What is my goal?

To be a natural human being, free of the insanity the ego and conditioned-pain and destructive patterns and self-limiting thoughts, and free from the energy of seeking and wishing to be different–in short, to be free of fear and its effects.

How is it that I am not free right now?

In the last year particularly there has been a release, a shift. I feel more at home, easier, lighter, less resistant, more honest with myself and others. I feel healthier, I sleep much better, I eat better, I don’t experience episodic depression and anxiety in the way I used to. I relate more openly with people. Some emotions have gone away or I no longer take them as personally as I did before; emotions such as regret, remorse, uncaused sadness.

Perhaps the only complaint I have, in practical terms, is that my life is a little dull. I haven’t made the effort to re-engage.

Life is very good.

But.

There is still some resistance. There are still some mental conflicts.

There are specific fears which come up…insecurity of the future, the need for approval and validation, and others.

Sometimes my reactions are unconscious—in those times I have the feeling that whatever I am thinking or doing or feeling or saying is not natural but motivated by reactive patterns. Recently, an egoic emotion of anger came up because I did not get what I wanted from someone—and this is something I thought I had released a long time ago. It surprised me.

In the quietest of times, I can feel a subtle hum of anxiety in my body.

Overall, I cannot report that I am completely satisfied with life.

How will I know when I am free?

When life is lived in satisfaction and the need to ask this question disappears.

I do not expect that all the things which I consider negative or confusing or binding will go away—maybe they will. I expect more that there will be no resistance to whatever is happening.

What am I doing about this?

At this point, not much at all. I recognized a little over a year ago that the original problem is fear—this was big.

Fear damages all of our mental structures (ego, pain-body, beliefs, and so on). Life is experienced in the mind. All sensations and perceptions and experiences are in or of or through the mind, and when mental structures are compromised by fear, nothing can be certain, not even our frantic efforts to fix ourselves.

With that recognition I was able to let go of a five year spiritual search.

This release brought about a shift, a great delight, acceptance, understanding, and a renewed wish to re-engage in life. A great deal of resistance fell away.

Now, things have settled a bit. I don’t know what the next step is but experience has taught me to be patient. It will be clear soon enough.

So what’s my spiritual practice?

My spiritual practice is neither.

When I remember to, I bring attention to the sense of I AM, or very simply, the ordinary sense of me (as suggested by Nisargadutt and Ramana, and very cleanly clarified byJohnSherman). This is effortless now. I see that what it feels like to be me is constant and has always been the same. I see that the sense of me is really awareness, presence, stillness.

I try to be aware whenever I remember. I try to fall back out of conditioned thoughts and emotions to a quieter place inside, and allow and observe.

I use the release technique whenever I feel harsh emotions.

I am patient.

This website

I started this website to share my journey. Honesty and authenticity developed over time. In the beginning years I had a great wish to help others—but that energy has dissipated with the realization that though the basic problem of fear is universal, everyone’s insanity and recovery is highly individual.

Now, I write what I want…I want to be honest and authentic and relevant. Much has changed—I know I should re-organize the website and the books…oh well.

A year ago I had a fundamental shift, a letting go.

I’m not done. But I do feel significantly lighter, more natural, easier.

It happened as I recognized that the basic problem with me, and all human beings, is fear.

The Buddha said that people suffer. We suffer, not because there is suffering, but because of the damage caused by fear in the mind. Every human being, I think, at some point and at some level, knows that he or she is not seated in naturalness. It’s interesting that most people do not face this problem head-on. There even seems to be prevailing sentiment that even though I am not seated in naturalness, everyone else has figured it out.

Why some of us are able to see and admit the insanity within, and some of us ignore what is so very obvious when seen, is a bit of a mystery to me. How did I go for 45 years not seeing that there is nothing wrong with life but there is something wrong with my orientation to life? Suffering gives us this insight.

The Buddha’s second noble truth says that there is a way out of this suffering. This is of course where the whole misleading world of religion and spirituality begins. This is where it starts with the myriad, confusing, dogmatic, often money-making, always divisive, ways to be spiritual. God, awareness, presence, meditation, particular teachings, particular beliefs, particular practices, hierarchies and advancement and so on–none of them has worked in the long history of humanity. But this is what we do.

I go back to only that which I am certain of. Which is very little.

I know that the basic problem is that we perceive reality through damaged mental structures. Some people may call these mental structures the ego and the mind, but I haven’t found it useful to analyze this too deeply.

