This show references an article in American Psychologist titled "Mental Balance and Well-Being - Building Bridges Between Buddhism and Western Psychology". The idea of this talk is that goals, in and of themselves, are not bad things; but that choosing goals wisely is very important. When a sense of dissatisfaction is our reality how do we choose what goal to shoot for? What will make us happy and what will not?

What we are really looking for in life is stimulus free well-being. Science is proving that stimulus driven happiness doesn't last. This is due to both the transient nature of things, and also our own mental imbalance and lack of understanding. Science is starting to see that true well-being comes from a state of mental balance that can be cultivated. We cultivate well-being in many ways, but the one idea that primarily fosters it is self knowledge and self awareness. Choosing to make well-being, and ultimately self awareness, our goal ends up being the goal that makes us happy.

This talk tries to explain the motion of desire, and our two choices. One choice is to satisfy the desire, and again science is showing us more and more that that doesn't work in a lasting fashion. We always want more. The other thing to do is to make well-being our real goal. Once we realize that well-being comes from self awareness and mental balance, we can choose to examine the dissatisfaction when it arises. This doesn't mean we don't accomplish things or have external goals. It means we understand more and more clearly what really makes us happy and what does not.

Stimulus driven goals can be meaningful, but don't lead to lasting happiness. Understanding this is a huge step toward greater wisdom and compassion in our lives. Examining our goals to see if they are stimulus driven can be an amazing exercise in helping us find happiness.

It makes sense that people who don't have much feel a sense of lack. It doesn't make as much sense that people who have tons of stuff, lots of money and means, also feel lack. One point of this talk is that the sense of external lack is driven by an internal lack. If we learn to get our joy from inside, we don't need these external things to the same extent. Another point is addressing the actual lack in people and places on this planet.

I've talked before about the state of consciousness that expresses enlightenment comes from a place of abundance. It has arrived. It has what it needs. It's interesting to see that the external things we want, all the Christmas gifts, and all the status we shoot for, they are fleeting. As I make a higher salary, I still want a higher salary. There is a treadmill here, and I'm not going anywhere no matter what I get or accomplish. Can we see this fictitious sense of lack and expose it?

Real lack does exist on our planet. There are lots of people without enough food. Lots of people without homes and basic needs being met. But at what point do we realize that we are abundant? For those of us that are not starving, and do have shelter, at what point do we feel abundant? Most of us never do.

This sense of lack drives our governments and our corporations. If we were to realize, deeply realize that we are abundant internally. What would change on this planet? One way we can make a dent in the actual lack on this planet is realizing we have enough both internally and externally. If we have enough, we can begin to share.

One could argue that there has been an evolutionary need for the feeling of lack. In small circles without enough resources the strong survive. But now we can see the entire planet, and we've never been able to do that before. We all have enough. There is enough food. There is enough money. For the first time in the history of the world, we can see that there is enough.

Those literal external expressions of lack are probably not fixed only by a redistribution. We can't necessarily just feed the hungry. Historically that ends up creating more dependence and corruption than help. So the issues of lack are complex. But we have the capacity at this point to realize that we all can make it. In the past only some of us, the strongest of us, were going to be able to make it. But now we have the technology and the capacity to work toward all of us making it. All of us having meaningful and productive lives.

What would change on this planet if we all realized that there is enough? There is enough joy. There is enough food. There is enough money. The world is abundant. We are not stuck. The only thing keeping us stuck is our own erroneous sense of lack.

This talk is about how non-dual experience can inform our morality. It was inspired by a magazine article that painted non-duality as morally irresponsible. Non-duality is not irresponsible. In fact, it can deeply inform our morality.

What is morality? Morality defines and distinguishes between right and wrong. Our own history and belief systems are where our morals are born. It's important to note that our morals are not universal and can vary greatly. As much as we feel "our" morals are correct, they in fact are relative. There are endless examples of clashing morals, and this is where most wars come from.

So if we describe our relationship to morality in shades, we could say that on one side, there is a person who is fully attached to right and wrong, and all the personal beliefs that support what is right and wrong for that person. On the other side, there is someone who is experiencing a non-dual state; they drop the attachment to good and bad and do not experience duality. All different levels of attachment and morality fall in between these extremes.

If we choose to experience non-duality our morals are informed. This does not mean they are lessened, or weakened. We do not now prefer bad to good. Rather, loosening our attachment to morals can bring deep wisdom. Once we see non-duality, we become less attached, and because of this we are able to deal more easily with complex moral issues.

The world is seeming more and more complex as globalization occurs, technology increases, and more choices in general become available to us. It can often be helpful to come to that complexity with the mind of "I don't know." Non-duality comes from place of "I don't know," instead of the belief based "I know how it should be" mind set. This allows us to approach complex situations in a more authentic and capable way. "I don't know" allows for finding out. "I already know" does not. Right and wrong attachments can often be based on beliefs that are not relevant or helpful.

People who practice meditation have the opportunity to work with their beliefs as they practice. But all people see the edges of their moral value systems when things upset them. When we get upset, it's time to get non-dual. Take a moment to focus on your breath and become still when dealing with things, this will allow for a new morality.

In this podcast we have a fist fight at a gun show. Two men, both deeply interested in safety, take very different stances on how to achieve that goal. One, having been mugged and beaten before feels as though having a gun will offer him safety. The other man, losing his son to a gun accident, feels that guns need to be banned. From those different stances, a fight ensues. If they had been more clear on what they really wanted, which is ultimately safety, they would have been able to avoid conflict.

Conflict often arises between people that have the same end goals, but very different means goals. An end goal is a goal that once accomplished is finished. A means goal is a goal created to help achieve an end goal, but isn't an end unto itself. We often get too attached to a means goal, missing opportunities to achieve the end goal in different ways.

I explain that even what we normally think of as end goals, are really still means goals for what we all really want. Our true end goal is really the ability to manage our own states of consciousness. As an example, we don't really want money, we want the feelings we think money will give us. That may be security for some, and bliss for others, but it's the state of being that we want, not the abstraction of money. It turns out that everything we do is in relation to managing our states. Knowing this can breed wisdom and allow us to navigate conflict, and the world in general, with much more ease.

Whenever we come to inner frustration or external conflict, we are at the edge of one of our own attachments, or means goals. Taking the time to be introspective in those moments will help us gain clarity to what we really want (state management) instead of the thing for which we might be fighting (a means goal).

How do we remember what to do when we feel lost in our daily lives? Metaphor can be a great teaching tool to anchor ideas into our reality. "Connecting to the vine" is a great way to describe connection to oneness.

What happens when a leaf gets cut away from a vine? It tends to wither and die. This talk discusses this idea as a spiritual metaphor. If we consider the expression of oneness as the vine, then our identification with self is cutting ourselves off from that vine. While identification with self can feel quite cut off, it is often called an illusion because we can never leave oneness. We can only identify away from oneness, not actually be away from it. Changing our identification back to experiencing life directly, we reconnect with the vine.

It's simple to do. We can use times when we're stuck in line, or in a traffic jam, to bring our focus to the physical sensation of life and reconnect to being. We can make the effort to truly listen to coworkers, instead of thinking of what we'll say next. This allows us to be present while with others. Whenever we need to walk somewhere, we can bring our attention to the physical sensation of walking to bring ourselves back to the vine of being. And of course we can chose to allow a more formal space for connecting to the vine through meditative or introspective practices.

In this talk I also discuss Jesus and the idea that he was the expression of being connected to the vine. If we change our concept of Jesus from needing to go "through him" to understanding that he was showing us "how to be" connected, we can actually begin to emulate how he lived. If we leave it as an idea, we won't be able to express his love.

Part of evolving as a human being, and part of the teaching that I'm trying to promote, is about bringing awareness to all the aspects of our lives. One of the big accomplishments in psychology has been identifying and naming what's been called the shadow. To understand the shadow we'll try to describe a fictional "whole self" and then discuss damage that occurs which can create shadow.

What is a whole self? We could say that it is someone fully identifying with all the ways he/she can interact with the world: Thinking for objective experience. Emotion and body for subjective internal feeling. Spirituality for a larger context. Having access to all those experiences is what we might call being whole or fully self. (FYI - This is a different meaning of self, a more healthy meaning, than what I normally use to describe self.)

