’, it isn’t really play any more.

Luckily, we can all regain our sense of play,  and all we have to do is observe our everyday lives.  Just watch.  This is also a ‘passive’ activity, like play or meditation.  If we observe with clarity, examining our every assumption about what is important in life, we’ll begin to see that much of what we take seriously is just people playing (but as stated above, playing while forgetting that they’re playing).  The humor of this situation becomes pretty evident.  And from there, it’s not difficult to see that you are playing as you act out your daily activities.

The key, then, is not to develop a sense of play, but to discover that we’re already playing.

We’re going to keep re-visiting the foxes to watch them grow.  Their romping about is a beautiful reminder of what’s really important in life.  You can see a few more pictures of them at our nature blog, or see our entire day’s adventure at Live the Juicy Life.

During a conversation the other day, a friend told me that as we get older, time seems to speed up.  This, of course, is a common and bemoaned observation - many people report that as they age, time appears to accelerate.  Soon, it feels like the weeks and months (and even years) are flying by with astounding rapidity.  It doesn’t really seem fair, since as we get older and approach retirement, we hope that we’ll be able to ’slow down’, cease all our striving, and enjoy life a little bit.  But by the time we arrive, many people report that life has taken on a careening velocity.

What’s Going On?

Perhaps you’ve noticed this time-acceleration for yourself.  It’s one of those things that we consider to be an inevitable result of living - like stress.  But time’s apparent passage can be directly understood - and even influenced - if you understand how it works.

Time is Mutable

You can experience time’s variable passage for yourself.  Simply sit down to a really exciting movie, and see how long it ‘feels’ has passed after you’ve watched it.  Then commit yourself to sitting in front of a blank wall for an equal amount of time, and see how time’s passage feels.  If you’re like most people, the hour-and-a-half you spend watching the movie will pass in a flash, while the hour-and-a-half you spend sitting and doing nothing will pass very, very slowly.

This is a very blatant example, but it shows us that time’s apparent passage is relative to our mind-state.  Indeed, we can experience for ourselves exactly how we create the sensation of time passing - or rather, we could experience it for ourselves if it was explained to us that our current way of experiencing time isn’t the only way to experience time.

Linear Time

You see, our current experience of time is linear.  We’ve all been taught that there is a future, that the future arrives and becomes the present, and that the present then disappears into the past.  Soon we envision our entire lives flowing along like this - one moment passing into another - and thus we create the sensation of linear time passing.  The more ingrained into this habit that we become, the faster time seems to pass.  The reason is distraction - it’s just like when we’re distracted by a movie.  Only in real life, we become distracted by our visions of future and past, and the older we get (and the more aware that we’re nearing the end of our lives), the more we tend to dwell in future and past.  The present moment becomes more and more elusive, and since it’s only in the present moment when we can see time for what it truly is, we get lost in the hypnotic dance of past and future, until the present is lost and linear time becomes an impenetrable reality in our lives.  The result is that time appears to speed up.

Slowing Down Time

When we begin to remember that this moment is all that there really is, we discover that  the future is only a thought in our heads - a thought we’re having in the moment we’re experiencing it.  Past, too, is only a thought in our heads - a thought we’re having in the moment we’re experiencing it.  Neither really exists except as a fantasy.

The concept of linear time simply can’t exist when we realize that there is nothing but the present moment.  By spending time trying to ‘find’ future and past, we can de-construct the ‘truth’ that we’ve all learned - that time passes by.  When linear time is gone - what is left?  I can’t put it into words because we can’t conceive of anything else — indeed, non-linear time is inconceivable, just as the sensation of a hot pepper in your mouth is inconceivable.  And yet, the hot pepper can be directly experienced as a reality of sensation, just as non-linear time can be directly experienced as a reality of sensation.  You’re free to choose what you think is more ‘real’ - the thought of a hot pepper’s burn, or the sensation when you place a pepper in your mouth (within this example is hidden one of the reasons why we create thought-forms in the first place — fear or negative past experiences give us the impression that the thought-form is safer or more desirable than the reality itself — as we learn to fear more and more of life, we retreat more and more into thought-form until we learn to dwell almost entirely apart from our actual experience of reality).  In the same way, you can choose to think about time, and create a construct (linear time), or to experience the direct sensation of time (non-linear).