I think that the damage is caused by an original fear.

I know in the presence of damaged faculties nothing we know or believe or practice can have any certainty to it. The experience of life happens in the mind, that is all our perceptions and sensations and actions and beliefs and thoughts and emotions come from the mind, and when the mind structures are damaged, nothing can have any certainty.

The solution to this is go back to the source. To go back as deeply as we can within ourselves, so that there is a touching between the damage and the source.

I had believed that to go back to the source requires spiritual work. I thought I had to ferret through all that is false to find truth. I was completely wrong about that.

The source is right here, right now, right on the surface. It doesn’t require meditation. It doesn’t require spiritual knowledge. It doesn’t require a particular practice or particular understanding. Even to call it source is a bit too much.

It’s just looking at the sense of who I am, the sense of I AM, the very ordinary every-day sense of what it feels to be me.

Along with the looking, the release technique I talk about here is still with me. It’s very natural now, innate. I don’t consciously think about letting go. It happens.

The giving up of the spiritual quest is a huge relief.

And life simply lives. For some of us on a spiritual journey frequently confusing questions come up, about how we can reconcile our regular life with our current spiritual understanding. I don’t have a clearer understanding–it’s more that the questions are disappearing.

It’s kind of strange that a five year harried spiritual quest has come down to something so simple.

This is what I feel now. It’s a pretty good place to be.

I’m losing 10 to 15 lbs a month since May, without effort or dieting.

You might wonder why I’m writing about healthy weight management on a website which is about being a natural, free, human being. Well, there are a number of relevant lessons in this.

A few years ago I got tired of dieting. I realized that all diets work in the same way. First, they work. I lose weight. Then, they don’t work. And I gain back weight with a vengeance, generally gaining back even more than I had lost.

I went through many yo-yo swings before I got tired of it. I read Charles Eisenstein’s The Yoga of Eating and some stuff from Geneen Roth, and what they said made intuitive sense to me.

So about a year ago, I tried the following:

Eat when I’m hungry
Eat absolutely whatever I feel like eating
Stop eating when I’m satisfied
Eat with full awareness

This meant discarding all the conventional wisdom about eating.

I eat when I’m hungry. If I’m hungry late at night, or in the middle of the night, I eat. If I’m not hungry for breakfast I don’t eat breakfast.

I eat absolutely whatever I want to eat. If I feel like eating potato chips or ice cream or a donut, that’s what I eat.

I tried this for a year, and what happened was, well, nothing. In fact I think I gained more weight.

About the time that I felt the relief, I also began to understand why this was not working.

So I made a small change. I changed “awareness” to pleasure. Instead of eating with awareness, I eat with pleasure.

And it works. Effortlessly. Without any sense of deprivation.

This experience I think is an apt analogy to what happens when we go on a spiritual search for enlightenment.

I gained weight for emotional reasons. I gained weight because I was eating through fear and conditioning and mental rules.

This is what happens generally in life. We have a sense of alienation from the very beginning, and so we learn to experience life through fear and conditioning and confusion and mental rules.

At some point we decide we don’t like being fat. So we go on quest to fix the problem. Which is what dieting is.

At some point in life we don’t like being confused or depressed or feeling uncomfortable in our own skins. So we go on spiritual quest to fix our lives. We seek wisdom and practices and enlightenment.

Dieting is very much like the spiritual quest. They are both just another form of control, another of form of resistance.

It turns out the answer is not to try to fix our lives. If the goal is to live freely and naturally and sanely, the answer is not to try to fix anything or seek anything. That takes us further away from the truth. The answer is to recognize that the only problem there is is that we have always thought, from the beginning of our lives, that there is a problem. Everything else is a logical effect of this original problem.

Similarly, the answer is not to go on a diet to lose weight. The answer is to recognize that because of fear we learn to eat emotionally. When we eat freely and naturally and body knows exactly what to do.

Another lesson here is to understand how powerfully distracting abstraction is. I was trying to eat naturally with “awareness.” Awareness is an abstract word, it took me further away from the real thing. “Pleasure” is something I understand innately, I don’t have to learn pleasure, I don’t have get into any specific mind state to experience pleasure, I completely and immediately understand what pleasure is.

These words which we use, like awareness, oneness, non-duality, acceptance, consciousness, karma, true self, false self, Self, self, and all the paradoxes and clever sayings and wisdom and Sanskrit words which spiritual enthusiasts seem to be so fond of–well, they take us further away from the actual thing.

