Happiness Articles and Blog Posts

Fully Available to Life

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

What is the point of living if we aren’t enjoying ourselves? This is the question that came to me as I was thinking about my full to-do list and worrying about an upcoming presentation. And it stopped me in my tracks.

When I took a look at all the things that seemed so important to accomplish, clear seeing showed me that everything was just fine. Nothing was late, and all was well.

It’s a pattern that can grip me—the need to do and keep up with tasks—and it was beautiful when the light of awareness pierced through these false and stressful thoughts. Immediately, I was home—to peace, relaxation, and pure enjoyment.

Here, I’m empty of conditioning and fully available to life!

Radio Interview

Where can you let go to return to ease, simply being here as pure presence?

This is one of the questions we discussed in an interview I did recently on ConsciousTalk Radio. The interviewers, Brenda Michaels and Rob Spears, were so much fun, making for lively conversation. Here’s the link to the interview that starts at about 4 minutes in. I hope you enjoy it.

Interview on ConsciousTalk radio

Book Available for Pre-Order

Also, exciting news! My book, The End of Self-Help: Discovering Peace and Happiness Right at the Heart of Your Messy, Scary, Brilliant Life, is available for pre-order. It will be released on April 16, but you can order it now from Amazon.com in the paperback or ebook version.

Here’s the link: Pre-order book on Amazon

If you’re thinking of getting it, this may be the right time. You’ll be helping the book get noticed by Amazon, which will spread its message about happiness and freedom to as many people as possible.

It’s called The End of Self-Help because we’re not broken, damaged selves who need help. We’re already whole, full, and overflowing, and the book explains how to realize this. You’ll be able to read all about it on April 16.

What About You?

So for now, my question to you is: what stories can you let go of that trick you into believing you’re damaged or inadequate? What do you discover when you get out of your own way? I’d love to hear… And if you’re reading this by email, please click here to visit GailBrenner.com and to comment.

Always in love,

Gail

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The End of Self-Help—Book Now Available!

Book now available for purchase. Please click here.

“Brimming with crystalline clarity and the love of truth, Gail Brenner’s The End of Self-Help invites us to see through the illusion of the separate self and discover our inherent freedom, wholeness, and well being in the midst of our ordinary lives. This beautifully written book sparkles with vibrant insight and is a welcome antidote to the endless and errant self-improvement project!”

~John J. Prendergast, Ph.D., author of In Touch: How to Tune in to the Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself and senior editor of The Sacred Mirror and Listening from the Heart of Silence.

I couldn’t be more thrilled to be announcing the publication of my first book entitled The End of Self-Help: Discovering Peace and Happiness Right at the Heart of Your Messy, Scary, Brilliant Life.

Writing this book has been a labor of love. I’ve completed a project that’s been in my heart to birth into the world for over 20 years. It’s taken commitment, the willingness to move through unexpected fear, and patience with myself and the process.

And at every step, you, the ones who will be reading it, have been in my vision. It’s an offering that flows straight from my heart right into yours. And I can’t wait for you to read it.

The End of Self-Help

“Until you know yourself to be essentially whole, and not the wounded and broken one who needs to be fixed, the true solution to your personal suffering will remain out of reach.”
~from The End of Self-Help

There are now hundreds of articles in the archives of this blog, but the book offers something fresh. It’s not a compilation of blog posts that you’ve already read. I’m excited to share it with you because it offers the way through your personal struggles to discover that it’s always possible to be peaceful and free. This is what I’ve found to be absolutely true.

The title, The End of Self-Help, refers to the fact that we are not damaged, inadequate, limited selves who need help. We certainly can think we are, if we take our thoughts and feelings to be true.

But here’s what’s possible. When we open to the truth of any given moment, we discover that we don’t have to believe false ideas about ourselves and the world. We don’t have to get caught up in habits and emotions that don’t serve.

We can rest our attention here, in presence. We can know ourselves as the space of pure being that is luminous, endless, and alive. We can soften into the heart and find the essence of life everywhere, knowing nothing is separate from anything else.

This is the possibility for all of us—to, as the subtitle says, “discover peace and happiness right at the heart of your messy, scary, brilliant life.”