Shadow literally means to obscure the light. A shadowed element of self is a part of us that we don't identify with. Commonly that can be an emotion we don't relate to, or it can be how we relate to our bodies, minds, or spirituality. Any part of self that we have become disidentified with can be termed the shadow. Again, our shadowed elements are any part of us that we don't have the ability to identify with directly. Shadow elements are often brought on by trauma, and solidified by our beliefs. Working with shadow is extremely difficult primarily because we don't see what we're not conscious of.

How do we find our shadow? We begin to find our shadow by looking at things that bother us - anger in other people or situations - behavior we know we do, but deny as "us". Often this will be perceived as someone else's "stuff." It can be out in the world, but shadow can also express itself in our dreams. Therapy can help us find the shadow, in fact most of what therapy tries to do is work on reintegrating splintered parts of self and foster becoming whole.

To begin working with the shadow we make the effort to bring aspects of our self into 1st person experience. Literally taking 3rd person experience and working to make it 2nd person, and ultimately 1st person - via role playing dialog and perspective shifting. This is a great way to reintegrate shadowed elements of self.

Turning subject into object is both a concept and a practice. In this talk I discuss the difference between inner and outer experience and how that relates to subjective and objective experience. We need to define perspective - subjective experience is what I identify as "me". Objects exist within my awareness, but are not "me".

An interesting point to note here is that even things I identify as me can be objectified. I have a foot, but I am not my foot. My foot is still me on some level, but I am able to objectify it. That ability to objectify internal experience is important.

If we find we are angry, that is our subjective experience. Turning subject into object would be backing up from that anger with a question: What am I right now? That shines the light on our experience and objectifies the anger. We can't see the subject, we are the subject. But we can see things once we objectify them.

You may say, but Rob, I see myself get mad all the time. That's true on two levels: One level is that you flip between subject and object to some degree all the time, and the other is that you see it now, when we're objectifying it together. But learning to do this as a practice can lead to profound change in your life.

Who is the self that backs up from the subject to objectify it? That is the age old question. Another question to ask is which of these perspectives is self? That really depends on whose talking. Self can mean egoic separate sense; or it can mean, in some Indian traditions as an example, the cosmic oneness. We can get lost in words very quickly here. But the aware self in the background is what is often termed either just "awareness" or "authentic self". Ego would normally be considered the smaller self.

The practice of mindfulness is a subjective experience, practice of awareness is an objectified experience. We need to do both. When you are angry, you are smaller. When you are aware you are angry (have objectified the anger, but not dissociated from it) you are larger. You are the anger and potentially the solution.

So how do we make the subject the object? We use introspection, questions, and cultivate awareness. The desire to see what you are brings this objectivity to the situation. We see as objects what we are. This is the practice of meditation. What is arising for me in this moment? We can make a practice of it, or we can do it when we realize we are unhappy.

Just the simple action of making the subject the object allows us space for change.

There are two types of judgement or choice, and it is a mistake to make either of them bad. In this talk I will describe the two kinds of choice, introducing a new kind of judgement.

Many people in the spiritual community condemn judgement. They've had experiences where they saw the freedom in not judging a situation and so judgement becomes a bad thing (which really is just another judgement). In this talk I hope to clarify that judgement is important at all levels of spirituality, but that there are fundamentally two types of judgement for two types of levels or experiences.

When we judge something and condemn it, it doesn't feel very spiritual. Most of the world is doing this most of the time. I'll call this the level of "betterment". We judge between good and bad and are always wanting the better of the situation. Very normal, and again, where most of the world resonates.

When we discern, or judge, to not attach to a situation, we are potentially coming from (or moving to) a non-dual or what many people think is a very spiritual place. Both of these actions use judgment. One is on the level of betterment, and one is on the level of non-duality or spirituality. This non-dual judgment is the new kind of judgment. It is the development of awareness.

What most of us are trying to accomplish in meditation, or learning our own minds, is an appreciation of what is. A non-comparative experience of is-ness. No good, no bad, just is-ness, or stillness. That type of experience is often called non-dual, and we try to experience it during meditation, and since meditation has a spiritual stigma surrounding it, we tend to equate spirituality with non-dual states of mind.

The more normal experience is on the level of betterment. The level where I prefer this smell to that smell, this feeling to that feeling, this person to that person. The first talk I did was on beliefs, and how beliefs are born from opinions. Well the level of betterment is the dance of comparing what we believe we are, with our situation; and striving toward the better aspects of that situation. An important point in this talk, and all my talks is to remember that we have the tendency to solidify our beliefs, but that it might serve us to soften our beliefs about who we are so there's less "us" for phenomenon to bump into. This is not unhealthy dissociation, it is being aware of our ability to judge things in many different ways. I'll discuss more on beliefs later.

I'm going to define a couple other words right now: relative and absolute. Relative is the dance between two or more things, and absolute is oneness (or potentially nothingness, but that's another conversation). If I am comparing something to something else, or even something to myself, I am in a relativistic good-bad frame of mind. If there is no comparison, and there is only experience of what is, then I am in a non-dual, or what we might call a spiritual state of mind.

So the concept for this talk is this: if we use judgment to support a good or bad belief, or a betterment belief, meaning a qualitative stance on things, then we are not acting in a traditional spiritual fashion, but we are acting on a betterment fashion. On the other hand, If we are using judgment to choose a not belief based, not good or bad comparison, but our choice is to choose non-comparison itself; then we're acting deeply spiritual, or deeply non-dual. That ability would be the new kind of judgement. The decision to drop comparison.

Many people are dancing in this space without much context at this point. They learn about the non-dual state of mind, and all of a sudden duality or the betterment level is bad. But, we're not supposed to always act spiritual, or non-dual. To think about it differently, this entire life is spiritual, but many people take spiritual to mean non-dual experience only. You might start to feel that we can bring the term spiritual to both levels: non-dual and betterment; if we see that awareness or discernment are involved throughout. My betterment decisions become more spiritually based when I have the non-dual experience available to me.

The betterment level is where we can lose weight. It's where we make more money. It's where we can actually affect change in our lives, and other peoples lives. It's not a bad place. We want to get better at dealing with the betterment level because it is a part of life. We just don't want to remain lost in the betterment level only. We need both in our toolkit. If we don't have any ability to just "be", to just feel the situation, to move our solidified center of self out of the way, then we don't have as many tools. The non-dual experiential side allows us to see the beauty in whatever comes up. Without that we don't have the freedom side of things. So one is the work (betterment), and one is the freedom (non-dual experience). Most of us are just stuck in the work.

So this is a discussion on judgement, on good and bad, on beliefs, and on how all this stuff arises. The belief part is the me that comes up against the decision. The me that feels the pressure of the situation. So many teachings teach that we need to authentically feel our feelings, and I completely agree. But not many teachings mention that our feelings are relative to who we think we are, and what's going on in the situation.

If you step on my foot, there will most probably be physical pain, but most people assume there will be tons of healthy anger there as well, and there certainly might be. However, the levels of anger depend completely on my perception of the event. If I believe you meant to do it, there will potentially be lots of anger. If I have compassion for your frustrated situation, there will potentially be less anger. If I believe it was completely an accident, there is the potential for very little anger if at any comes up at all. So the anger is not absolute, it is relative to who I believe I am and you are in that situation.

Most of us walk around with a solidified self that can't have it's foot stepped on. Most teachings would say that we need to include the healthy anger that comes up with all these situations. But that assumes a static unmovable self. The ability to move self, or choose (which is a new kind of judgement) what we want to attach to or believe in, allows us a deep freedom and is acting on the non-dual side of things. Learning this level of judgment allows us to have more options when that conflict arises. I can change the me that is in the situation. Fully dropping the me is to fully drop the relativistic quality of the situation (feel the feelings, choose to drop the judgement). Having these options in our toolkit is the building of awareness. Awareness is what I have called discernment in the past. It is the comparison and knowledge of where we are.

So we use the tension of the betterment level to achieve, and we use the freedom of the non-dual level to grow spiritually. The two kinds of decisions we have available to us are on two very different levels, but both are really necessary.

So normal judging is between relative things and is on the level of betterment. Judging (or choosing to experience) the level of absolute is non-dual and a new kind of judgment for most people. When we are stuck without the new kind of judgement, without the discernment of awareness, we are stuck in the betterment side of things only. That is generally a reactive and not very full experience of life. Once we learn these other tools that we have available to us, it allows us to navigate and improve within the betterment level, and it also offers the entire spectrum of non-dual experience as well.