The actual thing, the sense of you, is utterly ordinary, and right here on the surface. You don’t have to dig down deep for it, you don’t have to look for it, you don’t have to distinguish it from abstractions like false self and true self and awareness and consciousness. It’s just you. Take a look.

What I feel these days is an enormous relief!

I think back in May I had a shift. I didn’t quite understand what had happened, and I still don’t have clear words to describe it. I saw that life is perfect, it has always been perfect, mysterious, wondrous, quirky. The only problem with life is that I had thought there was a problem with life. And this bit of off-centeredness has been with me since I was a baby.

With this recognition I understood. I understood why everything I have learned and known and believed and rejected and felt and said and thought–everything–is uncertain. I understood why spirituality, in the broadest possible sense, does not work, and hasn’t worked for five thousand years. I understood why this has nothing to do with any kind of practice. I understood why this has nothing to do with any kind of becoming.

This was a pretty big for me. The realization itself is not big. It’s not a secret; it’s all over the spiritual landscape; many have said this before. What was striking was the exclusivity of this, that this, and nothing else but this, is the only problem.

And with this little realization, I released the last five years of searching, isolation, anxiety, depression, insomnia…

The best way I have of describing this right now is that resistance is going away. I’m letting it be, giving it some patience and time.

And I’m utterly delighted with myself! My mind is so taken with itself right now that all it wants to do is play these thread of delighted thoughts over and over again. I let it play, hehe.

And I’m also angry. I’m angry at the entire world of spirituality and spiritualized personalities which stand between humanity and freedom. I realize the anger is misplaced; I’m really just angry at myself for spending five unpleasant years on a search which in the end turned out to be so simple.

I’m angry and delighted, and I also know that I can’t trust any conclusion I come to right now. So what you’re reading here comes with a warning label.

I’ve been an aspirant for five years, starting with a reading of Eckhart Tolle. I’m thankful to Tolle because he showed me that that there is another possibility. But I recognized that he couldn’t really help much further than that.

My goal was modest. I just wanted a happy life, here on earth, the same life I had, but free and easy, because I knew now that was possible. I didn’t want to be spiritual or mystical or knowledgeable.

And I recognized the irony of taking on this venture. I wanted to be free and easy, but what I was getting into was anything but free and easy.

I read a lot of stuff.

I got only two practical techniques out of the whole five-year unpleasant endeavor. Two techniques, one is observing (thought), and other is releasing, and really both of these are techniques of observance.

I also came to believe that it takes honesty and willingness. Honesty and willingness are important if you are, like I was, trying to find truth in the spiritual morass. But even honesty and willingness are just mental processes, and not necessary for the seeing.

As I dove into this mess, I got worse not better.

I didn’t choose to figure this out.  I didn’t choose to spend five years simplifying my life and isolating myself and abandoning conventional goals and trying various experiments, trying and failing. I didn’t choose. I was driven to it.

The worst time was probably late last year. I was depressed and in denial. I made myself sick. Literally. Last year I had really bad news at the doctor’s. High cholesterol, onset of diabetes, high weight, high blood pressure, and so on.

I think we get worse with a spiritual quest because we nudge ourselves to keep going. The nudging is often very unpleasant.

What I had learned kept me going. I had some relative peace, some psychological comfort.

This was good. But this was not freedom.

And on a morning walk one day it hit me: the only problem there is is the belief that there is a problem. The feeling that there is something wrong is the only thing that has ever been wrong.

The relief is enormous. I had not realized what a heavy burden the search had been in the last five years.

I just had a physical a couple of months after this realization and there is no sign of any problems. No anxiety, no depression, no insomnia, not even diabetes!

I have enough humility now to know that the clarity and lightness I am feeling may or may not be permanent. But I think the basic insight is permanent. Life is perfect, life is love; the only thing which is wrong is this feeling that something is wrong, and this feeling becomes the foundation of everything we experience.

It’s my pet hypothesis that once this realization happens–the realization that the only thing there ever was wrong was this sense of unrightness that we carry with us–when that realization hits, it’s inevitable that the fear and the sense that there is something wrong will go away and the healing will begin. It doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do–the solution is very recognition of the basic problem. I’m not sure about this; it’s only an hypothesis, and it’s one I can’t really test.

I’m also convinced that the looking which John Sherman suggests does away with this fear and closes the wound in which we feel that something is wrong.