Nothing about you needs to change for you to be happy—it takes only a simple shift of attention.

Chapter Descriptions

Here is what the book covers. At the end of each chapter is a section called, “Explorations” offering experiments and contemplations to make the content come alive in your own experience. And each chapter includes an audio meditation, which you can find here.

Introduction

The introduction describes the problem with the concept of self-help and offers the alternative: that we don’t need to look outside ourselves or wait one more second for happiness. We aren’t broken, and we’re not missing what we need to be happy. I also offer my story of how I’ve come to this realization.

Chapter 1: Finding Yourself

This chapter begins to go deeper to describe how our attention gets glued to thoughts and feelings that make us suffer. And it guides you to realize, in your own experience, the relief from freeing attention so it can rest in the simplicity of pure presence. The chapter concludes by inviting you to question your identity. Maybe you aren’t defined by your limiting thoughts and painful feelings. It lays out the path, developed in the rest of the book, for discovering your essential wholeness and boundless true nature.

Chapter 2: Clear Seeing About Unhappiness

Together, we explore exactly why and how we suffer, including stories from the past, our current right now experience, and our belief that who we are is separate and limited. You’re continually guided to realize the effortlessness of just being, available in any moment.

Chapter 3: Showing Up Ripe and Ready

This path is radical in that it invites you to question everything you take to be true about yourself, others, and the world. This chapter highlights 6 essential qualities to find within yourself and bring to this investigation.

Chapter 4: Running and Staying

You’re guided to become familiar with all the ways you avoid and resist what you’re actually experiencing—and to be truthful about the painful effects on your life. We go deeply into the topic of emotions so you can learn to relate to them with intelligence. You’ll learn the beauty, and surprising relief, of simply opening fully to what is.

Chapter 5: The Puzzle of Thinking

Believing the content of our thoughts takes us away from what’s true, yet thinking is a powerful force that magnetizes our attention. This chapter offers many suggestions for relaxing attention away from troublesome thoughts.

Chapter 6: Kidnapped by Fear

Fear deserves its own chapter because it lies at the root of the belief that we’re the separate and limited entity our thoughts tell us we are. We learn about the subtle faces and voices of fear and how to be with the experience of fear so it’s no longer in control.

Chapter 7: Hijacked by Lack and Desire

At the foundation of the separate self who we think needs help is the belief that we’re broken and lacking. This chapter guides you to see through these false beliefs to realize that the truth of you has always been pure and innocent, untouched by anything that’s ever happened, and overflowing with infinite potential.

Chapter 8: Awake in Relationship

No longer needing to protect or defend the separate self, we’re free to show up freshly in our relationships. We discover ways to be with emotional reactions, the wisdom of seeing through attachments, and the truth about loss.

Chapter 9: Natural Curiosity

This chapter addresses important questions about change, acceptance, thinking, emotions, and spiritual awakening.

Chapter 10: Finally Home

What is embodied and awakened living? How do we live when we’re no longer driven by thoughts? In this chapter, you’ll find out about goals, stress, life purpose, and the simple joys of ordinary life.

Living It in Your Own Experience

My intention for this book is to break things down so clearly that you can’t help but realize the insanity of identifying yourself by your thoughts about the past, worries about the future, or the disease rampant in our society—feelings of inadequacy.

You’ll understand fully why and how you suffer—and discover another way.
You’ll be so knowledgeable about fear that it stops having power in your life.
Your thoughts about not being good enough just won’t make sense anymore.
And you’ll realize that you’ve always been who you really are despite your distractions—pure consciousness, spacious, open, and transparent.

Then you’ll practice bringing this new understanding to your relationships, life choices, emotions, thought processes, and quest for a life purpose. Maybe, like me, you’ll revel in the ordinary unfolding of everyday life that overflows with palpable presence and love.

This journey is radical because it invites you to question everything you take for granted—every belief, viewpoint, identity, assumption, and expectation. So I’ve offered some guidance.

There are explorations at the end of every chapter where you are encouraged to apply what you’re reading about to your own direct experience. And there are new guided audio meditations available for each of the 10 chapters.