In this show I discuss honoring imbalance. Many people (including myself) critique the world and describe the need for "balance" (listen to my last show, I use that very term). This talk discusses three ideas:

The first idea is that everything is in a state of achieving balance. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. As we push something over, we watch it achieve a new balance. The action involved is the "balance through movement" also known as imbalance.

The next idea is that we prefer an ideal state of balance, but that's just not realistic. The entire world is in motion. Constantly balancing itself through imbalance. The beauty is in honoring the imbalance. We have the capability to stay still through that motion.

And lastly, on the level of betterment, imbalance brings growth. When we're stressed and feeling the pressure, we can be comforted understanding that we are growing.

This talk is really an exercise looking at the split between internal/external, and thinking/experiencing. I discuss the words below and ask you to identify with each word as I do.

thinking	experiencing
form	feeling
outer	inner
external	internal
different	similar
motion	stillness
time	now
attachment	freedom
expectation	actual
them	us
you	we
disconnect	awareness

First we go one by one down the rows identifying with each side. Then we look at the left column, and identifying with all those states of being. Lastly we look at the right column.

The point of this is to show that we often find ourselves living external thinking lives only. We should balance that with the internal feeling experience from time to time. Being able to dance freely between these different states of identification is a deep fundamental shift.

Everyone listening to a podcast like this is trying to better themselves. I want to commend all of you for trying to do that. This work is difficult, and not enough teachers say that's the case. Many sell this path as an easy fix for people. It can often be very difficult. Meditation is hard. Being authentic is hard.

The big point of this talk is that learning to be authentic brings up difficult things to deal with. You end up seeing that there is potentially a lot to change in your life. Our unconscious lives leave large patterns and situations that we see are not authentic. Examples include: relationships that are codependent and messy, the tools we use to deal with life can be destructive, our work may be dissatisfying, etc. It can be very scary and difficult to deal with these situations once they arrive.

So why do we choose to do the work? One reason is because we have to do it. There is something in you that is searching. You wouldn't be listening to this podcast or reading this blurb if that weren't the case. Something in you knows that there's got to be more. Once we start looking at ourselves, our belief systems, our own inner becoming, we notice that on some level there's a lack of authenticity in our lives. So truths begin to open up to us. We can't go backwards. Once we've seen that our life isn't authentic, we can't unlearn that.

Other reasons we do this work is because we find our joy in different places now. We learn not to fear "bad" situations or "bad" emotions. We become courageous. We become whole. However, you may not get the same pleasure from old things: TV shows, drugs, drinking, overeating. In fact, that lack of satisfaction may have started happening before you knew you were beginning this work. That dissatisfaction is what ends up making people search more deeply.

Disconnect, which is a huge tool for dealing with life situations, may not feel the same. It may not bring the same "peace" it once did. You will, at times, miss it. It has been what you've used to deal with many of life's problems thus far. Instead, you'll now rely on presence, and being true to your feelings.

Teachers often imply that this path is simple and natural; and that the now is always available. That is true, it is easy, but it also can be hard... to find the easy. It's not a long path to this moment. It's always right here, and yet we still miss it. Being authentic can be hard. Be courageous. Keep working. You might find there's not much else to do.

Basic ideas:

• Seeing that good and bad, or pleasure and pain are in all things.
• We can use pain to promote change.
• Ultimately, we can get off the treadmill of pain and pleasure.

Our desire to avoid pain and experience pleasure tends to push us around if we are not paying attention. When we use introspection to learn about the mind we see that we all try to avoid pain and move toward pleasure in everything we do. This is a huge thing to understand fully.

Pain tells us something is wrong, but we tend to overreact and begin to avoid all pain and discomfort. This creates a treadmill of pain and pleasure. Where we are constantly trying to manage our states of mind by moving away from pain and toward pleasure.

We can deal with this three ways:

1. Do nothing.
   • How does this hurt us? Well, if we're unconscious of it we end up not being very durable. We end up running from any and all pain we see. We might think we deserve no pain, and so whenever it comes up, we feel like we're cursed or unlucky.
2. Secondly we can learn to use pain effectively.
   • Think of someone who's life situation is fine, versus someone who is in pain. The person in pain is motivated to change. The person who is fine, may want to change, but will often not go through the bother or work to change because there is really no motivation to do so. This is the first way to use pain effectively. Become aware of it.
   • We can also use pain for gain. This is a way to develop in a worldly sense. It can help us do things like lose weight, or perform better at sports, and evolve spiritually or behaviorally. We can learn to associate pain to things we'd like to change, rather than where they happen to fall. Examples of this might be associating pain with being out of shape, or associating pain to not meditating.
3. Lastly, we can get off the treadmill of pain and pleasure.
   • Pain is inherent in all things. The duality of being shows us that there is both good and bad in all things. Good and bad are facets or opinions of things and situations. So it is unwise to try to always get the "good." It just won't work. Seeing this truth is a huge teaching.
   • Learning to accept pain as a part of the experience is a great teaching of meditation. Pain/pleasure treadmill response is the normal human response to being. What would an exceptional response look like? How can we achieve that state? Meditation is one way.
   • We place ourselves in an accepting mode, and train that response to stimuli. Boredom and frustration, and even physical pain can come up during meditation. It is training to learn about the nature of our relationship to pain and pleasure, and ultimately have the ability to get off that treadmill.
   • We learn to stay through different painful events and not judge them. That lack of judging gives us a different, and better, experience of both pain and pleasure. Then we are off the treadmill.

Learning about this allows us to wake up to the understanding that this is how we're built. We also learn that we can use pain to grow. And lastly, we learn that not fearing pain or being attached to pleasure allows us a deep freedom. Those experiences are a part of the oneness of being. We can learn to relate to them differently.

It would help us greatly if we decided to look at others for our similarities instead of for our differences. It is very natural to see someone of different color, or ideas, and focus only on the differences. In this show I discuss some examples of how we focus on the differences, and how things might be different if we were to realize how alike we all really are.

When we come from a place of looking first at differences, we tend to assume that everything about the person is different. If we can realize that we are basically similar, and that the differences are in the details and perspectives, then we would have much less conflict in our lives.

The ways in which we are all similar:

• emotions
• physical traits
• needs
• behaviors
• we all want to prosper
• etc.

Focusing on differences is very natural. Similarities seem boring. Of course we all breathe. Of course we all feel fear. Not very exciting stuff. But coming into a situation with that literally on our mind helps us to see things in a cooperative way instead of a conflicting way.

What if nations focused on similarities? What if religions did? How might that change our world?

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Today I want to discuss evolution.  There are many ways to think about evolving:

• Individual evolution, societal evolution, human evolution
• Evolutions like Homo Erectus to Homo Sapien, etc.
• Agricultural age, to Industrial Age, to Information age
• An individual growing through identification with self to identification with society
• etc.
  

A good definition of evolution is this:  A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form.

What is the type of evolution I'm talking about today?  Making a habit of coming back to our breath is only the beginning of the deep shift I'm referring to. The evolution would be the significant shift in the capacity of the average human to express and hold onto the state of mind that lives outside of time. Humans would need to learn to be the expression of presence and stillness.  We don't need to stay in that space all the time, but we need to learn about it and make it a larger part of our lives.

Stillness is more significant than just a way to deal with problems.  It can have an amazing impact both on the individual, and also society.

We have made massive technological changes. Those can all be thought of as external. We've learned to bend the world to our wishes to a certain extent. Learning our own minds, learning about time and how we relate to this moment would be an internal evolution. The external changes and progress can and will continue, maybe even faster than it has to date.

Fostering stillness is where the mind needs to go.   All of our problems arise out of attachment to concepts that come from being unaware.  We need to understand that practicing stillness is a bigger deal than just dealing with our own simple problems.  It is actually dealing with all problems.  So it is important work that we're doing.

The world I see involves all these evolutions (each one would be an evolution in it's own right)

• Much less need to express ourselves violently
• Higher desire to appreciate and create art and live creatively
• People become more physically healthy, because our joys won't come as much from physically detrimental substances (smoking, drinking, drugging, eating poorly). Our joys will come from deep connections to being.
• Corporations will learn to be much more sustainable and fair (both ecologically and to people)
• Countries will come from a world view instead of a nationalistic view - lessening wars, learning to cooperate, etc.
• People will base their lives and goals more on finding and sharing meaning, rather then gratifying self (what Maslow thought was the more rare expression of mans purpose)
• We'll have more technological advances as well because much of technology is creative
• etc.
  