In any event, this relief of giving up the quest is a wonderful thing, and I’m really enjoying it!

All the frantic energy of trying to figure it out, trying to understand and learn and practice–all of it left me in one fell swoop. I loved the whooshing sound it made on its way out, hehe! And here I am, empty and open, happily left with really only one insight, and it’s not a big one.

I am grateful to Eckhart Tolle. I read the Power of Now about four or five years ago, and it wasn’t my first reading of it, but at the time of that particular reading I was in emotional pain and therefore open. What I got from Tolle was that there is a way to be where life can be loving and not fearful.

The first six months after that initial insight were heady–I decided not to work, I traveled, I wrote, I had a lot of energy.

But soon I realized that Tolle cannot help me beyond the basic message. Tolle’s enlightenment was accidental. He’s good at telling me what it is to be unawakened (ego, identification with the mind, fear); and he’s good at telling me what it is to be awakened (presence, acceptance), but not very good at telling me how to get there.

I turned to others, like Nisargadutt, Ramana, Krishnamurti, Jed Mckenna, Adyashanti, and more. I learned and processed. I simplified my life down to the barest. I isolated myself.

I learned to look, to observe. I learned how to release–releasing is a beautiful, stupidly-simple way to let go, so simple that some of the people I’ve worked with refuse to try it because of its simplicity. And that was a good lesson for me–that’s it’s easy to dismiss the simple.

I had learned to rely on myself. There is no help in spirituality. Today, I understand why this is–it’s not that spirituality is good or bad, it’s that it is no different from any other human endeavor over many thousands of years–it’s no different from morality, religion, philosophy, psychology, self-improvement and the rest of it.

When there is a basic fear of life, a basic sense of unrightness, it really doesn’t matter what knowledge we gain or what practices we practice or what beliefs we fervently believe. Whatever it is, it cannot and has not succeeded, because it’s all contaminated by this basic fear of life.

But at that time I shunned spirituality for a different reason. From what I saw, spiritual people just run around in circles, adorning weird spiritual personalities, insistent on using strange words, firmly attached to their suffering. I was already pretty good at running around in circles; I didn’t see the point of learning new circles, hehe!

After four years of this I was in a relatively good place. I was at peace, I had released depression and anxiety. I had released worry.

But.

The basic feeling of unrightness persisted. This basic fear of life was still there.

About two months ago, on a morning walk, it struck me.

It’s very simple, so simple that a ten year-old can understand this, and some day perhaps, this will be taught to all ten year-old’s.

The only difference between Eckhart Tolle and me is that Eckhart Tolle has gotten rid of his basic fear of life and I have not.

This is the only difference.

It isn’t enlightenment or self-realization because that’s already innate. It’s not the mind or ego–the ego is not real, it’s just thoughts and emotions and beliefs about the self, not inherently bad. What makes the ego troublesome is this basic fear of life I have.

This recognition–that the only problem is this basic sense of unrightness–is nothing new. It’s the first thing the Buddha said. He called it dukkha. It’s in the speakings of all the awakened. It’s not that deep, you only have to look inside to see it.

The revelation was not that there is a basic, prevalent, persistent fear in me; the revelation was that this is the only relevant revelation.

Because everything else is then uncertain. Everything else that I do, say, feel, believe, practice is uncertain, because it is driven by this basic off-centeredness.

That’s all.

In the absence of this basic fear, all there is is love. Anthony de Mello said love is the absence of fear. I didn’t quite understand it then.

How can there not be love? We all love life, we are self-aware, we can experience, we are aware that we are alive–how can there not be love and gratitude and compassion and acceptance, and all the other stuff that we love to talk about but are totally confused about because we’re tinged with this basic off-center fear?

This is simple, obvious, subtle, big.

At this point, I recognized that the only problem is this basic fear of life. I recognized it’s all about looking, observing, watching. I recognized the only thing I know for certain is that I am self-aware. I recognized I have to rely on myself. And, happily, spirituality is no longer in the way.

So the only question which remained was how to get rid this basic fear of life.

This is where John Sherman comes in. I was completely ready for him. He cleared it up instantly.

I had believed that what Nisargadutt and Ramana were saying was to perform an active inquiry, some sort of effortful figuring out to see who I truly am.

It’s not.

It’s a passive looking at my sense of what it feels/looks/listens/tastes like to be me.

