Dr. Gail Brenner

Sacred Space for Awakened Living

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Finally! Here’s the Secret to Peace and Happiness


“There is a life-force within your soul, seek that life.
There is a gem in the mountain of your body, seek that mine.
O traveler, if you are in search of That
Don’t look outside, look inside yourself and seek That.”
~Rumi

Let’s start by contemplating some common situations that arise in everyday life.

Anne gets frustrated every time her husband walks through the door and doesn’t give her a hug before moving onto other things.

Robert feels disappointed when the phone call he’s been waiting for never comes.

Melanie feels tense every time she reads the news.

These common situations leave us batted about by our reactions, feeling that something isn’t right, while what we really want is to feel okay inside.

Anne needs her husband’s behavior to change so she can feel loved. Robert needs that phone call so he can stop feeling disappointed. And Melanie needs better news so she can feel at peace.

Their happiness is attached to things they can’t control. And this is a setup for unhappiness.

Here’s a simple but brilliant truth—and it’s one that we can bring to our in-the-moment experience over and over.

The world is as it is. People do what they do. Things happen as they happen, and there are no mistakes. And our ideas about what should happen have little to do with it.

People aren’t wrong and the world isn’t wrong. It’s just how it is. Even if some of the things that happen are quite upsetting, this is a truth that doesn’t change. Things are as they are.

So if we don’t have control over things external to us—if we can’t manifest a world of people and situations that fulfill our every desire—then how can we be happy and peaceful?

The one amazing, life-changing option that we always have is to turn our attention away from our thoughts and the outer world and in toward ourselves to meet our inner reactions with loving acceptance.

The source of our discontent is not in what happens—it’s in our reactions to what happens. Underneath the stressful situations and unfulfilled desires are tender places of fear and longing.

While we’re busy in our heads hoping to be loved, wanting others to change, or wishing the news would improve, we miss ourselves…the tension in our bodies, the persistent anxiety, and the young parts that need our loving attention.

Our thoughts mostly tell us what is not okay and what needs to be fixed or changed….so don’t look for peace and happiness there… But opening to our feelings with love and kindness, we discover a whole new way of being with our experience.

We start by becoming peaceful with what arises in us, and eventually our view of the world changes to one of compassionate understanding…for ourselves and everyone else. We have the space to flow with life…

  • Receiving rather than resisting;
  • Welcoming in love rather than fixing or improving;
  • Being curious.

Exploring even deeper, we discover the underlying, stable formless reality that is already whole, fulfilled, and complete. Resting here in this spacious presence…allowing everything, resisting nothing…there’s peace…

Looking outward into the world to find ways to feel better is one of the many strategies we use to avoid our inner experience. Although it might work for a while, ultimately we will become aware of the pain of our feelings again.

But turn toward yourself with love and openness, and miracles happen. Finally, you’re connected, alive, real, and at peace.

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The Essential Way to Liberation from the Mind

“Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.”
~Hafiz

If you’re like most people, you define your everyday experience by your problems.

What is wrong? What isn’t going right? What if all these bad outcomes I’m thinking about actually happen? Why me? Why can’t I just be happy?

These worst case scenarios and comments on your personal inadequacies are all thoughts that appear in your mind. If you’re identified with these thoughts, if you take what they tell you as absolute fact and think they accurately describe you and your life, then you’ll never know the peace of your true nature.

Simply said, you won’t find peace and happiness in your mind—ever. Can you feel the power in that statement?

But lose interest in the content of your thinking, and where are you? Who are you? You’re right here, undefined by thought, awake in the luminosity of present moment experience and one with life.

It takes no time at all to leave the limitations of the mind. You don’t have to wait for your thoughts to stop or for bliss to appear. You don’t need special knowledge or the right method.

You only need to lose interest in what your thoughts are telling you. Don’t give any attention to the commentary, judgment, and mental blabbering.

  • Then open to your senses. Without labeling anything, just feel, see, hear, smell, and touch;
  • Look from behind your eyes, prior to your brain, and be the seeing itself—with so much freshness;
  • Forget words altogether, and directly experience what’s here beyond memory. No time, no space;
  • Be the open field of perception that endlessly includes everything with no resistance or separation.