There’s a wondrous discovery awaiting you. It’s the end of self-help, of waiting to improve at some future time, and the living, breathing possibility of peace now…and now…and now…

Always in love,

Gail

5 Welcoming Ways to the Peace You Long For

“Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever.”
~Jack Kerouac

Awakening to your true nature means that you realize the absolute truth about yourself. You know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are not the limited, separate person who lacks, strives, needs, and defends.

You realize with every cell of your being that you are the endless peace that includes everything. You know that your true nature is love itself.

You don’t become anything different. The only change that happens is that you consciously recognize what has been true all along. Your attention was just too distracted to see it.

When you know this truth, you realize that you are, and always have been, effortlessly aware and at ease. While you’ve been busy resisting your experience, wanting things to be different than they are, there’s been an undercurrent of okayness with everything that you’ve simply overlooked.

Just take a moment to be still. Can you feel it?

Imagine that your whole life has been played out on a stage. You’re in the audience, maybe enjoying the drama, but you’re able to walk out of the theater undisturbed by it. The deepest part of you has watched your life story play out, but it’s pure. It has never been touched by anything that’s happened.

Knowing this, you’re in the world, but you don’t take it all that seriously. You see through emotions so they don’t grab you. You no longer spend energy defending, denying, or looking elsewhere for happiness. You’re simply here—fully alive in your humanity, fresh and innocent, free and receptive to what life offers.

How do you come to consciously know this truth? It’s revealed in its own time. But don’t wait until the clouds part and grace illuminates your true nature. Orient your whole life to living beyond your limited ideas of yourself and the world. Be persistent in your daily life by inclining yourself toward peace.

1. Be Deliberately Aware

Living unconsciously leaves you churning in automatic habits. You play out conditioning without really knowing what you’re doing or why. It’s an agitated way to be.

The medicine for this dis-ease is to be deliberately aware. Take some time every day to simply, consciously be alive to your present moment experience. It might look like:

10 minutes or more of daily meditation where you sit as open space, allowing your experience to come and go;
Take a breath when you realize an emotion is present and welcome it, especially helpful when you feel stressed, frustrated, or defeated;
At the end of every day, reflect on how habitual patterns caught hold – what feelings were behind eating that bag of cookies when you didn’t want to, working to get someone’s attention, ruminating about things that make you sad or worried?

Our culture beckons us to distraction and busyness. Whenever you remember, do the radical thing by just being still and aware.

2. Open Your Mind

Become very familiar with the beliefs you hold that structure and resist reality. Then play with letting them go.

What if you didn’t expect anyone to do anything? What if you forgot to believe that you’re fearful and unworthy? What if things are just fine as they are without your trying to control them?

Every day, keep inviting your mind to open…open…open. Let it be clear like the sky. Entertain the possibility that all this thinking is unnecessary.

3. Get to Know Your Body

Many of us live in our heads, consumed by trying to figure everything out. But there is a whole realm of your experience that you’re missing.

The experience of all emotions and unconscious habits includes sensations in your body. While you’re worrying about all the things you need to do, there are places in your body that are tense and contracted. If you feel sad, your body may be heavy, dark, or vacant.

Simply experiencing physical sensations supports you to break through automatic habits. Always include them when you become aware of programmed ways of being.

How do you do it? Notice and consciously experience the physical sensations that appear. When?

When you realize you’ve been engaged in a tsunami of thinking;
When you’re consumed by emotion;
When you’re bored, lost, or confused;
Anytime.

Open to all of your experience with great awareness. It’s delicious to be alive to what’s actually happening. And, if you stay with it, it brings you home to the ease of pure presence.

4. Don’t Know

How often do you show up like a robot, saying the same words you’ve always said, expecting the same reactions from others? Try this instead.

Show up fresh, without knowing what will happen. Make the space for things to unfold naturally, not as you expect them to.

Stand before a loved one forgetting any history;
Be with someone who triggers you with your mind on hold and your heart open;
Be in a familiar environment, seeing it for the first time;
Taste, touch, see, and hear things freshly;
Wake up in the morning and spend a few hours not knowing what you’ll do or say;
Open to the possibility of experiencing awe and wonder in the simple things of ordinary life.

