“Everything that kindness touches relaxes into its true nature.”
~ Pamela Wilson

Are you stuck on needing to be be in control? You’re definitely not alone.
As humans, our brains are constantly finding problems with ourselves that need to be solved. By instinct, we notice what we think is wrong—then get busy trying to change, control, or fix it.

• If you worry too much, you plan for every possible outcome.
• If you don’t like the way you’re feeling, you try to move on and ignore the pain.
• If you feel badly about yourself, you try to make everything perfect.
• If you don’t like how someone else makes you feel, you do everything you can to change them.

All of these efforts seem to make sense. If you don’t like the way things are, then why not make it better or different?

However…seeing the world in terms of problems and solutions is fundamentally flawed, and here’s why.

• It reinforces the belief that right now is not okay. It makes us feel like we’re lacking, inadequate, and missing what we need to be happy.
• It makes us believe that something is wrong with this moment that needs to be fixed or changed.
• And it makes us hope for happiness at some future time, which keeps us searching endlessly to fix ourselves.

This belief that there’s something wrong with our present moment experience is good for business. People spend literally billions of dollars a year on books, retreats, workshops, and programs to learn to fix what we’ve been led to believe is broken about ourselves.

But here’s the amazing news: there is a better way, a radical way, and it’s available to you for free, right now…and in every moment.

Right now you can give up all the effort to change, control, and eliminate your troublesome thoughts and feelings. You don’t have to wait one more second hoping you’ll eventually find your way to peace and happiness.

What you can do is turn toward yourself and form a kind and friendly relationship with your inner experience. Here’s where you’ll discover you’ve never been broken.

Think of it like this. Whatever is arising in you—mental resistances, difficult emotions, energy in your body—these aren’t problems. They’re like friends knocking on your door that want to come in for a visit. So the question for you is: how do you meet them?

Do you ignore them hoping they will go away? Do you reject them and ask for better friends instead?

I don’t know about you, but for me, that approach hurts. It feels like I’m turning away from my humanity, rejecting the tender and young parts of my experience that want to come to conscious awareness.

It creates an inner war, a divided sense of self, and a sustained feeling of anxiety that something isn’t right.

Do you feel stuck in a recurring pattern? Then there’s some part of your inner experience that’s waiting for your love and care.

Welcome these delicate parts that arise in you—grieving, fear, pain, tension in the body. Give them the space to breathe and be. Let them just be here, invited into loving awareness…welcomed home endlessly…

When we turn toward ourselves, we get to be infinitely kind with all that arises…and we start to feel whole. It’s what we’ve always wanted.

See how there’s nothing to fix, control, or change? Simply be here, relaxing as the welcoming presence for whatever arises, saying a warmhearted “hello” to all of it.

Now there’s space for the free flow of whatever comes…and there’s harmony, peace, and the end of inner conflict. No longer caught in efforts to change and improve, you’re here…available, inspired, present, and free…

“When by the flood of your tears the inner and the outer have fused into one,
you will find Her whom you sought with such anguish,
nearer than the nearest, the very breath of life, the very core of every heart.”
~Sri Anandamayi Ma

Whether you consciously know it or not, the truth of your essential nature is and always has been infinite awareness and boundless love.

Nothing needs to be changed in you to have this realization—it’s a matter of noticing what is already the case.

Yet, here we are living the human life. We react, we get stuck, we yearn for more…

We don’t feel like we’re resting in boundless love. We’re caught up in the sense of separation, which gives rise to the belief that something about us needs to be fixed.

In the moments when the sense of separation relaxes—when we stop thinking about ourselves and our problems—we find that we’re more available to being present with things as they are. These are times when we’re not clouded by need and fear, and we’re just here and awake, receiving everything in openness.

Laughing with someone…watering your plants…sitting down for a break after being busy all day…enjoying a bite of food…

You may experience these simple, easeful moments more than you realize, so be on the lookout for them. They’re what’s already here before the mind starts telling you what’s wrong.

If you take an honest look at your experience, you may find that your mind-driven habits are old news. Needing to please others, keeping yourself too busy, using substances to soothe the pain…

Check to see if they’re still necessary—because along with these activities of the separate self is the underlying call to simply relax and be.

Can you feel it?

Little by little, we let ourselves come into alignment with what is already true…the simple reality of our right now experience…here before the mind convinces us that we’re separate. It’s waiting for us, the homecoming we all long for, so close and available that we miss it.