The Result

Once linear time is gone, our entire lives change.  Almost all of our life’s experiences (and life’s problems) are based on our construct of linear time.  Getting old, not achieving your goals, getting angry at others, and experiencing stress and frustration - all of these are a result of our idea of linear time (which also gives us such constructs as cause/effect, sense of self, and the idea of change).

When you experience non-linear time, there literally is not past or future - just this perfect present-moment dance, during which you immerse yourself in every sensation (including, if you choose, memories and hopes).  Nothing is lost - you’re just seeing things as they really are, and the result is liberating.

Let’s Get Real

If you experience This Very Moment for yourself, you’ll immediately see how all of your personal problems (and all of the world’s problems) are created out of people acting from the construct of linear time.  Indeed, though we think it’s ‘real’ and ‘necessary’, it’s actually the very thing that causes humans to act from greed and fear rather than generosity and love.  If you doubt this, I challenge you to see for yourself - take the time to truly examine your concept of linear time.  See if you can discover what ‘future’ and ‘past’ really are.  Examine fully, leaving no concept unexamined, and find for yourself what lies just beyond the ideas we’ve formed in our heads.

There is no greater quest you can go on, and none will bring you more wonderful treasures.

Photo by Rebecca Whitman

Ah, meditation –
Sit and do nothing!

“But my mind wanders,” you say.

Watch it wander!  Observe!
Don’t try to control it.  Watch it wander
like you’d watch a young horse buck and run through a field.

Delight in the vision!

Rebecca and I recently had an adventure into the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul).  They’re not huge as cities go, but for country-folk such as us, 3.5 million people is a pretty big town.  As someone who prefers to be able to disappear into a forest at a moment’s notice, this was rather intense.  But as we drove in to the city, Rebecca pointed out the crows flying overhead, and we started talking about what the city must look like from a crow’s perspective.

We came to the conclusion that the reason a city can sometimes feel claustrophobic is that there are a lot of imaginary lines.  We were at a friend’s house, and standing in their yard, we couldn’t walk more than about ten meters in any direction before we would have been trespassing.  The imaginary lines that designate ‘property’ can be more powerful to our psyche than actual fences.

There were lines of time as well.  People seemed to be in an awful hurry, and during the mornings and late afternoons, everyone was rushing to or from somewhere.

Then there were lines of behavior.  Where it’s perfectly acceptable in our small town to walk up to a stranger and introduce yourself, people seem surprised if you even meet their eyes in the city.

All in all, there were a lot of lines.  But they were all in the heads of humans.  The crows flew and perched where they wanted, our lines invisible to them.  They had a freedom that was greater than what could be accounted for by the power of their flight.

These lines are usually invisible to us, but they dominate our lives.  Perhaps they’re not entirely bad, since some people would argue that those lines are necessary to keep humans productive and peaceful.  But those lines also cause us a lot of stress and are often excuses for violence to both ourselves and others.

These lines are only one of the many mental processes that are running invisibly in the background of our minds, and which shape our worldview and much of our behavior.  The key is not to rebel against these mental processes or even to try to change them, but simply to become aware of them.  When we can observe them and realize the impact they have on our lives, we begin to live in awareness.

Challenge yourself to find just one of these ‘invisible’ processes each day.  It might be an assumption you make, a habitual action, or a preconception about how the world works.  When you discover one of these in motion, observe it, seek out its root, and have some fun discovering what lies underneath such daily activities.  The discoveries are often surprising.

I’ve been hearing a lot of late about the impending economic collapse. While some people insist it’s just hype, pointing out that we have an ‘end of the world’ looming every few years, others are sure that we’re about to see a total devastation of civilization as we know it. Lately, the ‘hype’ folks have been in the right, standing by and watching as millions of people jump on the ‘end times’ bandwagon and then suddenly go silent when their Judgment Day passes and the world keeps right on going like normal.

Of course, this time it might be different.

Perhaps the important question isn’t whether we’re about to face economic collapse or not – it’s why we have this strange fascination with ‘The End’. And if we look carefully, we’ll discover that this fascination has a lot to do with our perception of how the world works

Why the Fascination?

There are many theories regarding our fascination with The End. Perhaps the one that comes closest to truth is that most of us harbor a deep-set dissatisfaction with life. Even if we ‘have it all’, there is a secret longing in our heart that won’t quite go away. We don’t have a name for it, and have trouble finding its source when we go inside and look for it. It’s nameless, and lurking, and scary.

It fills us with questions we’d rather not think about. Is there really any meaning to all of this? What use is life if we all just die in the end? Does all this suffering and striving have a purpose?