5. Notice Awakened States

Knowing who you are is the experience of effortless relaxation, ease, peace, happiness, joy, creativity, and fulfillment. But there’s no need to wait. If you tell the truth, aren’t there moments of these experiences that naturally occur in your daily life now?

Awakening is already who you are—whether you consciously know it or not. So the simple act of noticing what’s already true aligns your mind, body, and heart with the source of all, which is life.

As you go through your day,

Notice, and enjoy, when things go well;
Recognize when your heart opens in the face of beauty, tenderness, and love;
Be appreciative when creative ideas appear;
Surrender your desires and dissatisfactions into peace and happiness.

Just like the true nature of a wave is ocean, your true reality is the infinite splendor of the universe. Remind yourself that nothing is personal to you—it all appears by grace. Then you’ll bow down in gratitude to everything.

What About You?

What is it like to come home to yourself? How do you return? I’d love to hear…

And if you’re reading this by email, please click here to comment and to visit GailBrenner.com.

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The Glorious Practice of Becoming Unglued

“The choiceless truth of who you are is revealed to be permanently here permeating everything. Not a thing and not separate from anything.”
~Gangaji

If you rely on your mind to tell you about how things are, you’re asking for trouble. Because it’s the mind that divides, compares, judges, and evaluates.

It tells you that you’re not good enough, that you’re better than, that you’re lacking or insufficient. It makes you feel confused and anxious in your daily life. It seduces you into thinking that others are here to threaten you, annoy you, or withhold the love you long for.

It makes your feelings spin out of control.

Misunderstanding Who You Are

When we define ourselves by our thoughts, we forget the truth: that we are immeasurably vast, that peace is our very nature, that everything is connected, arising from the one universal source.

We forget that—before any thoughts have taken hold—we are awake, aware, and fully alive. We are pure existence minus the content of thoughts, without any form or personal definition.

So how do we go from this idyllic state of infinite awareness to these limited, separate, troubled entities we believe ourselves to be? Why don’t we live what is actually true?

Through the power of conditioning, limitless awareness gets glued to thoughts.

We are told from birth that we are separate and individual.
Our personal view of ourselves is reinforced by others and by our own thoughts.
We identify as a person with a name and gender who has goals, needs, fears, and desires.
We live this misunderstanding of who we are, incorrectly believing that thoughts are the true description of our reality.

The joy of simply being present is lost as we scramble to protect ourselves. We think we are lacking so we try to find happiness in the future that never comes. We strive to get our needs fulfilled—our thoughts deterring us from realizing that everything we want is right here, perfect as it is.

The Practice: Becoming Unglued from Thinking

How to unglue your lovely essence from thinking? How to live the truth of who you are?

Lose interest in thoughts. Ignore them. Don’t take what they say as truth.

You simply let go of focusing on the energy and content of thoughts. And you realize that you are aware and free, boundless and awake. You have no personal identity to protect or condemn. It’s so relaxing, so effortless to give up focusing attention on anything.

You flow like water.

Losing interest in thoughts is an invitation for your attention to disengage from thinking. You don’t need to stop thoughts or change them. These are strategies that take way too much effort to sustain.

Instead, see that thoughts are simply appearances in the expansiveness of presence. They don’t essentially mean anything—unless you believe them.

Losing interest in thinking means you turn off the switch to everything you know. If you’re honest, it hasn’t been working for you anyway. Then,

You can’t feel inadequate.
You can’t be caught in anxious thinking.
You can’t worry about what the future might bring or ruminate about the past.
You have no capability to doubt, analyze, judge, or ponder, no repetitive mental patterns to distract you.

When you rest in presence as spacious awareness, thoughts may appear, but they don’t agitate you. They can be present or not—but either way, here you are…aware, undefended, peaceful.

This is true freedom. Reality re-created fresh in every moment. You: innocent, pristine, whole, undivided.

Always Here: Unattached and Free

The habit of thinking is so powerful that forgetting will happen as awareness again attaches to thoughts. You may miss the pure aliveness that you are many times. Be concerned only with freedom in this moment.