Again, making a habit of coming back to our breath is only the beginning of the deep shift I'm referring to. The evolution would need to be the significant shift in the capacity of the average human to express and hold onto the state of mind that lives outside of time.  Stillness is more significant than just a way to deal with problems.  It can have an amazing impact both on the individual, and also society.

In this show I promise not to be too deep. Today I spend a few moments fostering presence with you. I open with a couple of conscious breaths, then onto examples of, and reasons for, bringing your focus back to your breath. I end mentioning that in regard to any learning, we deeply need to apply what we learn. Learning alone isn't enough. Without application, it's just spin.

Fostering presence will be the next evolution of man. Join in that evolution by bringing your attention back to your breath.

In this talk I describe why we seem to be stuck in time, and what an enlightened mind might look like.

If we have the fundamental understanding that there is only this moment; meaning we cannot leave it to go elsewhere, or more specifically that time is a construct of thought, we can start to understand that we need to relate differently to this moment.

None of us would argue that time doesn't exist. It just may not exist as we think it does. We can't go to the future, and we can't go to the past. There is change, but we are always here. The inner desire for a better future is where our unhappiness comes from. We need to learn to stay.

Any expression of enlightenment is an expression of timelessness. There is no wanting for the future. No struggle, or need for anything more than what is. Any expression of enlightenment also is an expression of abundance. Most of us walk around feeling as though we need: We want that car, that spouse, that job, more money, etc. But every expression of enlightenment comes from a place of not want, not need.

If we can learn to drop time when we see our own dissatisfaction arising we will grow immensely.

These two expressions, timelessness and abundance, are related. To learn about dropping time is to learn about dropping wants.

The freedom from time, and want is learnable. We can practice it. That practice doesn't have to be hard. Just learn to bring it back to your breath.

On the level of self and accomplishment, as we learn how our mind works, we can begin to use tools to achieve change and betterment in our lives. We can learn to focus better, make more money, lose weight, eat better, etc. Not only that, we can use the same tools to further our meditation and connection to being. There are many facets to living an optimal life.

We do want to be careful that we don't get too attached to that betterment. Self and ego are attached to these wants, so we need to watch how we apply the tools I'll be talking about today. But the tools are very useful nonetheless.

Today's show will be a brief overview of the power of Intention Setting, Hypnosis, Neural Linguistic Programming, Hemi Sync, Goal Setting and Positive Thinking. All of these "technologies" affect our opinions and beliefs, and hence our perception of the world.

In this talk I want to discuss what might be our biggest challenge. To find a state of stillness, and remain productive in the world. How do we accomplish, while remaining present.

Why are most of us unable to hold on to stillness? Many of us can find stillness, but why isn't it easier to just stay there? This talk assumes that you know what I mean when I say stillness. Some call it big mind, or a state of presence.

I did a talk before called Stillness in Motion. While this talk is similar, it will differ in the level we're talking about. Stillness in motion was a talk about the feeling of holding stillness while we do things.

I've heard Ken Wilber say things like you can't be in a non-dual state and in a state of duality at the same time. I'd be interested to speak with him about that because I have a deep sense of being still, or in a non-dual state while still seeing and being aware of, and able to function in the world full of duality.

This talk will discuss, and point out that we definitely still have the desire to accomplish and do things. We may drop the attachment to that desire, but we still discern.

At the base of our being is a function of judgement. This judgement leads to most of our discomfort. It puts us on the treadmill of time. Judgement says this situation isn't as I would like it to be, so let's change it. It leads to inner becoming. I'm not enough, etc. Many spiritual teachings seem to imply that this is a bad thing. But it's important that we don't vilify this idea. We need this function to survive. It's the same impulse that tells us we're in danger. It also allows for us to better the world.

We don't lose the ability to judge when we're still. I usually begin to describe this judgement as "discerning" to show that there is a difference. It isn't a lost, deeply judgemental, place that we come from, but we can tell what our preference would be. We do chose to walk, and eat, and talk, etc.

Many stereotypical representations of meditation imply that the meditator is unable to discern when in a deep meditative state. That's just not accurate. I mentioned before the Burning Monk, who had gasoline (or some flammable liquid) poured over him and lit. Then there was a picture taken of him not moving. While his experience of that might have been different than yours or mine, he still was aware that he was burning. The amazing thing is not some otherworldly state of mind he found, but rather the choice to stay. The discipline to stay.

The trick is going to be to learn to remain still while we judge and think. Can we remain aware while we judge? We need to learn to watch our judgements. The subtle distinction is this: A frustrated meditator learns about a pleasurable state of mind and then catches themselves thinking and discredits all the stillness they achieved. Whereas, a centered meditator finds himself or herself in a thinking state and watches it, thereby remaining centered.

In this world, we have things to accomplish. There is work to be done. In every moment we look at the world and have opinions about how it could be better, things we need, things we want to have, or do, or give. None of that is wrong. It's really important that we allow for that. There is such a thing as growth. There is betterment.

So is stillness in conflict with betterment? Doesn't stillness imply that we're done? While it is an appreciative state, we can be aware of movement, and the need for change while holding on to stillness. Stillness is a state of awareness. One that is realized and awake to the truth of a situation. If there is betterment to be done, do it, but try to remain aware.

Our innate ability and need to create and judge is what's impairing our ability to remain still. And that's a wonderful thing. The work we're here to do is to marry the two. We're here to blend the duality. We can engage in both experiences, and do our best to remain aware of where we are and what we're doing.

We lose loved ones all the time. We hope for an afterlife. The self wants to grow and be powerful and young. It is completely opposed to it's own extinction. So there is fear and panic around the thought of death for many. In fact, many people can't even discuss it. But all living things seem to pass away. How do we deal with that?

Today we're going to talk about death of the body, but also death of the self. We'll talk about how meditation relates to death, and how putting your life in perspective can be meaningful. We'll talk about the death of others and how to deal with that. We'll talk about the desire for an afterlife, and how death really makes everything deeply meaningful. Death is a part of life, so let's talk about it.

We've discussed in the past, that we are not only self. We are also in some way connected to everything. Can that other identity help us deal not only with our own death, but also the death of others, and finally other types of change as well?

All living things die. But we can expand the idea of death from there. Situations die, friends change, we get divorced. All of these things are mini-deaths. We "die" in a different way as well. I am not the same 10 year old boy I once was. That boy is gone forever. So we are all changing. Everything is in a state of change. Death s a kind of change.

Meditation actually teaches us a death of self. We are putting down the ego and just identifying with the big mind. You obviously don't actually die, and you can retain your "self" as much as you wish, but each time you enter this other mind, you will see it is a death of self in that moment. You will find that this type of practice can change you fundamentally. It can make you more able to deal with change, and hence your own death, and the death of others.

Truly being in the Now is about not thinking about the future. The entire thing is to watch the mind that wants to leave this moment. So in that, the Now becomes much fuller. Our entire attention is on it, and it becomes rich and thick. The understanding of this type of mind leads spiritual leaders to talk about eternity. Many talk about no death, in the death of self. So the temporary idea of you, or your ego, dies in that moment. And what is born is a fuller understanding of timelessness, or eternity.

Pulling away from your life and looking at it on a time line is very helpful and can put your life into a different context. Often we find ourselves just drifting along, but all events are precious, so it can be useful to find that context and check in.

There's an old saying, or it might have been a viral email that went around way back, about filling a jar with a marble for every year of your life expectancy, and removing one on your birthday. It shows the significance of our lives. That could potentially give a deeper context to your life as well.

The desire for an afterlife comes from the mind that that is unhappy and wants salvation. It also may have been used as a carrot and stick for controlling people. But whether that's true or not, it is really important to expose the mind that craves a better future, the ultimate of which would be a glorious afterlife.

We think that to stay moral, our culture needs to be held in a "proper space" with the appropriate carrot and stick. Meaning, if I were to take away the idea of living a good life being the thing that gets us into heaven, people might begin to behave poorly because there's no point in behaving well. The idea of putting down the external carrot and stick scares many people. They immediately image anarchy and insanity ensuing from removing those guidelines. But a sincere morality comes from seeing the beauty that's here, not a future hoped for beauty.