How to find this radiant aliveness of simply being present?

• Slow down;
• Turn your attention inward—away from the outer world and your mind;
• Notice the sensations of breathing;
• Find spaciousness around anything you’re experiencing;
• Relax and be…

From here we’re available to bring compassion to painful feelings that arise. We catch the conditioned movement of our patterns and let it be without acting on it.

We breathe with our nervous system as it begins to calm. We have space to feel quiet, grateful, loving, and free.

It’s such a kind way to be. And the only thing that’s changed is that we’ve stopped paying attention to the stressful mind.

Do you feel the call to relax and be? Surrender to it…let it have you… You’ll discover the infinite peace that’s here at the core of every heart…

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I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.”
~Hafiz

Are you feeling more anxious these days than usual? I’m sure you’re not alone.

These are times of uncertainty, which means we just don’t know what the future will bring.

And when we don’t know, what happens? The mind starts creating every possible scary scenario. What if this happens…what if that happens… Then anxiety lodges itself in your body.

Let’s first take a moment to thank the mind, as it’s only doing its job as part of our human survival system. It tries to think about all the bad things that could happen so we’ll be prepared to act. The survival system doesn’t want to be surprised by an unknown threat. It wants to feel safe and secure.

But here’s the catch—we’re not just a human survival system. We’re expressions of the unbounded aliveness that’s beyond human form. The momentum of this aliveness beckons us to return to our natural being and expand into the love, peace, and happiness we somehow know are possible.

When we believe what anxious thoughts tell us, we’re living in a fear-fueled fantasy in our minds, separate from aliveness, awareness, and truth.

The more we think these thoughts, the more we reinforce false views of ourselves and the world. And the more we’re contracted into fear and stress.

Being stuck in anxiety about the future is different from doing what you need to do. Maybe a scary scenario will actually happen—and then you will deal with it in practical ways the best you can. Anxiety comes from spinning in stressful thoughts.

So how do we untangle ourselves from these anxious thoughts and return to the
truth of ourselves? Ready? Get fed up with the suffering they bring to you and learn to not believe what they’re telling you.

Your attention is like the most nourishing food. What you pay attention to is what grows in your awareness.

Pay attention to a hypervigilant mind that’s trying to keep you safe, and all those fears and what if’s become your living reality.

But stop believing the content of your thoughts, and your attention is free to come back to the actual here-and-now reality, not the false one living in your head.

It was a turning point in my path when I realized that just about all of my thoughts:

• Were not actually true; and
• Didn’t bring peace and happiness to my life.

I wanted peace more than anything, so I started experimenting with not believing what my thoughts were telling me. I just gave up letting them take over my experience. They kept appearing, but I saw them as random noise in my head, rather than something important I needed to pay attention to.

Instead, I stayed present in the actual moments of life right here, right now, and I discovered that everything was just fine. In fact, only here do I find enjoyment, enthusiasm, contentment, gratitude, and love. I stopped worrying about the future, trusting I could deal with whatever comes.

Right now, take a moment to recognize the thoughts that are making you anxious. Notice how persistent they are and how you feel when you’re thinking them.

Then stop feeding them with your attention.

There’s no magic, no fairy dust or special technique that will take these thoughts away. You just need to stop being interested in them as much as possible.

What do you do instead? Appreciate the life that’s here right now. Take a breath…feel the physical sensations in you body, but don’t give them any meaning. Maybe even stop using the word “anxiety.”

With your attention in deep connection with the present moment, you’re simply here with what’s real…alive, breathing, and grateful…

Don’t be concerned when the anxious thoughts keep reappearing, because that’s what they do. Each time is fresh. Each time is your opportunity to lose interest in them and return to peace.

Keep trusting in the life force that is infinitely greater than your false personal self. Keep returning to the aliveness that is who you are.

This is the anchor that will set you free.

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“I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars.
I started listening to the teachings of my soul.”
~Rumi

What are you looking for? Do you want to discover how to stop suffering?

Wake up to the truth of who you are?

There are so many beautiful teachings available to help you—more than you will ever need!

But don’t think they will give you all that your heart longs for.

You can read books, watch videos, and attend retreats forever, but until you apply these teachings to your own in-the-moment experience, you won’t find the peace you’re looking for.

Teachings are valuable as they point the way for you, but it’s unlikely that anything will shift until you turn toward your own inner experience.