Your clue is that you suffer. Be patient—it takes time to erode this connection. Be kind—take a breath, and let the thoughts go, every time.

You are instantly, consciously, gloriously aware.

You already know that peace is right here waiting for you. Deep happiness, joy for no reason, gratitude that can’t be contained, wonder, awe, stunning clarity…these are glimpses of a crack in the thinking armor that lets in the light of conscious awareness.

Notice these. Live here.

The challenges of life still happen. Practical thoughts will appear just as you need them. And here you are—unattached and free.

What About You

Have you become unglued from thinking? Do you think your thoughts are real…or not? I’d love to hear…
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Is It Time to Come Out of Hiding?

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
~Soren Kierkegaard

It takes so much energy to hide from yourself. And it’s such a relief to let yourself be seen.

You realize that you’re essentially whole, that who you are has never been broken or lost. Coming out of hiding is the choice that will begin to set you free.

Discover the Hidden Core

Hiding from ourselves is at the root of all suffering. Are you suffering? Then it’s guaranteed that you’re avoiding some part of your inner experience.

If you’re caught in feeling shameful or inadequate, if you feel alienated, confused, or alone, if your relationships are fiery or shut down—then some thought or feeling is there in you that hasn’t yet seen the light of day.

Do you find yourself playing out unsatisfying habits, even with your best intentions not to? There is a hidden core that remains unexamined.

You’re avoiding feelings that you’re afraid to experience.
You ignore the signals that appear in your body.
You take for granted that you’re small, limited, and lacking.

And the amazing secret is: you’re not only hiding from your feelings, you’re overlooking your true magnificence, the natural aliveness that is the essence of you. Yes!

Hiding Creates Inner Division

If you hide from your experience, you set up imaginary walls that determine which feelings are acceptable and unacceptable. A feeling arises, and your inner guard is on alert. Is it okay for that feeling to be experienced? Is it too painful and scary? Do I need to push it away and pretend it’s not there?

You end up feeling fragmented and insecure. And you spend your precious energy protecting, defending, and figuring out how to stay safe.

Coming Out of Hiding

Is it time to come out of hiding? Be fierce and gentle at the same time. Find the willingness within yourself to let everything be seen. It’s so freeing! And bring love and care to your experience as you shine the light on all your nooks and crannies. Be courageous, even fearless, with whatever you discover.

There’s really nothing to it, once you’re ready. Instead of turning your attention away into compulsive thinking, an activity, conversation, or any other way you know you distract yourself, turn your attention toward your experience. Just be curious to see what’s present.

When you have an emotional reaction to something or someone, rather than going into your mind or lashing out, be quiet with your own direct experience. It’s been given to you, so you have a choice: ignore or welcome, defend or embrace.

Ground yourself as the expansive field of presence that includes everything. Then feel what appears. Let your attention fall deeply into the sensations in your body. Simply be with them.

This is where the heart of any stuck emotion lies—in the physical sensations.

Each time an emotion arises, feel it in your body. You might start with 30 seconds, then a minute, then as much time as you need. Allow the sensations simply to be in the sacred embrace that accepts all.

True Welcoming

Sounds simple, right? Now, here’s the paradox. Welcoming emotions in order to get rid of them is not true welcoming. It’s like receiving a friend at your door and telling her she needs to leave as soon as you don’t want her there anymore. Doesn’t sound too friendly, does it?

There’s no goal other than to let things fully be as they are in the moment. That’s the way to freedom, the way out of hiding.

Have no preference for what appears—just allow it as is. Don’t choose this and not that. Don’t separate your experience into what’s okay and not okay.

Be so patient as your long-lost feelings emerge from the darkness of your inattention. Don’t worry about the time it takes. Every moment offers the invitation to be completely at one with yourself.

When you give up the fight with your experience, what becomes apparent is this: the peace of being, the simplicity of pure presence. Your inner guard no longer has a job because there’s nothing to protect or defend.

You’ve come out of hiding. The veils are gone. And here you are—peaceful, alive, and at ease.

What About You

Have you come out of hiding? Are you resisting? Please share in the comments. I’d love to hear…

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