We need to become OK with who we are, without the hope for a prize. Because fear of not getting the prize does not work as our motivation. Fear based morality will not work. The example of extremists who die to get to heaven also cause great pain and suffering. They want the "prize" too much. Their morality is quite different, but also belief based. Either type of morality doesn't seem to be working. To be clear, I'm not attacking peoples beliefs necessarily, I'm just saying that the mind that thinks about salvation, or hopes for it, or gets attached to it, is not the healthiest mind. It is ego based, and fear based. Seeing the beauty right in front of us, rather than being controlled by fear will work much better.

Death of others is very hard to deal with. It is very hard to lose a family member or loved one. We are attached to permanence, which doesn't exist. This is a fault of the egoic mind. While losing things we care about will always be hard, I want to point out that the natural desire for permanence can make dealing with death and change even more difficult. If we realize that nothing is permanent, then we don't have unrealistic expectations around things like a loved one dying. We need to learn to face non-permanence.

Fear of death and the unknown is enormous. But death makes everything matter. Living forever would take value away from lots of things. You'd be able to take literally forever to master things, so being a master chef as an example would have little meaning. We'd constantly be approaching everyone knowing everything, with no risk because we'd have forever to fix any problems, etc. It would be a very different existence for sure. Certainly different than most people would fantasize. Death is a part of life, and it is something we'll do well to get more comfortable with.

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Show Music:

Live At Tonic

Christian McBride
Ropeadope Records

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• Download "Technicolor Nightmare" (MP3, 192kbps)

We're going to discuss what addiction is, and then talk about how we can come to terms with it and what can we do to stop it.  To do this, I'll talk about addiction, in broad terms.  Then we'll do a quick exercise that might help you find what your addictions are.  This could be considered an addiction "workshop", albeit a very short one.  Then we're going to discuss the different quality of being that allows for better choices.  That state of mind, one of presence, can help us end addiction. 

What is addiction?  Addiction lives on the pleasure pain level of being.  So there will be lots of references to good and bad in this podcast.  What are the different addictions?  Drugs and drinking and smoking, of course, but also watching TV, shopping, eating sugary foods, and working out. Some of these are obviously better for you than others.  Some are manageable, and some aren't.  Ultimately, addiction can end up really ruining a person, but it's ugliness doesn't have to wait for that extreme.  All forms of addiction stem from a choice in attention.

I talk about the unhappiness that becomes so big that we end up choosing to drink or drug because we can't face the pain.  The problem with this is that the problems grow.  We're Pavlovian, and want to move toward pleasure.  So it is a slippery slope to not become addicted on some level.  It's important to watch how we manage our lives.

What happens when we're addicted?  While responsibilities are piling up, they become completely unmanageable.  We need the courage to face that, and it's very hard to do.  We usually aren't motivated enough unless there is enough pain.

How do we stop addiction?  What is the different quality of being that allows for change?  I mention the conscious use of pain, and also the use of being awake.  Those two things will allow us to quit our addictions.

Pain is the reason we change or stop.  It may seem odd that pain may also be the reason we started.  That makes sense when we realize that in the beginning, the thing that makes us feel good hadn't become painful yet.  So how painful is your addiction?  Can we make our pain unacceptable before it truly becomes unbearable?  That would be like getting free from addiction early.

So here's how to stop.  You must go into the feeling of the addiction.  When you are faced with that moment of choice, which you've just become aware of, how do you make a different choice?  You feel into the feeling of conflict.  You breathe into it.  In that moment you give yourself enough space to make a different decision.  If you choose poorly, just gather data and don't beat yourself up.  Becoming aware allows us to see the moments.  Those moments, when we see them, we have the power to get free.   We can't face all our problems at once, we need to face them one at a time.  So this is a constant vigil.  This conflict and the needed attention to it will soften over time.

In conclusion, we need to realize the pain addiction is causing us, and that needs to become greater than the pleasure it gives us. 

If we want to evolve it would be good to learn that everything is sacred. Using certain objects to wake up is useful, but we need to watch how attached to those objects, places, etc. we become.

What good comes from making things sacred? It is normal to notice certain things as more orderly or beautiful than other things. We tend to make some of those things sacred. But we should watch how we do this. It is a certain type or quality of mind that wants to do this. Again, it's normal, but normal is not necessarily good. We have the challenge to better ourselves by going for good, without degrading ourselves by getting too attached in the process.

What problems does turning some things sacred create? Good necessitates bad. Many religious wars have been caused by minds too attached to sacred things (Middle Eastern land, etc.). This is also one of the problems with New Age ideas of today. The mind that makes a certain charm, or symbol, or building, or area more sacred than another can become problematic as we get too attached to those objects. The more power we give these symbols as being sacred, the more we have the potential to depend on them.

So is this idea important? I think this has the potential to end wars. If we as a people could see the importance in loosening our attachment to sacred things, or rather, notice that everything is sacred, we could begin to end conflict. No land is better than any other land. Everything has the essence of being in it. Space does, objects do. That awareness is in you, so learn to foster it. Realize that when you are in a mind of preference, that you might be able to look at things differently. You might be able to see that it's all sacred.

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Show Music:

Wholeness & Separation

Halou Vertebrae

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We create pressure in our lives unconsciously that can end up making us very unhappy.  Some of these pressures are deeper and some are more superficial.  One person creates a "have to" situation with accomplishments he/she wants to create at work.  Someone else on a daily basis sets up to-do after to-do and then feels bad for what they didn't accomplish rather than good about what they did accomplish.  Jobs can be self created pressure.  So can houses, cars, and salaries. 

We often aren't able to appreciate our success once it comes, because it tends to move.  I've been with successful people and watched them accomplish goals, and rather than enjoy the accomplishment, they immediately and unconsciously create new goals.

So what pressure are you creating?  This talk points out that we can spend time working on, or watching, what pressures we create for ourselves.  The exercise we could do would be to learn to find your self created limits, or pressures.  Once you see what yours are, you may choose to soften them, or you may not.  It's nice to learn that you can lose your job  You can move.  Your life could be different.  The other side of that is the fact that a conscious goal is a powerful one.  We can choose to work harder for our pressures if we really want to hold onto them.

External pressure is often actually created by us, and thus is internal pressure.  Watch when pressure is created in your life and see if it's really external pressure.  An interesting point is how unconscious these things become.  We sit and think "Of course I have to do these things..."  It's good to realize that we can live in the smaller house.  We can drive a cheaper car.  The kids can go to public school.  But they also may not have to.  Becoming aware of our pressures allows us to support them or put them down as necessary.  It's up to us.

Question I'd really like answered for a future talk:  What, if anything, would be the best thing humans could do to make the world a better place?  Please leave an answer as a comment to this blog or email me directly.

In this talk we explore paradoxes and logic and point out where we'll find them in learning about stillness.

One interesting paradox is "This sentence is false." Another might have to do with using language to define impossible situations.  The logical mind doesn't like paradoxes.

The most common paradoxes we will find in these talks tend to come from different levels of experience clashing against the same thing, or the idea of the same thing. Normally those two experiences come from a mind that feels separate from the moment, and the mind that feels at one with the moment. If you have no concept of what being one with the moment feels like, it is simply when we are doing anything without critique. That's stillness in it's simplest form.

Another example of paradox, as I'm defining it here, is the good/bad dilemma. Having something that seems bad turn out to be good. Or learning something from a bad thing, and finding good value in that learning. Then the thing is good and bad, etc.

What I am really trying to describe is the problem with being "away" from reality. The normal existence of man feels separate from life. We feel distinct and separate from other people and things.  I'm trying to discuss the sense of oneness, and how a separate mind will often not find logic in discussing oneness.  In that lack of logic we will often come to paradoxes.

All spiritual traditions seem to be based, or at least discuss oneness.  In Christianity, the original sin is about mankind leaving stillness, or oneness, to come to knowledge. We obtained the knowledge of good and evil. It's man entering duality. In Christianity they say that after death we go to heaven. Is it possible that all that needs to die is the self?  Because there is no self in stillness, can we come to a heaven on earth?  Taoism speaks of everything being the Tao - that is their reference to oneness.  Buddhism speaks of stillness and oneness frequently as well.  This is all mentioned only to point out that oneness seems to exist, even though our normal experience is a separate one.