That means putting down the books turning off the videos—and slowing things down—so you can notice the reality of the moment…the quality of your breath…the sensations that are present…the pace and tone of your thoughts…the uncanny sense of stillness underneath it all.

At the beginning of my spiritual path, I meticulously read several books on meditation. I spent weeks thinking about it, trying to understand it, and going over the instructions. I think I may have been a little scared to try it because I didn’t know what would happen.

Then one day, I mustered up my courage and decided to sit on a cushion, close my eyes, and be still. And that’s when everything began to change.

I left the mental realm of hope and imagination. I stopped intellectualizing about meditation—and entered the amazing world of my right now experience.

No source external to you can give you the experience of awakening or healing from your past or the freedom that comes when an old habit starts to fall away. Because these are not things that you find through learning.

They’re the fresh and alive reality of what you actually experience in the moment.

Say you’ve only heard about honey, but you don’t know what it is. You can hear 100 people describe the color, texture, smell, and taste, but until you put some on a spoon and take a taste yourself, you won’t really know what it’s like.

You have to experience it yourself to know.

So my words of inspiration for you today are simple: do it! Taste the honey. Put down the books, videos, and even this article, and:

• Take a quiet moment with yourself. This might include a conscious breath.
• Shift your attention away from your thoughts—any concepts, stories, or ideas about things.
• Open to being aware of your experience right in this moment.
• Now, notice the input from your five senses—what you see, hear, smell, feel, and taste. Notice sensations and energy in your body.
• Get a sense of any emotions that might be here.

Just for now, don’t resist. Be curious about what’s arising. Meet whatever is here with unconditional kindness.

This is reality…you’re here and fully alive…coming back to yourself…to conscious, heartfelt living, wisdom in everyday life, and the deepest intimacy with all things.

You can’t know any of these experiences if you don’t turn within.

It’s normal to be lost in our minds with our attention out in the world of people, objects, and situations. We’re seeking happiness, but we’re not going to find it there.

Instead, turn inward. Feel into your own experience. Then meet the world with wonder and amazement.

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Note: I’m excited to announce my next 6-session course entitled, “Deep Trauma Healing: Tending the Ground for Awakened Living.” It starts on Friday, October 15, and you can find details and registration here. The course is designed for a deep dive into our conditioned patterns as we lovingly support each other in our desire for real, embodied freedom. I’m offering a free info call about the course on October 12, details here.

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“Generally, between two people there is very little real meeting. There is only the coming together of two patterns. This causes conflict and boredom.”
~Jean Klein

These powerful words in the quote above by Jean Klein call us into a deep exploration of how we show up in our relationships.

When we come together with others, steeped in our patterns, we bring expectations, judgments, needs, and hopes. We feel fear, loss, and separation.

We come ready to project our past history onto the current interaction, seeing the other through a veil of mistrust or longing. We’re terrified that we’ll be rejected or ignored. We’re primed to be triggered by the other person.

How does that feel in your body? Edgy…stressful…anxious…sad…?

What I love about this path of truth is that we take nothing at face value. A spacious exploration of the patterns we bring to our relationships reveals this: deeply held fears that developed when we were young that landed in our minds and nervous systems.

Within just about all of us, there is a young part who feels alone and scared. And from those tender feelings develop strategies of withdrawing, shutting down, or seeking love and approval. These are intelligent reactions in the situations we were in years ago that helped us to cope.

It’s not the illuminated freedom of our true nature that withdraws, shuts down, or seeks love and approval. It’s the pattern. And knowing this invites a new relationship with these conditioned thoughts and feelings.

Rather than living as if they are true, we can observe them, which is a powerful shift. Then we’re free to turn toward our emotions with welcoming, attuning, soothing, and reassuring. We’re giving them the loving attunement we’ve all wanted when we were young.

Almost like a miracle, we feel these delicate emotions, and at the same time have the space to stay present. This is how we show up in our relationships free of patterns.

Then our hearts are truly open, and we’re intimate with ourselves and others.

This quote goes on to say, “Your neighbors and friends have ideas about you. Do not be taken in by these ideas or in turn have ideas about them. Don’t imprison people in your memory.”

Everyone with unexplored patterns is projecting them. We have ideas about others, and assume they’re true. Others have ideas about us, and we assume they’re true.