By believing your thoughts, you’ve simply overlooked a fundamental truth that is always here, waiting for your infinitely kind attention.

In any moment, you can go beyond the mind and experience the light that shines through everything. You realize expansion, pure openness, endless being, and the deepest acceptance.

You become aware of the sacred nature of everything.

Realizing this, your “Oh, no!” and negative drama—fueled by thoughts and emotions—become humility, gratitude, and the ease of receiving of things just as they are.

Practice going to the space outside of your thoughts, and you’ll discover that familiar ideas about yourself don’t exist here.

There’s no “you” who gets hurt or takes things personally. No one to worry about what might happen in the future. No problems.

You’re empty of fear-based, thought-based patterns and available to oceans of ease and well being.

It’s simple…silent…holy…and boundlessly peaceful…

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In Love with Life

“Just know that you are above and beyond all things and thoughts. What you want to be, you are it already. Desire nothing, for you lack nothing. The very seeking prevents you from finding.”
~Nisargadatta Maharaj

If you look closely, you’ll see that the mind always tells you there is something wrong with this moment.

It tells you that what’s happening is not as it should be and that something needs to change. It draws you into believing you’re not good enough and need to figure out how to fix yourself. It says that people should be doing something different than they are actually doing.

The mind almost always inclines to the negative. It will tell you that the peace you really want is “out there,” available at some future time…if only you knew how to find it, if only you weren’t such a mess, if only you read the right book or watched the right video.

When we live in this “if only” mindset, how can we feel anything but sad, alone, and anxious? Because our present moment experience is defined by lack and inadequacy.

Caught in the mind’s grip, we think we’re missing what we need to be happy. And we’re disconnected from the love and freedom available right now.

Isn’t this how most of us live?

Thankfully, there is a solution to this problem of lack, and, no matter what you believe, true happiness is actually possible. But the compulsive mind won’t help you know it—you need to look outside the mind.

What’s amazing to realize is that in every moment there is a sacred choice.

  • We can believe our thoughts—or take a breath.
  • We can think about a better future—or open lovingly to what’s happening right now.
  • We can stay stuck in the rut of robotic patterns—or shift to expanded consciousness and relax into infinite possibilities.

I am absolutely in love with the experience of being present. I love the sensitivity of being alive to feelings and sensations. I love feeling the tenderness of emotions and the deep relationships that are possible without fear and defensiveness.

And I love the spaciousness—the timeless, formless energy of pure being—that holds everything with total acceptance.

Sure, we could all be gripped by conditioned patterns if we want to be. But things get interesting once we fully understand that a choice is possible. We wake up into being conscious in the moments of our lives.

We feel into the limitation that patterns bring us. We become aware of how much the mind judges ourselves and others. And we answer the call of the heart into something greater.

Thoughts are limiting—and awareness is vast and infinite. Thoughts are repetitive and negative—and directly engaging with life reveals unlimited possibilities.

It doesn’t matter how many times you miss the opportunity to choose—because there is always another one. Every moment is so fresh, so alive!

Turn toward yourself and away from your thoughts. Step into the fullness of the present, the boundless space of being aware.

Then open to whatever you encounter with the deepest welcoming and an overflowing heart. This is what I love, and I’m sure you will love it, too.

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Getting Back on Track

“Insofar as we’re not conscious, we’re not free.”
~Gabor Maté

Just about every day I speak with people who tell me how they get off track. They feel disappointed when their expectations aren’t met, get trapped in the inner critical voice, bring irritation into their relationships, or believe the thoughts that tell them they’re inadequate.

What is happening that creates this reality? Our attention is pulled into the stories that run through our minds while our feelings are being ignored.

The possibility of freedom disappears as the machine of compulsive, unconscious behavior takes over. Yes, we’re acting and speaking, but we’re not actually aware of what we’re doing. We don’t realize that we’re living from confusion.

We’re like robots, lost in the forest of our habits with no access to our humanness, our compassion, our sensitivity, and our capacity to be aware. Sound familiar?

Getting back on track, we wake up to realize we’ve been disconnected from ourselves. It’s a moment of grace when conscious awareness is revealed to illuminate what’s actually happening in our experience.