To answer those questions, we make up all sorts of stories. We insist that there is a new and better life waiting after we die. We insist that there is a divine purpose to our presence here on Earth. We design stories to make us feel comforted in the face of our deep and subtle fears.

But we don’t need these stories. In fact, those stories can actually make our fears and suffering worse, because they serve to distract us from ever examining the true nature of our unsettled feelings.

We create these stories only because we haven’t looked deeply enough to see the source of the questions. And the real secret? The source isn’t actually lurking and secretive. Instead, it’s difficult to see because it’s right in front of us all the time! Like the hum of our computer, it escapes our attention because it’s always there.

It’s Always the End

The beauty of looking at life directly is that we discover a strange and lovely fact. It’s always the end. While our usual perception tells us that we are born, linger a while, and then die, our own clear vision is capable of seeing that our usual perception is a story we’ve written in our heads, and has nothing to do with the way things actually are. When we gaze uninterrupted at This Very Moment, we discover that we die and are reborn eternally and always. Nothing about you is the same as it was when you began reading this paragraph.

This is the doctrine of change. It teaches us that everything is in a state of flux – aging, transforming, mutating. But within the doctrine of change lies a deeper truth – the fact that change itself is an illusion. I realize that I’m speaking in paradox, and that there’s little value in words if they only confuse us, but for want of another article talking about the illusory nature of change, simply observe that change dominates our lives. We can fight it for a while, pretending that our life is a continual monotony of the same people, same job, same endless circles. But change, however slow it seems to unfold, will catch up with you, and your life will deliver change that can’t be missed, whether it is an accident, ripening to old age, the benefit of some great boon, or some other powerful transformation in your life.

When we see that we are always changing, and look at this observation carefully, we’ll find that we have nothing to cling to. Holding on only brings us suffering, because change is inevitable. At first, this seems terrifying (and we want to tell our stories to counter our fears), but if we walk into the fear we discover something beautiful – we can truly immerse ourselves in every moment, simply because we’re no longer trying to desperately grasp.

Back to the Economy

When we bring this full circle to the present circumstances, we discover something miraculous. Impending collapse or no, it doesn’t really matter. The fact is that every moment is a total collapse, and every moment is a complete rebirth, no matter what the ‘outside world’ is doing. When we see this, our fear evaporates, and we’re able to act with love and compassion, instead of fear and clinging.

If we truly wish to help the world, this is vital to understand. The most important thing we can attend to is our own awakening. Otherwise, our actions emerge only out of latent fear, and no matter how much we try to help, we’ll  only add to the culture of Duelism.

Let’s open up to our full awareness, and see what we are capable of when we realize that The End is right Now.

A couple of weeks ago Rebecca and I bundled up in layers of wool, put on our mittens and stocking-caps, and wandered off to explore the full-moon night.  The adventure was very magical, but when we got back we were definitely ready to warm our hands by the fire.  It had been so cold that even the windless air seeped in through our clothes and filled our bodies with a creeping chill.

It struck me that it would have been so much easier to just stay inside and enjoy the moon by looking out the window, or stay cuddled up next to the fire.  But when we risk some discomfort, the world opens up to us in all of its glory.

You can imagine that we all have a ‘comfort bubble’ around us.  When we’re little children, the bubble is very large and transparent – we’re not afraid to get muddy, touch a spider, or have a snowball fight.  But as we age, most of us begin to harden our comfort bubble until it becomes an armor-like shell.

Consider that as adults, many of us spend the majority of our lives in a state of constant comfort (or at least in a state of seeking constant comfort, which is a clue to the very problem I’m addressing here).  We move as quickly as possible from heated car to heated building in the winter (or air conditioned car to air conditioned building in the summer), we eat pretty much the same foods every day, and spend a lot of time watching familiar programs on television (which are really just re-hashed versions of the Same Old Thing.)  In fact, our entire mission in life can become a quest for more security – an attempt to make our lives as comfortable and predictable as possible.

When we engage in this Mission for Security and Comfort, we lose our ability to enjoy a wide range of experiences.  Physically, mentally, and emotionally, things which were once exciting become challenging, and eventually the challenging things become uncomfortable, and eventually the uncomfortable things become painful.

