It’s not like you existed, and someone came by and said here, this is your body, and your mind, and your awareness, and your life. Now go and live your life. That didn’t happen. ~~~~~~~~~~ What happened was an infant was born. A body-mind-awareness-life was born as an infant. The you came later. You [...]

Honesty We’re not concerned about external honesty here. That kind of honesty that we want, or say we want, outside to others–well, that’s kind of important, but not for awakening. I’ve had clinical depression, and any depressive will tell you that depression makes you into a very capable liar. A depressive’s life swings up and [...]

Well, I haven’t been swarmed by a bunch of gleeful, flower-bikini-clad spiritual babes. Maybe that will still happen. And my mortgage lender refuses to believe I don’t exist. The bastard. Seriously, though. It’s a no-big-deal kind of a thing. That’s not bad. That’s truth. This technique is solid. You don’t exist. It’s compelling and unrelenting. [...]

Notice, notice everything, with the view I don’t exist, without expectation or anticipation or projection. This is the inquiry I am doing. When doubts pop up, I ask what it is that is doubting. When thought-stories pop up, I inquire who the story is about. My conceptual understanding of “I do not exist” is complete, [...]

Because we have it backwards. Notice the way we approach awakening. You get an insight. Then you take on practices. You meditate, you practice awareness,  you practice presence, you observe thought, you release, you loosen attachment to beliefs, you try to understand acceptance, you read, you memorize, you practice, you seek. photo credit: jdxyw You [...]

You do not exist. You think you think your thoughts. You don’t think your thoughts; there is thinking. There is no you or your. It is not your life; there is just life. You don’t have feelings; there are just feelings. You don’t breathe; there is just breathing. You did not exist before life. Life was [...]

We must be thankful to Eckhart Tolle. With simple and contemporary words, Tolle has taken mysticism and burdensome reverence right out of spirituality, and presented the essence of natural being in a very simple way. Tolle tells us about the ego (the false sense of “I”) and the pain-body (the conditioning which unconsciously drives us). [...]

You have to actually do it. At some point in your awakening you will have to actually do it. You have to set aside the learning and reading and thinking about it, and actually do it. We all need help on this and we are never alone. But at some point you will actually have [...]

“Say to yourself, ‘I have certain attitudes and ambitions. I also have friends and allies in these attitudes. But what would happen to me if they suddenly withdrew their support of me?’ Do this and you will understand one kind of fear – the fear of standing all alone. But you can stand all alone, [...]

You are born. You die. In the middle some stuff happens. We have trouble with the middle stuff but really it’s simple once we see that it’s all awareness. Our basic state is awareness. Everything else pops up as points of view in awareness. The only essential question is:  Is there enough joy and lightness [...]