“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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“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
~Oscar Wilde

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Our desire for embodied conscious living asks us to make a deep dive into our present moment experience.

And this includes all the little moments of daily life, the ones we take for granted, the ones we walk through under the veil of same, old same old.

Some ways of reacting are so familiar that we don’t even think to stop and question them.

Awakening into the reality of things is all-encompassing, including everything. No stone is left unturned as we notice all the times we turn away from openness and into habit and robotic living.

Noticing these moments is rich with possibility…

When we live in our conditioned patterns, we’re steeped in fear and separation…not love. There’s a sense of an inside and outside—a person in here who lacks comfort, attention, or safety, and a world out there that we strive to control to fulfill our needs.

We’re like hungry ghosts, terrified of our inner emptiness while focusing desperately outside ourselves:

• Seeking approval and recognition;
• Scanning for danger so we can protect ourselves;
• Trying to measure up to meet others’ expectations.

We’re ill-at-ease and feeling divided…from ourselves and from life.

While searching out in the world for the peace we long for, we’ve neglected to include an essential part of the unified whole…our own inner experience.

That’s why living from the inside out feels so right. We shift our attention back to being aware of ourselves and perceive the world from here. We open to:

• How we react in our nervous systems;
• How our conditioned patterns color our view;
• Letting ourselves feel how our hearts are touched by the people and situations around us;
• Melting into the peace that’s possible when we stop the tendency to move outside ourselves.

We may not realize it until we begin to notice our own experience, but we are sensitive beings. We react to what goes on around us, and these reactions are full of insights.

You’ll discover you judged someone because you were scared. You find the tender places within that need your loving care…not your avoidance. You feel the benefits of slowing things down so you feel less stressed…and more present in your life.

If you’re not aware of your inner experience, it’s a guarantee that your conditioned patterns will be in charge of your reality. And your life, the real one here right now, will pass you by.

Consider living from the inside out. Touch everything you notice with your loving attention. The lines between inside and outside begin to blur as you open to the oneness of all.

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“We cannot solve problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
~Albert Einstein

If you’re part of the human race, then your mind probably compares. It’s the nature of thoughts to divide the world into this and that, good and bad, better and worse.

The comparing mind tells you you’re not good enough and that others matter more than you. Comparing leaves us irritable about the weather, wishing for a better childhood, and striving for perfection.

Take a moment to feel into your comparing mind. How does it tell you that now is not good enough? How does it convince you of “if only”…if only your reality were different, then you would be successful, approved of, or just plain happy.

I have studied this comparing function in myself and many others, and here’s what I’ve concluded—comparing never makes us feel good.

Usually, we come up lacking. And even if we convince ourselves we’re special or better than others, we’re still caught in a story that makes us feel disconnected.

Check out how your mind functions for the next few days. My guess is that every time you feel badly in some way, you’ll find that comparing has taken hold.

In my experience, the comparing mind is harsh and makes us feel tense…and sad. Who wants to live feeling like others have the key to happiness while we’re left lacking?

So how do we find our way out of comparing and back to peace, love, and harmony?

It’s important to know that you won’t find the solution by staying entangled in your thoughts. This is the “if only” strategy—if only I were thinner or more successful, then I would feel better and stop comparing.

The solution is not in hoping to achieve something that you feel you don’t have now, as this will keep you striving forever. So, as Einstein says in the quote above, another approach is needed, which is to turn away from the whole comparing function of the mind so these thoughts don’t create your reality.

Comparing thoughts are veiling your true nature as peaceful, whole, and perfectly okay. When you don’t put your attention onto these thoughts, what happens? You realize you’re here, breathing in this moment, alive to your senses, not thinking about yourself and what you think you’re lacking.

Yes, the thoughts will probably return…and that is another golden opportunity to ignore what they tell you and open again and again to the reality that’s actually here…not the false one in your mind.

Don’t think yourself into being. Instead, stay still. Don’t move your attention into stressful thoughts. Look closer than the comparing mind to the living, expansive vibration of this now moment.

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