The invitation is to come to our relationships—with ourselves and with others—free of the past. This means acknowledging whatever separates us—resentments, judgments, hurt, fears—and holding them in love. We’re not imprisoning ourselves or others in our memory, as this is limiting…and fundamentally false.

Can you reflect on bringing this possibility of freedom from the past into your everyday life—with your partner, children, parents, friends, and colleagues? What arises for you?

Jean Klein finishes with, “So live in your surroundings as if for the first time. Be without qualifications. In this nakedness you are beautiful and every moment is full of life.”

This doesn’t mean that our patterns don’t appear. They do, and we get caught in them.

The beauty of exploring the nature of reality is that we realize we don’t have to identify with the patterns. We don’t have to live in the world—and in our relationships—as if we are small, needy, and fearful, expecting others to reject us.

Underneath these limitations, when you explore deeply enough, you discover the illuminated essence of who you are…fresh, alive, and free of memory.

And this is where intimacy with all is possible.

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“The Master does his job
and then stops.
He understands that the universe
is forever out of control,
and that trying to dominate events
goes against the current of the Tao.”
~Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu

If you’re living a human life, then you will experience change and loss. Maybe you’ll be diagnosed with an illness and experience physical pain and difficulty with daily functioning. Or you’ll break your leg and lose your ability to walk for several weeks.

Aging will creep up on you with changes in how you look, move, think, and feel in your body. People close to you will die.

In the course of life, we lose things we rely on and even take for granted—people, physical capabilities, our health, and eventually our vitality.

There’s a basic truth about reality…if it comes, it goes. There’s a free flow of experience in form that arises within the field of conscious awareness, and all of it, ALL of it, is temporary. This means that loss is an essential part of the human experience…and we feel it intensely when we are attached to forms.

Without even realizing it, we define ourselves by the most common experiences in life—relationships with our partner and children, our roles, our health, the choice to move about freely, and our dependence on the most basic abilities to see, hear, walk, and breathe.

We think things will last forever as they are…until our expectations are disrupted by the mystery of life showing itself…

Feeling into the reality of change and loss, we realize where we’re attached. Are you attached to having control? Do you cling to things staying the same? Are you petrified when change is on the horizon?

Then you are being invited into an exploration of the nature of of reality. And what you discover is the temporary appearance of forms arising in the ever-present boundless field of alive awareness.

Here you open to the possibility of experiencing the unfolding of life not by having your happiness dependent on forms remaining the same, but by being the spaciousness in which they come and go. This is where freedom lies.

You may grieve when your hair starts turning gray or your children leave home or you can’t see and hug your loved ones, but you also know the wisdom of resting as unchanging aware presence, letting the objects and situations of everyday life come and go of their own accord. Then you’re in harmony with things as they are.

Letting go of stories that make us desperately grasp what we want, we settle into the fact that we have little control over what happens. Miraculously, we’re now available to be fully present with what’s here.

No longer veiled by the fear of loss, we’re completely fresh in the moment, free to notice, feel, appreciate, be intimate, and love. Our hearts are touched over and over as we celebrate what is, just as it is, with abandon. We stay in harmony even with our shared grieving. So authentic…and tender…

Know this: what comes, goes. You have what you have for the time that you have it. Reflect deeply on this truth, and follow the mystery that life offers you…

Embodied Awakening Intensive Upcoming course starting Tuesday, April 13. Please click here for details. Join the free info call on Saturday, April 10 by clicking here.

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“When personal identification vanishes, all that then remains is a sense of presence without the person, which gets translated into a feeling of life as total freedom.”
~Ramesh Balsekar

Did you ever notice how much we think about ourselves?

Track your thinking for even a few minutes, and you’ll probably notice a constant flow of self-focused thoughts.

• My opinion is…
• This is what I think should happen.
• This is what I want to happen.
• I want…
• I need….
• I don’t want…
• I don’t have…
• I’m comfortable.
• I’m not comfortable.
• I’m nervous, scared, angry, or sad.
• I’m inadequate and unlovable.

The common thread in all these thoughts is me, me, and me. We’re the star of our own story with our ideas about ourselves shining in neon lights.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but if this self-focused thinking is not serving your happiness, it deserves your exploration.

I was once in a yoga class, and the instructor started with this brilliant suggestion, “Don’t think about yourself for a while.” Why is this a helpful suggestion? Because thinking about ourselves is usually stressful.