A Mechanism to Keep Us Asleep

This mechanism, which most of us engage in to some extent, is the perfect tool to keep us from ever ‘Awakening’.  Dualism or ‘Non-Awakening’ can only exist when we refuse to fully experience life.  It thrives on resistance and fear.  That’s why spending time in nature can be such a great tool to ‘wake us up’ – when we’re surrounded by fluctuating temperatures, unpredictable weather, bugs, dangerous animals, or sensations like hunger or thirst, we have to ‘find our place’ within those experiences.

Even in regular life we can re-expand our bubble by ceasing to gravitate toward the most comfortable path.  If it’s snowing or raining, turn your face up to the sky and feel the tickle as each snowflake or raindrop touches your skin.  If you have a choice between the ‘same old’ dish at a restaurant and something totally new, try something new.  Right now, as I write this, I’ve chosen not to sit.  Instead I’m squatting or stretching as I write, doing a sort of ‘yoga-writing’.  If a full moon or bright sunset is lighting the sky, go out and experience it first-hand.

Spiritual Security

This fear-based security mechanism is especially powerful when it comes to our quest for awakening.  Though teachers may tell us that ‘waking up’ is completely different from our usual mind-set, most of us refuse to believe it, and will search endlessly to find awakening within the context of our familiar, comfortable mind-set.  It gets a little scary when people use words like ‘Nothingness’, ‘Non-Ego’, or ‘It’s All Illusion’.  We’d prefer to dismiss these words, or play with them within our usual mind-set, so that the ‘Illusion’ becomes a sort of Matrix-esque fantasy.  But non-dualism is calling us to go to a place that is very uncomfortable for many of us – a place where we fully examine the nature of reality itself, and question everything – even such common-sense ‘truths’ as our sense of Self.

Setting Yourself Free

The problem with trying to grasp onto comfort and security is that it doesn’t work.  You may get yourself ‘safe’ for a little while, but then you’ll have to go to the hospital or someone you love will die or you’ll lose your money or your spouse will cheat on you – and then what?  These ‘tragedies’ will be all the more devastating because you’ve conditioned yourself to having things always ‘perfect’.

Life is unpredictable and completely lacking in security – by chasing security, the only harvest you reap is more pain when life turns your world upside down.

Simply by opening to life – delving into those things that make you a little uncomfortable – you can begin to reverse the stagnating process of ‘making yourself secure’.  You can start with baby-steps simply by trying a new food, turning off the TV, or going for a walk out in nature.  These actions not only lead us closer to a direct experience of life, but they open up our horizons to drinking more deeply from the juiciness of life.

Nothing is ‘for sure’ in life except for this very moment’s experience.  So what better place to start if we’re interested in really Living?

For another way to experience life and nature, visit this week’s Adventure Journal at www.kentonandrebecca.com.

A reader recently asked a great question. Why is it that so few of us actually awaken?

What a wonderful question this is, and it strikes to the heart of what this site is all about.

Everyone’s Asleep!

Those of us who are struggling to awaken see the situation like this – Most of the people in the world are ‘asleep’, lost in some sort of dream where they hold their beliefs to be real. They suffer greatly over matters of no real importance, and are subject to the emotional and thought-chaos that roams uncontrolled through their minds. Worse, we see that we ourselves are in the same mess – though struggling to awaken, we feel that we’re asleep, unable to experience the peace, stillness, clarity or ‘Nowness’ that we assume equates with being ‘awake’.

Why do these people, including ourselves, have so much difficulty in awakening? The reason doesn’t have to do with the reality of the situation – rather, it has to do with our continued illusion that awakening is something achievable. It’s the holy grail of spirituality, and it can’t be easy to attain!

This question also assumes that there are some people around us who are awake. Who are these people? Eckhart Tolle? The Dalai Lama? Zen Masters? Kenton Whitman? Some people even claim to be enlightened. How do we know if these people have really ‘got it’? Do we have evidence that anyone is enlightened? If we’re not enlightened ourselves, how do we think we’d recognize enlightenment? Obviously, some people are going to claim enlightenment (or write in such a way that implies they are enlightened) because of the attention (and perhaps money) it will bring them. How can we tell the ‘real deal’?

Is Kenton Enlightened?

Some people feel that I’m enlightened – but how ridiculous! So I must be non-enlightened.  I don’t say this in order to appear humble, nor do I make this claim because ‘there is no-one here to be enlightened’. Claiming non-individuality is just as silly as claiming individuality! The reason I claim non-enlightenment is because there’s really no such thing as enlightenment. And paradoxically, my claiming non-enlightenment is just as ridiculous as if I had claimed enlightenment!

Everyone’s Awake!