I won’t say much about the actual looking, because John Sherman is much better at explaining it. And I haven’t proved to myself that this actually works yet.

But I am very happy to be back at square one, empty and open and light.

“So, you look. You bring your attention, for just a moment, to what it feels like to be you. Not to anything that you know to be the case, but to what it feels like to be you, just to touch it, just for a moment. And if you do that once, you’ll do it again, and again, until it has its way with you, until you are finished with not noticing yourself, until you are finished with the hatred of your life, with the fear of your life, with the dissatisfaction of your life. Until dissatisfaction itself reveals itself to be not a problem, not needing to be fixed, just part of the adventure, part of the tour. Sensation only.” John Sherman

If your goal is to be rid of the underlying fear of life then literally everything that you do and say and think and believe is beside the point.

What is it that we know for sure?

All I know is that there is existence and there is awareness of existence. That’s all I know for sure.

And I feel that life isn’t quite right. Instinctively I know that it should easier than it is. Why isn’t life quite right?

Well, because there is an underlying fear of life–an underlying, constant unrightness. I don’t know this the way I know that there is existence and awareness of existence. But it makes sense to me. There is an underlying fear, a lie, a lens through which we live life.

Those of us who recognize this will run to try to solve this problem in many ways. There is basic drive in all of us to solve this, to understand, and in many of us, this shows up as religion. But it doesn’t stop there–we also run to spirituality, analysis, philosophy, psychology, therapy, sudden enlightenment, transcendence, understanding, practices, meditation and all the rest of it.

We try our best to receive this understanding. We construct and maintain and defend an identity. We are always in the process of becoming.

And we follow some people we trust. Eckhart Tolle, Shankara, Buddha, Vedanta, tapas, sutras, Ramana, or some religious maniac, or some philosophy, political systems, and all the rest of it.

Has any of that really worked? We can look at all of human history or we can look at just span of our own lives, and ask this basic question. Have any of these endeavors worked?

Nisargadatta said he broke free of the this underlying unrightness of life by holding on to the sense of I AM. Ramana said that all you have to do is inquire “Who am I?”

When I first came cross these, I was confused by this simple thing they suggest. That’s because my head was full of ideas. I didn’t know what they were telling me to do. What I are they referring to? The ego? The false I? The True Self? The mind, thoughts, emotions, body?

I was also confused because I thought this was an investigation. The effort of inquiry didn’t scare me–I was pretty desperate then, willing to put in effort. But an inquiry–well, that requires figuring it out. I thought it would be some sort of unraveling, where I look at this and then that and then that, until delusions are cut away. I didn’t want to figure it out. That didn’t sound right to me.

I didn’t understand. Though it’s actually a very simple thing to understand.

And even a few months ago when I decided to go back to Nisargadatta and Ramana, this question bothered me. I explored what they said and explored what others said about them, and this question, that I have to sit down and figure it out, with an inquiry, with an investigation, bothered me.

John Sherman clarified it for me. It’s not about figuring it out. It’s about looking. Look at yourself. Period.

Ramana was not telling me to inquire. He was telling me to look at myself.

The you that you are is constant. It’s same you that you were when you were a baby. Thoughts, emotions, beliefs, ideas, practices, mental states–these are not constant, they come and they go.

These guys were simply telling me to look at my sense of me. Just look at, not look for anything in particular. The answer to “Who am I?” is not relevant. What’s relevant is just the looking at.

I suppose I came across John Sherman just at the right time.

I am in a place where releasing and awareness have achieved some success. I conduct my life with calm and peace, and I can release fears and anxiety very quickly. I have no confusion about what is right and wrong, and no confusion about the conflict between awakening and the practical demands of life. I don’t worry. All the worries about health and security and relationships and weight and addictions and future are gone. It’s not even that these problems are solved, it’s just that the thinking about them are gone.

It’s a pretty good place to be.

But.

But this is not freedom.

Because the constant low-level fear of life is not gone.

How do I know this? How do I now that this is just another state and not freedom? After all, it’s a pretty good state, very seductive.

I don’t really know how I know this. A month ago I would have said it’s because of humility and honesty. But now I realize that honesty is just another idea. It’s mental process which can and is easily subverted by the mind.

If we can’t rely on honesty, what can we rely on?

Well, it turns out we don’t have to rely on anything except ourselves. And since you are already you, that shouldn’t be very hard.