Self-focused thinking separates the world into me and others, good and bad. It constantly reminds us of what is missing or not okay. And it leaves us living under a cloud of negativity.

Check it out in your own experience. What do you think when you think about yourself? How do you feel? Do these thoughts bring you ease and joy.

Then try not thinking about yourself for a while and see what happens.

I’ll share a little secret with you. You don’t need to think about yourself much at all to function well in life.

You don’t need the judgments, worries, and analysis to know what to do and do it well.

In fact, without these “me” thoughts taking up your mental space, you’re quiet, aware, and available to what the moment is offering you. There’s room for wonder and insight, ease and creativity.

You move from problems and drama to openness and allowing.

And you know what else? You can’t take things personally because there’s no limiting “me” thought endlessly finding fault with what people say and do.

Notice how your self-focused thoughts affect you. Then lose interest in them. Know that they’re taking you down a road you don’t want to go, and leave them be.

Then expand into the spaciousness of your present moment experience. Without the story of me, what’s revealed? Effortless ease and a heart overflowing.

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“Wisdom is knowing I am nothing, love is knowing I am everything, and between the two my life flows.”
~Nisargadatta Maharaj

Note:  Please consider joining the upcoming mini-retreat on October 17 and 18. I would love to see you there! Click here for details.

I am fascinated by the intersection of the truth of nondual reality with our experiences as humans in our everyday lives. This is where the spiritual rubber meets the road.

It is a knowing beyond words to realize formless, timeless unity as eternally present. Beyond stillness…beyond silence…the pure Isness of existence…

And then someone annoys you or you’re facing a difficult conversation or a pandemic hits and changes all your plans. What then?

If nondual reality is true, it’s not just present in the blissful experiences of oneness with all. It’s here right now—in this irritated feeling, this disappointment, your reaction to your partner’s anger, loneliness and the longing for connection.

How to live from the truth of reality in these very human moments? This is a powerful question, as it invites us to be as aware as possible of what arises in us in our own direct experience.

And it brings into focus the lens through which we live: our underlying limiting beliefs…and unexplored emotions and triggers from longstanding conditioned patterns.

Sometimes the aliveness in the moment is obvious. We effortlessly feel happiness, delight, gratitude, creativity, and expansion. Without thinking, we see things clearly, a response emanates from us, and we’re generous, caring, and courageously authentic.

This is the free flow of being creating itself in human form…unfiltered and natural.

But when things feel more complex, we’re invited into deeper awareness of our present moment experience and into a process of discernment. How can we navigate what is here in this moment, not from programmed reactivity, but from the fundamental truth of essential unity of all?

Here’s a real-world example. A while ago, I wrote about bringing attention to the comparing mind, which creates a belief in ourselves that we’re lacking something. I received an email from one of our readers telling me she compares herself to others as a strategy to reach her goals. The sense of competition motivates her, and she was asking how to be on this path of realizing oneness while setting and accomplishing goals.

If we approach this question from the belief in separation—that who we are is actually a separate and limited self and not an expression of the singular unifying force—then comparing and competition make sense—and may actually help us to succeed. In this case, “succeed” means to meet our goals (for example, money, recognition, a sense of being “better than,” goals that may boost our sense of self).

But if we know, even conceptually, that the source of all forms is the one abiding vibration of life, then our whole perspective changes. Because there is no “other,” only the one source manifesting in different forms.

Coming from the belief in separation, our goals are self-focused, designed to feed our personal ideas about ourselves. But in the light of truth, they’re an expression of the whole.

Rather than trying to do better than others, we might contemplate how our goals contribute to the interconnected web of life. How do they serve the collective?

And instead of competing, we take in apparent others as no different from ourselves, feeling joy for their successes and wishing for their well-being as well as our own.

We move out of a mindset of limitation and embrace the totality of unlimited potential. We consider action informed by this knowing.

Simply said, we meet everything in love…the fragmented parts of our own inner experience, the pain and humanness of others, the earth, nature, our breath, even the COVID-19 virus…everything…and we move forward from this deepest connection with all.

By its nature, separation creates the other…and the need to protect and control. We all know how that feels.

Consider the radical possibility of seeing everything through the eyes of love. Expand out of the mindset of separation and into the all-encompassing field of clarity and love…where everywhere you look you see yourself. It’s humbling to the personal self and touches the heart endlessly.

How can you bring this perspective to practical everyday situations? There are treasures here just waiting for you…

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