When we ‘wake up’ (read: Achieve Enlightenment), we discover something remarkable. We discover that the whole time that we were seeking, the joke was on us! Enlightenment itself is a joke, because Enlightenment is not a ‘thing’ after all, and as we look at everyone around us, we see that everyone is ‘already there’! Indeed, (and this sentence can be easily misunderstood, but I’ll write it anyway), every rock and tree and cloud and person is unfolding perfectly in every moment. We had been trying to achieve our own perfection, but the idea of perfection is ridiculous because everything is already perfect (careful- dangerous word warning — follow the link to read more about ‘perfection’)! The only thing ‘wrong’ was that we were spending so much time trying to ‘obtain’ enlightenment – and now we’re seeing that even our years of seeking were perfect.

What Gives?

The secret is that there’s not an actual ‘state’ we’re trying to achieve. We can follow exercises or spiritual programs to achieve things that look like enlightenment, but all we’re really doing is following the same old dogma of subtle violence – eradicating some of our behaviors in favor of replacing them with ‘better’ ones. Waking up isn’t about getting somewhere – it’s about seeing where we already are.

So, How Many People Are Enlightened?

This question only makes sense when we approach enlightenment as a goal we can achieve. Otherwise, any answer we give can only be worded as a paradox. When we consider this question, however, it allows us insight into our own minds – opening the door to seeing that we’ve formed some idea of what enlightenment is.

Perhaps the best answer to this question is to skirt around it and suggest that the only person’s awakening we need to concern ourselves with is our own. In our own awakening, we discover what we mean when we use words like ‘awake’, ‘enlightened’, or ‘how many?’.

If we take all of this too seriously, we’ll trap ourselves in the seeking – and that seeking creates the state we call ‘not-awake’. But it’s all our own self-created illusion, and even that illusion is pure. This is the joke we’re playing on ourselves.

Our usual method of solving life problems is to examine them as fully as possible and then design strategies to overcome them. Sound sensible enough?

The problem is that this is a lot like modern medicine – we’re spending our time treating the symptoms instead of the disease itself. Modern medicine has shown us that there is great value in this. By effectively treating symptoms we’ve been able to moderate the affects of diabetes, allow HIV positive people to live healthy lives for many years, beat back cancers and helped to alleviate high blood pressure. The list could go on.

Holistic medical practitioners, however, might argue that we wouldn’t have to deal with all these medical problems if we simply attended to the real problem – lifestyles that encourage these diseases to manifest. Some might argue that there really is a ‘silver bullet’ that would allow for perfect health. But it would require a completely new idea of what ‘health’ means, and would necessitate living a totally new kind of lifestyle.

When it comes to emotional and spiritual problems, we’re in the same boat. Many of today’s teachers ask us to attend to the symptoms of the disease. Just as in modern medicine, there is value in this, and we can see great improvements in our emotional and spiritual well-being if we utilize these methods. But these problems all arise out of a single disease – our dualistic world-view.

Non-dualism isn’t about some magic ‘enlightenment’ where you can suddenly walk on water or levitate. It’s not about anything mystical at all. It’s simply about using our intelligence and awareness to see what’s at the ‘root’ of all our experience – to clearly see the dualistic world-view operating in our lives.

When we see this clearly, we at once understand the mechanisms that have been causing us confusion, fear, or stress. These negative emotions don’t ‘disappear’ – rather, we are able to experience them fully, and within the context of that experience they transform.

When we seek enlightenment, we’re really trying to do the same old thing – we’re trying to change our current behavior into something we envision as ‘better’. This may get results, but it will never fully cure the disease.

All of our life problems can be seen with perfect clarity if we allow our natural awareness to do its job, and if we use our intelligence to explore our basic ideas about life. In this way, we can get better ‘results’ if we explore such basic life-ideas as our sense of linear time, cause/effect, and selfhood, instead of trying to tackle, one by one, the symptoms caused by these unexamined beliefs.

Here are a few places to begin exploring:

What This Site is All About

Self-Improvement and Awakening

The Meaning of Life

Be sure to visit www.kentonandrebecca.com to read our Adventure Journal.  This week it’s about the amazing experience called ‘Winter’.  You can also read about making homemade eggnog and learn about a fun winter tracking game you can play if you live in the snowier climes.  Find it all in the Explore More section of www.kentonandrebecca.com.

You’re also invited to make free Intention-Manifestation requests at www.thegenerosityproject.com.