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Inauthenticity: Identity Wants confuse what we are
[Excerpt from Unachievable]
The other day a client said to me, “I just want to understand myself. I just want to be true to myself.” It led to an interesting conversation about what the self really is and what it means to be true to it. What are we? Are we the beliefs about what we are? Are we the behaviours, actions and words? Are we our habits? Our values? Our opinions? Are we the experience of being us? Our tendencies and preferences? Our personality?
It is amazing how through this work eve…
Unachievable – is the want about fixing in place or getting rid of an emotion?
In their book, Stealing Fire, Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal calculate that the industry of ‘shutting off the self' is worth $4 trillion a year. They include all the activities, substances, experiences and practices that ultimately have the result of shutting down – even if only momentarily the burden of self-focus.
As they pointed out, many of these are ‘impulsive, destructive and unintentional’. They include activities such as legal and illegal drug taking, pornography and gambling which can, o…
Nothing to be gained
Nothing to be gained [excerpt from HOME]
The dilemma for the individual is not that the individual can't get what it wants - the dilemma is apparent individuality.
Tony Parsons
I was on a non-duality retreat and the teacher began by standing up and saying “There is no point in your being here……It doesn’t matter if you come to any of the talks. There is nothing whatsoever to be gained. You might as well be outside in the gardens or in your room.”
There is absolute honesty in this because it i…
Confrontation that leads to psychological freedom
[Excerpt from Unachievable]
Unachievable. That sounds a contradictory title for a book about getting whatever we want.
We’ll hear it many times throughout this book. Unachievable Wants are a dead end. A brick wall. These wants prevent the experience of what is wanted from ever being achieved. Unachievable applies to any want that aims to secure or avoid a particular experience of being ourself. These wants are Unachievable because, no matter how much it looks like it, the separate entity that t…
The mind is a powerful force
[Excerpt from Unachievable]
Have you ever stressed about getting enough sleep before a big next day and found yourself lying in bed wide awake?
If so, you understand the power of the mind to create worrisome projections, doom visions of the future, vulnerability and insecurity, imaginations of failure and negative opinions of others. You also have seen how these mental phenomena can make it temporarily impossible to experience what is there naturally and easily – the ability to fall asleep.
T…
What is here already cannot be achieved
[Excerpt from Unachievable]
We all want to feel happy, peaceful, whole and secure. This book is saying those are Unachievable. Hang on. Don’t throw the book away. Unachievable does not mean the things we are looking for can never be experienced. In fact, it means the opposite. It means happiness, peace, wholeness and security are here already. They are what we are. Because they are what we are, because they are here already, constant and never-changing, they cannot be achieved.
The attempt t…
Well - The Body
‘I am this body’.
It looks so true doesn’t it? It looks like the body is me and I am the body. There is no possibility otherwise.
It looks like there is an objective ‘me’ in this objective body, controlling it, that the ‘me’ is doing the reading now, that the ‘me’ is feeling the sensations, that the ‘me’ can use the body to be a better self, more loved, more respected, more successful.
It looks like the body is an objective truth. That the judgement on how it looks, feels and moves is f…
Nourishing the Body
“It is slavery to live in the mind unless it has become part of the body” said Kahlil Gibran.
The words of Gibran, born in 1873 in the Lebanon, are perhaps more relevant today than ever. The mind, this tremendous creative powerhouse, experiences great suffering when it gets lost, believing its own creations. The body, on the other hand, is always in reality, receiving and responding to real time chemical and biological information.
When the mind settles into the reality of the body, m…
How Peace is Revealed
The public speaking phobia continued through different jobs and roles. I scraped through the presentations I had to do feeling absolutely sick.
At the same time, I continued exploring what the mind is, what reality is, what the idea of ourselves is.
One day, I knew I was going to do a talk in my house for a small group of friends. The thought came in with dreadful inevitability. I felt sick at the idea of it and yet I knew it was going to happen. The same tensions aro…
Getting rid of negative emotion
[Excerpt from SANE]
A thirteen-year-old girl I was working with said ‘I get really sad sometimes. I worry that I might cry in my class. Can you take away the sadness?’
Take away the sadness.
Take away the fear and the worry.
Make me always happy.
That’s what she wants.
And pretty much all of us say the same.
Take away the anger.
Take away the low state.
Take away the feelings of overwhelm.
Take away the grief.
Take away the fear.
Take away the anxiety.
Take away the frustration.
Ta…