If I had listened to Nisargadatta and Ramana without my ideas I would have known what they were asking me to do was very simple. They were not telling me to inquire and unravel the mystery of life. They are were not asking me to absorb or give up any ideas or beliefs or practices. They were not telling me to look for anything.

They were saying just to look at yourself. Whatever my sense of me is, look/listen/feel that. I am here. Look at that. Just feel the sense of I, the sense of amness, the sense of I am, the sense of I am here.

John Sherman is particularly good at saying this. Check him out.

So, how do I know that this looking is effective?

I don’t know. I have to prove it or disprove to myself.

But it does make instinctive sense to me.

First, it’s all about me. What everything points to is me. All the teachings, arcane and new, bizarre and sensible, everything I do, say, think, my altruism, selfishness, everything, is about me. Suffering and depression is me. Happiness and compassion is me. Problems are me. Solutions are me.

Then, doesn’t it make sense to look at me?

Not the ego, not the mind, not awareness, not consciousness, not oneness, not presence, not persona. Not anything crazy-spiritual-mystical. Just me.

Also, I tried looking at me and very soon I felt agitated. That’s a pretty good sign that something is happening.

More, I’ve know for some time now that I have to do this for myself. You have to actually do this for yourself. Sure there is guidance out there. There is also a lot of mis-guidance. I have to rely on myself. I have to see for myself. No amount of practices or understanding will do it.

So if you have to to do it for yourself, it makes sense to start with you. You have to look at you for yourself.

Now this can scare the hell out of some people. The thought that I have to rely on myself can be frightening, because I don’t really understand anything and I don’t know where to start.

Yeah, maybe a little scary but also quite freeing. I don’t need to explore or understand or read more spiritual books, or practice other people’s practices, or the rest of it.

And here’s another thing I like about this looking. It’s consistent with my understanding that it all comes down to observance. I used to say it comes down to observance, willingness and honesty. But I realize now that willingness and honesty are just ideas, and completely beside the point.

So, how does this work, this looking at you. How do you start?

The word “look” brings up a visual connotation, but clearly you can’t look at you with your eyes. You look at you with your mind’s eye. Look, listen, feel, whatever makes sense to you, at yourself.

The word “at” is important because you are not trying to look for anything. You are not trying to discover the false self or ego or mind or  awareness or presence or oneness. You are not looking for the boundaries. (There really are no boundaries, there is no place where thoughts end and the mind begins, or the ego ends and awareness begins, or any such thing, but it’s also irrelevant if you see that or you don’t see that.)

You are just looking at the sense of you.

Is it hard? Is it effortful?

Yes, probably.

It wasn’t hard for me to start. Or you can see it another way and say it was very hard for me to start, because I didn’t start four years ago when I first came across it. What could be easier than looking inside to see what you already are? The actual starting of it can feel like effort.

“In all cases, in all practices, in all traditions, the inquiry is the end of the road. It is always the case. Everything leads to this. Everything leads to this only question that really matters, which is “What am I, really?” It is the only thing that really matters.” John Sherman

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(edited)

Dear -,

Awakening is awakening in the dream and awakening out of the dream. I am at the first.

What does it feel like? Well, I had anxiety and depression for twenty years. Anxiety is gone. The psychological unhappiness of depression is gone. I can operate in the world from a place of calm and peace. There is very little fear (although there is a little) and I am not attached to the outcome of desires, seeing desires as fear turned outward.

It’s nice.

However, this is not full awakening, and moreover, it is not important.

The most direct technique is self-inquiry. I have not written much about this because I am new to it. I have known about self-inquiry from Ramana Mahrishi and Nisargadatta, and it’s probably written about elsewhere. But I did not actually try it until recently.

That’s how the mind works. It is good at hiding.

The things I’ve talked about are useful–awareness and releasing will help you let go of worries and the anger you talk about, and it will teach you how to observe.

Self-inquiry is just observance. Just looking. Look inside, at yourself. You will ask, well, how do I do that, I don’t know what it means, where do I start, what will happen, why? This is of course the mind. Looking is just that, just looking. We do it all the time. The only thing to do is turn the direction inward, taking a step back, and observe yourself. Not yourself in action, just yourself. The idea or feeling of you–observe that, and stay with it.

There’s no particular goal, the goal is the looking itself. Things will happen, changes will happen, but you cannot control or predict these outcomes. Whatever happens if fine, because it’s irrelevant to the inquiry. Just keep looking.