So are we OK with paradox?  Can a mind see that paradoxes exist, and move past them?  Can we put down the discerning mind to come to peace?

It seems many people want to get the idea of what enlightenment looks like.  We're all trying to "figure it out."  I get many emails discussing understanding these ideas.  This podcast is about doing them instead.

The "Now" has become very trendy.  So let's not get lost in ideas about it.  We even have great philosophical minds telling us we don't have time to be in the now, which is a bit ridiculous.  What I think they are saying is that we shouldn't be trendy about the Now.  

Because we can play with words and ideas and labels at this level we should see that we will never "figure it out."  Rather we should look at the desire that we have to figure it out.  The idea of how to do this is less important than doing it.  Our minds want to become experts, and so we look at all the possibilities of "getting lost" so that we can be sure that we will win "when those things show up."  But that state of mind is already lost.  The waiting, thinking, planning mind is exactly the mind we are trying to put down.

Someone comes across the idea of being at peace.  And they are listening to these podcasts, and trying to meditate.  And they realize they are not at peace.  The mind that is trying to get to peace is lost in time.  The mind that wants to "DO" peace is the mind that puts down expectations.  This may feel very unnatural to us.  We want to figure it out instead.

So when we "DO" peace, when we allow for peace of mind by coming to this moment, whatever it is, we are doing it "all the time".  Because we start to realize that now is all there is.  

The important concept is this: getting to this moment "is the end of it", EVEN if we leave this moment.  Sounds like a cop out, and is hard to get your mind around, but it's the truth.

So let's look at the actuality of living in the Now.  We don't care if we can do it permanently, because that is another idea.  We just want to do it now.  When we come to the Now in this moment (whenever that is), we realize that this moment is always here.  So that is all we have to do.  The mind will kick up again and say things like "You won't be able to do that in the future."  And that may even knock us off a bit, but seeing that once we DO come back, there is no tally of how long we've been gone.  So doing it now IS doing it forever.  Because the illusion is the mind that creates a future that doesn't exist.

So doing it in the now is as simple as coming to what you are, your breath, this moment, the sounds, the fears, the whatever, without worrying if you can do it again later.  If you're doing it now, you're doing it forever.

Important thought:  The gap between our experience and our expectation is our unhappiness. 

Experience is what's happening to us.  Expectation is what we'd like to happen to us.  How many people do you know who live in a state of almost constant disappointment over their life situation?  They are simply comparing what they experience to what the expect, and leaving a huge gap between the two.

There is a freedom away from this type of mind if we want to find it.  It takes a different mind set.  It will help if we can see the pain this behavior creates. 

Which can we control, experience or expectation?  Movies and TV often imply that we can control the world, or should be able to.  Science implies that control or prediction should be our greatest goal. 

An awake person realizes that we can control, or at least deal with the expectation part of this better than the experience part of this.  That realization is huge. 

This is a talk about fear and fear based teaching.

Any teacher that offers fear should be watched very closely.  There is nothing to fear.  You cannot kill god.  The death of bird, the Exxon spill, 911, tsunami's and hurricanes, all of it can't kill god.  We may not understand it, but it is OK.  Even the extinction of the human race can't kill god.

If we can learn to identify with god-consciousness, we will see that we are a part of the whole.  That realization allows us to not fear things.  We are temporary, but we are part of the infinite.  All things in the infinite will change, but the infinite itself is timeless.

The idea that we need to save the planet is quite funny.  What we really feel is the need to save ourselves.  When we set up the idea that we need protection, we introduce the birth of fear. 

The planet will be just fine whether we litter a five feet deep layer on it, or blow craters the size of Texas in the side of it.  It will be fine.  It's us who feel we need the protecting.  Wild life extincts itself and yet new species are born.  Change is constant.  I'm not at all saying we should try to extinct things, but as we do, we don't kill god.

Leave a plot of earth barren or in any horribly assaulted condition and eventually life will come back to it.  We're getting better at making it barren for longer periods of time, but we still can't stop life.  Life wants to come forth.  And so it will.  There is nothing to fear.

Fear based teachings aren't helpful.  We need to learn to grow past fear.  "Bad" actions, like mistakes and killing things come from a fear based mind.  If we open to a fearless state of mind, we will make better choices.  Not a reckless state of mind, but a truly fearless one.

There has always been catastrophic things to fear.  War, famine, sickness, nuclear attacks, etc.  Our current struggles are nothing new.  They won't end until we evolve past the idea of fear.

We all die, and need to learn not to fear that.  But we most importantly need to learn to live.  The illusion is that we're not OK.  This world is perfect as it is.  This moment never has anything wrong with it.

Quoted the Tao te Ching: #46.

Happiness comes from being.

All the things we enjoy (dancing, drinking, drugging, driving cars, watching sports, etc.), the parts of those things that bring joy are the "being" parts.  So what this means is that the things we chase don't bring us joy or bliss.  We already have happiness inside us, we just need to learn to listen to it.

Just being is blissful.  If you start judging and call a situation bad or good, you're not being anymore. You're thinking.

Action that makes us happy does so even when we don't understand presence because being pours in anyway.  How much better could it be if we learned to foster presence?  That is the state of awakening that everyone is talking about.  One, because you would be able to have more happiness in general. And two because, you become non-dependant on things.  Your job doesn't bring you joy, your money doesn't bring you joy, your relationships don't bring you joy because you already have joy.  That is true freedom.  It's our mistake thinking joy and happiness are outside us.

This is not to say that we only foster presence and don't do things anymore.  Rather we continue to do many of the things that bring us joy and we learn to foster more joy from them.

We can become fearless because there is no way to take our happiness.  There is no way to separate us from bliss once we know where it comes from. 

Making any kind of change is very difficult when we aren't truly committed to it. So what is commitment and how do we find it?

I see people use meditation and become spiritual all the time to feel better when they are sad. But they often drop the practice once things get better. Finding commitment is hard to do, but we don't want to get caught in the common loop of: being in pain, working to escape it, forgetting we were in pain. We can't really escape pain fully until we learn to stay committed to change through all seasons.

Can you practice stillness when the world is good too? Can you "sacrifice" to try to stay awake at all times? This is not meant to imply that being awake isn't fun. It's only meant to show that commitment is necessary for lasting change.

How can we stay committed? We can use anchors. We can surround ourselves with books and podcasts and ideas that support our goals. We can commit to practicing meditation. But what is the thing underneath? It might just be our pain itself. Finding your reason to stay committed is really important. What happened to you that got you started down this road? What pain happened to you? Make a point of holding on to that.

People often mention that we can't change other people. I disagree. We are all connected and intertwined. A change from you affects me. So if there is learning, if there is change, then we can point to something. We can find the "ah ha!" we can turn on a light switch for people.

In this talk, the light switch is the idea that being committed makes change easy. Finding commitment can be hard, but once we find it quitting smoking, eating differently, losing weight, meditation, all become simple. So what's your reason to stay committed? Make that an "ah ha!" for you. Create new grooves of thought. Be awake to your pain. Change.

I want to clarify what I mean by "to be" because it is actually more than one thing.  It is both "to be - still" and also "to be - what you are."  This may be hard to stomach because these seem to be in opposition, but they are both really important.  It's actually many many layers, and facets of things to wade through.  So let's look for more language around this issue.

"To be still" implies working with the mind through concentration and space to "still" the busy mind.  You might think of this as the Buddhist way of practicing meditation.  It implies a lot of things:  Peace, but also difficulty in finding that peace.  It has a sense of carrot and stick to it: I'm not still now, and I want to be still.  So time is implied.  "I'm not what I want to be."  There is a part of us that is trying to grow.  This is the part that realizes that need for growth.  This type of practice is important.   We could call this discipline.

"To be what you are" implies a looser idea, of "I'm OK" in any situation.  So if you are busy, be busy.  If you are still, be still.  You could think of this in a more Taoist sense, or more "zen" if you will.  Up is down, right is wrong, everything is OK.  This sense is much less rational, but also very important.  It's being gentle with who we are.  It's also dropping expectations about what we are supposed to be.  This is the state that has no conflict, even when "conflict" is there.  Meaning, in this state, you are not trying to be anything but what you are.  This is the awakened state.  This you might call freedom.