Like a breath of fresh air, we come home to ourselves. Turning away from the mind and outer world, we look inward—with loving curiosity—to notice what emotions are present and how we feel in our bodies.

That’s how we begin to know what we’re actually doing and what’s driving us.

As a support to get back on track, inquiry may be helpful. Consider these essential questions that take you out of the confusion of conditioned reactions and into the depth of your true heart’s desire. Ask yourself:

  • What is important to me in this moment? How do I want this moment to be?
  • What do I value?
  • How can I express myself to be aligned with what I really want?

A client came in humbled by the power of these questions. She told me that in the past week she posed them every time she felt irritated and discovered that they brought her back on track where she could open fully to her present moment experience.

She saw that her personal needs and reactive emotions were not what she really wanted for those moments, and she reconnected with a generous, loving heart, a relaxed mind, and the true desire for her own and others’ happiness. She left the drama of her thoughts so she could find calm and see things clearly.

Then she had the insight to apply these questions to all moments, no matter what the situation. She couldn’t contain her excitement about the possibility for her whole way of being in her life to be affected in a profound way—infused with awareness, love, and truth.

By asking these questions, we go beyond the blinders of our patterns and expand into openness and clarity. We’re present, aware, and fully alive.

As an example, consider a relationship you’re in where there is friction or disconnection. Your conversation with this person loops around in the same dissatisfying dynamic.

Now with a fresh view, how do you want your next interaction with this person to be? From your deepest truth, what is important to you?

Embodying these insights, how can you show up differently? Can you take care of your inner reactions, listen deeply with curiosity, be a bit more vulnerable?

When you’re triggered, lost, and things feel challenging, try asking these essential questions.

They just might bring you out of the fog of conditioned habits and home to yourself. And here you are, aligned with truth, with eyes and heart wide open.

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Bringing Ease to Your Present Moment Experience

“Open your heart to who you are, right now,
Not who you would like to be.
Not the saint you’re striving to become.
But the being right here before you, inside you, around you.”
~John Welwood

If there’s one thing I wish you knew, it is this: it’s possible to bring ease to your present moment experience.
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Sure, you can get caught up in fearful stories and go on in your mind about what shouldn’t have happened. You can doubt yourself endlessly and analyze every little detail about you and everyone else.

You can judge, compare, and dramatize everything. And this is what most of us call normal life.

But in any moment, we can shift our perspective. Yes, it’s possible!

  • We can take a breath and get a timeout from all the thinking.
  • We can watch thoughts floating through the space of open awareness rather than being hooked into their content.
  • We can experience life through the aliveness of our senses instead of through the veil of the thinking mind.

We can be caught up in stories…or be with things as they are with spaciousness and ease.

We’re programmed to resist our experience. Without even realizing it, we’re incredibly harsh with ourselves. Have you noticed? We tell ourselves:

  • You shouldn’t feel like that.
  • You failed again at finding peace.
  • You’ll never improve.
  • You’re worthless and unlovable.
  • You got stuck with a bad lot in life.

How can we possibly be at ease when we’re feeding thoughts like these?

My friend, Amy, woke up one lovely weekend morning with a strong feeling of agitation. She had a list of things to do, and this feeling was interfering. She tried to push through it in every way possible, only becoming more and more frustrated with herself.

She wasn’t at ease with her present moment experience, and it was stressful for her. Can you relate? I know I can.

What about shifting to a kinder way of being—a way that brings ease to our present moment experience?

  • You say, “Oh, hello feeling. Yes, this is what is here right now.” You stop the fight with your own experience.
  • You focus on the sensations of a slow and deep conscious inhale and exhale. Why not try it right now?
  • You expand your attention beyond any thoughts and feelings to the space around them. You’re open like the sky rather than being trapped in clouds.
  • You invite yourself into being present with what’s here.
  • And you take action from a place of love and care—and not from expectations or obligations.

We don’t need to change or fix one single thing to be at ease with our present moment experience. We don’t need to create better thoughts or banish feelings.

We’re only asked to be kind and friendly with whatever we’re experiencing. And that simple shift changes everything.

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