The problem is mis-identification. You are not who you think you are. So the best way to see this lie is to look directly at yourself, inside.

As far as your particular problem about getting angry, note that you said “you should not be getting angry.” This is not true. Anger is a natural, built-in reaction–it’s how we handle it which can be a problem.

Releasing will help you with anger. Any emotion is an association of thoughts and body sensations. When anger comes up, you can note that there are physical symptoms, like hotness and fast heart beat and a tightening of muscles and you can feel it in your entire body. Observe body sensations, observe thoughts, and allow the anger to come, without resistance, let it be, and ask yourself if you can let it go. The answer maybe no at first, and that’s fine. You keep doing this each time, and soon you will understand that letting go of anger is a decision.

Of course we must be responsible in how we express our emotions. My suggestion is when you get angry at someone it is best if you walk away and be alone. And then you can try releasing it as I have described.

However, remember that releasing will help you but it is not a direct technique. The direct technique is to look inside, look at yourself, and stay with the looking.

John Sherman (google him) is very good at describing looking.

I hope you find value in this.

Let me know how it goes.

Kaushik

(Edited)

I did the same–I wrote for myself for a long time before I started the blog. Writing gives us another mechanism to grow. The human mind is not always the best place to look from. Writing gives us the ability to look at arm’s length, which can sometimes be valuable.

Atheism is interesting. It’s a trend now–many younger people resonate with it, which is not a bad thing, and it may actually balance some of the craziness of religious beliefs. But atheism is the polar opposite of theism, and neither is about the exploration of truth.

Spirituality is not the answer either. From what I see, people fall into the trap of using spiritual identities and beliefs to avoid looking inside. These particular egos are very difficult for me to be around, as Jed Mckenna says, they can be particularly “offputting.” There’s no question that a spiritual identity is very validating–but it too is another form of hiding, of running away. It is not the exploration of truth.

I understand and empathize with where you are right now. The place you’re in is a place of of low-energy, resistance. There is confusion and doubt. Will this ever end, is this as good as it gets, is this what awakening is really about. I was better off living completely in delusion.

It’s just a mental state–and by saying just I’m not being dismissive. Depression, even spiritual depression and the dark night, which is rarely just one intense night, is a form of self-hatred. That may sound harsh but look into it. It’s not at all surprising that we go through this. Most human beings seem to be completely okay living in their delusions. So when you have the insight that there is something amiss with this picture, even if it is not an overt insight, it becomes harder and harder to pretend. The usual motivations we used for success and fun fall away. It’s not surprising that we feel depression.

I think you’re doing the right things. Keep writing. Continue observing. Continue developing internal honesty. Learn to release. Don’t avoid the feelings–allow them completely, watch.

Expectations can be a problem. We set expectations and a timetable for ourselves. It doesn’t help that so many bloggers report blissful states, “inner peace and harmony” through their new-found spirituality or beliefs, because of course that’s their idea of spirituality and awakening.

But that’s not what awakening is. Awakening is dispelling of delusions, it’s the pursuit of truth. And if truth is the goal, then all we need is observance and honesty. It’s not necessarily an easy or comfortable process.

I think you’re doing great.

k

The most fundamental question of life is “Is there joy and peace in my life?”

It’s the essential question, and yet most of us run away from it. We’re pretty good at not facing up to ourselves. I suppose most of us believe that life has to be the way it is. We buy into the popular definitions of success and we believe when we’re successful we’re happy–when we have money, when we have approval, when someone is bringing us flowers–we’re happy then, and when there is grief, we say, well, this is just the way it is, this is the human condition, we have to buck up and deal with.

I suppose we feel that if we do everything right, at some point life will open up and reward us. Or death will.

I certainly looked at life in this way for forty five years.

It was only because of suffering, an exhaustion from a two decades of depression and anxiety and confusion, and in circumstances where I was not getting what I thought I wanted, that I was able to face this basic question head on, and with this openness, a reading of Tolle’s Power of Now suddenly made complete sense.

We might ignore this basic question, but it will not ignore us–it constantly nags at us. Especially in times of grief, we look up at the heavens in search for big concepts, the big secret, God or spirituality or the law of attraction, or the ideas of right and wrong, or the idea of control and reward, something, anything, which is bigger and more powerful than us.

We look outside. Or we look to new beliefs.

We don’t look inside because we have a fundamental mistrust of our inner nature.