So the discipline allows for the second freedom, in a sense.  The discipline is hard, and the freedom is soft.  They are two ends of a spectrum.  The Buddha talked about the middle path, and this is what he meant.  You can't leave your mind too loose, it needs some discipline.  It also can't be too rigid, or you never actually sit in the space of freedom.

A mystical Christian might say that since everything is God, each moment is the expression of God right now.   We should learn to be  in alignment with that, and it takes forgiveness (being what you are) and a bit of discipline (learning to be still) to align with that expression.

So the practice of meditation is working with your mind to still it.  But it is also the practice of forgiving, or allowing to be whatever is.  You may sit and have a busy mind.  That's OK.  You may sit and fall into a lot of freedom, that's OK too.  If you feel too loose, bring some discipline.  If you find you're being too rigid, loosen up.  That's the middle path.

Anger has it's place. It is there to move us. It tells us things aren't right. But we don't want to get lost in anger. We need to be conscious of it.

Compassion means: Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.

There are two phases to turning anger into compassion. Phase one is looking at the situation from the other person's perspective. Phase two is understanding that people must be in pain to act the way they act.

There are things that people do unintentionally that upset us. Phase one would be to take the time to see things from the other person's perspective. There is really no need to be upset once we understand that we are all trying to get somewhere in our car. Once we see that that person doesn't know our situation, and was just acting probably as we would act if we were them. That perspective allows space into the situation. It allows perspective and understanding.

Then there are times when the other person is actually being malicious. They are trying to sabotage us in our work environment, take our job, abusing power, trying to embarrass us in public, or they are treating us poorly in one way or another on purpose. What do we do then? Well, you still use phase one, which is looking at the situation from their perspective. Once we realize that that person is doing something we don't understand, we try to find compassion.

The way we find compassion is we begin to realize, right now, that people don't act poorly like that unless they are in pain. Unless they have been wronged in the past.

I will point out that it's interesting that humans don't need to be taught to lie. A small child will lie about being caught in the cookie jar all by themselves. But that's just self preservation, it's not really malicious.

If we make it a practice to one, look at problems from the other person's perspective, and two, understand that people are in pain and act poorly because of it, we can turn our own anger into compassion.

This talk is about the box of language. The main point is that since we are all one, when we create the separate reality (the one to talk about), we are "lying" to ourselves.

Language creates a box of agreement. But we are still separated by perspective. A smaller point but something we tend to miss. Perspective is what language is trying to relate, but we trust memories as if there was little or no perspective. Again, this is a different point than the main theme, but still important.

Language will always be incomplete. You can't capture things with language, you can only point. The structure of thinking ends up being a detriment because we tend to remember our judgements about things. The language of the situation. We tend to get stuck in the labeling mind rather than the listening mind. The party was "bad". But not to someone who enjoyed the party.

Language is a descriptor. It is an abstraction of truth. It adds a layer onto truth. So, what's the point? Why discuss the box of language? Well, as we're trying to open our minds, we need to learn that we can think differently.

I discuss the need to talk. The need to fill space with commentary. Truth comes from the act of listening, not speaking.

I also mentioned oneness and unity consciousness. Mentioned the book Cosmic Consciousness and Ken Wilber's No Boundary. All the greats had this state of mind, or state of being.

Other interesting points: Math is a language. We use words to define other words.

As we grow and consciously evolve, we will find wisdom in many situations.  However, we should watch how attached to those opinions we become.  We often will want to tell other people how to be, and get very attached to what is "supposed" to happen. 

The main point of this talk is that once you find yourself with strong opinions, use that as an anchor to wake up.  Even if you are morally correct, once you are attached to an idea, you start to become just as lost as someone doing wrong.  It is much more important to bring presence to a situation, than the right action.

New-agers often get lost here.  It's not about getting to the right beliefs, it's about seeing all your beliefs.  It may be right to not want war, but as we fight for that idea, we begin another war, or argument, or conflict.  That's when the idea of being right, or fixing the situation breaks down.

We may have opinions about how other people should live, eat, and behave.  All those opinions can come from a deep caring, and our advise can often be sound.  However, when we get to attached to our idea we've gotten a little lost.  Learn acceptance instead of righteousness.

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Show Music:

Building the Bass Castle Vol. I

Voltage Flameshovel Records

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Worry has become an epidemic.  We seem to almost always have a background sense of worry.  Worry means to feel uneasy or concerned about something; to be troubled; to cause to feel anxious, or distressed. 

All worry is the same thing and we need to learn what it really is: An irrational habit of imagining a future that often doesn't come. We ruin this moment when we worry.  We think we're helping ourselves by planning for the worst, but it's a very negative, and unhealthy way to live. 

We can see that worry is useless.  Once we see it's uselessness, why would we ever let it affect us again?  The next time we are deep within a situation, we tend lose perspective.  We think that the new situation is the most important situation ever.  "If I don't get this work done, my boss will be upset."  Often our fears are not even true, but even if they are, it often doesn't matter as much as we think.  We end up being irrational about the consequences. 

Does your worrying about something help the situation?  I bet you work better, faster, and more accurately when you're calm or in the zone.  Worry tends to lead to mistakes.  So it's a very illogical place that we find ourselves:  1) we've created a small situation (not an earthquake tsunami, but rather filing papers!) to worry about.  2) We've chosen a less effective state of mind to deal with whatever "problem" exists.  This is a horrible habit and a huge error for humans.

Examples of worry include things like our safety (staying away from strangers), humiliation (work projects, being bad at something we have to do), etc.  When the thing worried about actually happens, the event itself is often no big deal.  Yet beforehand we act like the world will end.

The fix:  Learn to bring your attention back to your breath.  First realize you're worrying, then drop it.  The practice of meditation helps learn to drop the situation.  There is no use in holding on to worry.  Worry is ALWAYS IN THE FUTURE.  It can't exist here.  So bring your attention here to drop it.

What is the definition of form?  I'm not sure I've seen as many different definitions for a word before.  On dictionary.com there are twelve different definitions before moving into forming and other variations of the word.  So what I'll do is try to tell you how I mean it here...  

In the total of experience, if we were to leave that as one thing, there would be no forms.  Forms then arise out of that oneness.  These forms are the things that we separate out, like people, cars, and trees. 

So far, they seem to be separate "things" but I want to take that further.  They can also be ideas, and anything else we can name and feel separate from.  They can be a job.  A job has no physical form, but it has an idea form.  Anything that is not us and can be named can be called a form for the purposes of this talk.

A feeling is the experience of a situation, the form is the idea of the situation.  Another way to think of it is that forms seem external to us, and feeling seems internal to us.  All forms are in the thought realm.  Something becomes a form when we give value to a separate entity, giving it a name, etc. 

Feeling is open and receptive; it is listening.  Form is naming, or talking.

Two points to make today:

1. There is a literal practice of bringing our attention from the form realm to the experience of feeling realm. 
2. When we're not doing that practice, we become very attached and sad unnecessarily.

We get lost in the idea, or form, of something.  We stick to it past it's usefulness:

1. salaries - why do we stay in a job when we are unhappy?
2. cars - why do we think they're beautiful?  What about them do we find beautiful?

"Attached to the idea about something" is how most of us live, but that's not what we really want.  We want to feel good.  When I believe that money will do that for me I make money my entire focus.  That's the error.  How many people do you know that are doing jobs they hate because they think they need money?  Do they really know how much money they need?  Have they spent any time trying to figure out where their happiness really comes from?  Wouldn't that be a better use of their time?

One example of stopping the identification with form can be seen while playing sports.  We can begin to realize that playing a sport is done for the fun of it, not the score of it.  When we get mad at ourselves for scoring a certain way in a game, we're stuck in the form world. 

Another example is when we look at an expensive car and like it, but don't know why.  We could say we are a little lost in the form world then.  Do we like how pretty it is?  The power in connotes?  Do we know what we like about it?

The fundamental shift is bringing our attention away from forms, beliefs, values, to the feeling of situations, and dancing between those two states.  Ultimately. we could realize that the feeling of a situation is what we really want.

Somewhere we've gotten lost in the idea of things instead of the feeling of the moment.

A talk about impermanence.

Mentioned that pain comes when we try to hold on to things that can't be held onto: relationships, jobs, hopes.  In holding onto those ideas, we are not free to appreciate the true quality of being.  We aren't able to appreciate that everything is change.  We try to create a ground where there isn't one.