Somewhere in the Bible, it says “God shall not be mocked.” This pretty much sums what many of us who tend towards religion and spirituality believe. We reflect our sadness and fear in the systems of beliefs we choose–the beliefs in God, or karma, or success, or whatever it is we are inclined to believe for now. God becomes something outside of us, someone who is judgmental and someone to be feared. We better not mock God, we better not fool around with our karma, we better not stray.

But from an awakened perspective, the meaning is very different. “God shall not be mocked” simply means that God is not capable of being ashamed of us. It’s a blessing, not a warning.

The concept of karma is pretty popular these days, and we’ve made it some sort of universal debit-credit system, where you can make up for your bad deeds by doing good in the future. The concept is bastardized to reflect what we truly believe life to be–we think life is a trial, a fearful journey of right steps and wrong steps. Having taken wrong steps in the past, all we now have to do is to tread carefully and take the right steps, so we can make up for it, and be ahead of the pack.

We fall to systems of beliefs and concepts because we have a fundamental distrust of our true nature. It’s not surprising that we fall to concepts which make judicial sense, which have some justice to them. From a place of fear and distrust, we crave a sense of control, and from a place of fear and sadness, what appeals to us most are concepts which explain life as a trial which punishes and rewards.

When Arjuna fell down at Krishna’s dusty feet at the epic Mahabharata battle of Kurukshetra, he could not see how he could slay his own relatives. This was too much.

Krishna showed him his universal form and told him he must fight.

I always wondered how it is that the divine or awakened Krishna was promoting violence, and not just violence, but the most despicable kind of violence–the violence of killing your own brethren.

Of course, what he was really telling Arjuna is that he must slay his attachments.

That beliefs are one of our strongest attachments may not be an easy thing for some to accept. It can take Krishna’s kind of violence to give up the love of our beliefs and concepts and ideas. Our attachment to ideas which explain the world to us is pretty strong, starting with the concept of an imagined and separate self, and all the subsequent beliefs of success and spirituality and love and rightness and goodness and compassion. We constantly take on and churn these ideas and concepts; they give the mind meaning and sense of control and sense of justice. And we wait for the rewards.

That the attachment to these beliefs are the very thing we must kill–well, that’s not an easy thing to see.

It’s not that we need to take on and polish new ideas and beliefs and concepts to see this. It’s not about spirituality or religion or psychological figuring out or intellectual analysis or the next new big secret. It’s not about ideas or viewpoints at all.

It’s simpler than that. It’s a letting go.

We can let go naturally through observation and honesty.

As you observe thoughts, without the effort to judge or analyze or change, you might notice that thoughts slow down. The gaps in-between expand.

You notice also that many of our thoughts are of self-judgment. This may not be obvious at first–well the obviously self-judgmental thoughts are clearly self-judgmental–but you begin to notice that almost all of your thoughts are in some way about judgment and about self. And then you start noticing what judgment is. And what self is. And whether it points to anything real.

Observance and honesty–in abiding in this quiet awareness, watching, watching thoughts without interfering or participating is a pretty good way to start.

As you observe thoughts, without the effort to judge or analyze or change, you might notice that thoughts slow down. The gaps in-between expand.

You notice also that many of our thoughts are of self-judgment. This may not be obvious at first–well the obviously self-judgmental thoughts are clearly self-judgmental, but you begin to notice that almost all of your thoughts are in some way about judgment and about self.

This self of course does not exist–that is, it does not point to anything real or present.

It can be hard to notice the self and judgment in thoughts because we’re so familiar with our usual thoughts, and thoughts are wrapped up in conditioning and beliefs. And of course we believe our beliefs.

This is a pretty clumsy way to live–it is in fact the basis of the psychological aspects of depression. And so we often wonder, what is life all about, what is the purpose of life, is there a higher meaning, why am I unhappy, why doesn’t the universe give me what I want, how can I be better, how can I be more successful, more outgoing, better liked, more interesting, more spiritual….Is this what life really is, just one damn thing after another?

To make this right, we embark on a program of control.

We want to replace our unworkable thinking with thinking that works. And so we chase after beliefs which will trump the other beliefs. It’s no wonder that we find things that will replace our current mind set so highly appealing. New beliefs are a relief. And so we chase spirituality and self-improvement and religion and positive thinking.

Tail-chasing.

It’s so much simpler than that.

Observance and honesty–abiding in this quiet awareness, watching, watching thoughts without interfering or participating, can stop the tail-chasing.

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