Because everything is change, because everything is impermanent, time becomes obvious.  Of course we can work in time.  Stillness isn't as obvious.  Understanding stillness will be the next evolutionary step for humans.

Mentioned the saying "what can be seen dies, and what can't be seen is eternal."  The eternal part is the quality of change that is underneath all forms, the energy of isness.  What can be seen is all the forms: landscape, bodies, things - they all change, they all die.  When we identify with "change" - or the energy underneath the forms - we identify with our own eternal being.  Again, eternal isn't an endless amount of time, it is the absence of time.

I talk about how stillness *is* motion, and a time based mind is stuck.  This is the paradox of change.  You would think a time based mind has motion and a still mind is stuck, but that isn't the case.

A still person stays with the motion of change - the change within this moment.  A stuck person stays with events in history.  Identifying with the experience of change is what being still means.  Getting stuck on events as they go by is living in time.  Staying in this moment is the appreciation of "change" and staying in a time based mind is not moving with what is.  That's why we can say stillness is motion (or the appreciation of it), and time based minds are stuck (in past events and hopes of the future).

Meditation is the realization of this moment. The "practice of meditation" is the sitting down to work on this before it becomes fully natural to live that way. To abstract it further, we can use anchors such as counting, visualization, and pointed awareness to help bring our attention to our breath.

I'd like you to stay as present as possible during this talk, but I will be talking much more than a normal guided meditation, hence the "sort of" in the title. I want to show you different ways to meditate and use ideas to help find stillness. Please look for other guided meditations as there are many good ones out there.

Set the intention of spending this time to work with your mind and thoughts. Be committed during your practice time to coming back to your experience, back to your breath no matter what thoughts arise.

Stillness is the quality of listening. Notice when we start adding thought, or content, and see how that is not listening. When we notice this, we come back to our breath and pay attention, or "listen" to the moment. That is the quality of meditation.

Work with counting. We learn to use anchors until stillness is loud enough within us. So we place our thinking on something we can see, and judge (counting). Count on the in breath for a while, then the out breath for a while, then both. This is also a good way to time yourself if you don't have a clock. You can commit to a certain number of breaths.

Be sure to notice and work with the energy underneath the breath. We mentioned that everything is in the breath, all sounds, etc. The breath is really just a link to what is. Open to the energy underneath the breath.

Work with closed eyes, and finding a sensation, then watch opening our eyes and trying to hold that sensation. Did it go away? The content changed, can we hold onto that stillness, that sensation?

A more mature practice is just breath, then thinking, then breath. We come back again and again as we think. We start by learning the landscape of thought.

Another anchor is shifting attention to something small, like just the opening of the mouth and nose while breathing. Later we open it to the bigger full breath from mouth to stomach and back out. Eventually we can start to move the energy all around the body. We'll discuss that more in another talk.

I mentioned that there are things that help practicing meditation. Committing to a certain area, and using a seat and timer can be a help. One place online to buy meditation gear is Amida: http://www.ami-da.com.

Lastly, we don't need to spend a lot of time meditating. Just a few minutes is useful to bring us back to center. Sitting in the morning and evening for three to five minutes can have a profound affect on your life. I call it bookending your day with meditation.

Trauma is horrible, and we shouldn't forget that. We all have trauma to one degree or another. We all have "our stuff."

Trauma has the potential to widen and deepen our experience of pain. Which allows us to have a higher "high." Imagine someone who hasn't had much stimulation in either direction, good or bad. Their circumstances are not as wide and as varied to draw from. They have a skinnier history to draw from. So something somewhat "bad" seems potentially horrible - like gas prices going up. Whereas, someone who has lived through a rape, or a major car accident, might not be as affected by social issues. They care, they just have a different historical comparison to weight the situation against.

Trauma also allows us to see that we survived. We went through that stuff and are still here. It didn't kill us.

This is not to say that we should look for trauma, or inflict it on others. Life brings enough of it on it's own.

How does pain and trauma allow for growth? Well, let's look again at someone who is sheltered. They never get the challenges to test themselves. The Buddha is the iconic representation of this. He left his palace to learn about life and pain. He was unsatisfied with being given everything. You, your kids, and loved ones will be equally unsatisfied. Have you seen wealthy kids at the mall who have everything? Nothing surprises them, nothing thrills them. They are bored. These kids may begin looking for trauma. They won't know that's what they are doing, but their boredom has the potential to make them look for thrills. Those thrills, in the form of drugs, etc. can end up giving those kids their share of pain. This is a stereotype used only to make the point that pain and growth is a part of life. We can use pain to stimulate our desire to live differently.

Pleasure and pain are related. In the spectrum of self, pleasure and pain mirror one another. To leave the ego realm of pleasure and pain, it can help to go through enough pain to say "I don't want to live this way any more."

It is really important that we process our trauma. We need to begin to work with our pain, and process it fully. We need to feel it, rather than run from it.

Our pain is the substance that we are supposed to traverse to grow. The more of it, the more we want to wake up from it. So as we hate it, from a certain point of view it is a blessing.

We can relax a little with our children and loved ones. We can realize that pain is a part of life, and that we need to allow for some of it to grow. It is often a dis-service to over-protect a child. Pain in general is there to wake you up. It's asking for you to be present. To drop the valuation of the situation. To open your consciousness. This is how we can begin to kill the ego, or wake up from it.

Trauma can jar us free of the ego. It can re-prioritize our lives. Sadness, fear, and anxiety that is the result of trauma can become so loud that we want to put it down. Without that pain, we might never have woken up. We can become sick of being unhappy. That is a very healthy state to be in.

So how do we want to relate to our trauma? Do we want to be fearful of it, or realize that we've been through it, and we've beaten it? It's important that we don't continue the cycle of abuse. It's our responsibility to end the cycle of abuse.

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Show Music:

The Shanghai Restoration Project

The Shanghai Restoration Project Undercover Culture Music

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What is the human condition? Humanity seems quite insane. What is the root of that insanity?

Our core problem is the fact that we feel separate. We are ego, but we are not only ego. We need to evolve into the realization that we are much more than that.

There are two parts to that evolution. The first part is the realization that we are identified with an ego, time based self, and that we can drop that identity. The second part is the practice of coming back to this moment (leaving ego) over and over again every time you realize you are lost, until it becomes normal. Every problem comes down to this, and is fixed once we realize and act on this.

Discussed lots of the old shows and mentioned briefly how they relate to this core condition.

Lastly, as we learn what our ego is, and that we can drop it, we realize that we can change the human condition. The fact that it is only a "condition" and not an absolute, or permanent, state of being is a wonderful thing.

This is an advanced talk. Many people may find this content weird, but I'm serious when I say that the world is your body. We're trying to learn to look at the world differently. This is very literally a different way to look at the world. It's a shift in consciousness.

Normal subject/object consciousness has ego and self boundaries involved with it. It's important that we don't look at these ideas from a place of self. We need to drop self to understand these ideas.

Subject and object aren't separate. The act of listening, seeing, tasting, hearing, feeling can't occur without both the subject and the object. That being the case, the actual act of sensation is the real content, and the parties involved are only ideas. The listening, as an example, *IS* the thing that's going on. When we learn to dive into experience on that level we widen our perception of ourselves, and the world. Our experience is further out than we thought. We start to realize that we are larger than we thought.

Another point to understand is that we become, literally, whatever we focus on. When we see a sunset, we are the sunset. When we think a thought, we are that thought. When we hear a car horn, we are the car horn. The reason most of us don't feel that way is because we are too busy bouncing from thought to experience to thought, etc. to realize any content deeply enough. This understanding is a new way of approaching things, but it allows for many freedoms.

What are the benefits of these ideas? An unchecked ego is the basis for all of our pain. This is another way, or facet, to understand dropping the ego. It's another way to describe a new way of being. This will allow us to be filled with what is: sunsets, car horns, stillness, joy.

The practice is to realize that you are not a separate thing. You are an integral part of the greater whole. You are necessary to the process of life. Everything you hear, taste, smell, see, and feel shows you a wider self. That horn down the street is you. That breeze is you. You are vast. Realize it. Imagine, as a side benefit, how respectful we'll be of the world once we realize it's us.

Lastly, realizing that your body is the world quickly allows us to relate to the idea of "oneness of being" that all great philosophies speak of. This understanding is a way to realize that oneness.

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Show music:

Romanza

Sahnas Moondo Records

• Download the mp3 of "La Bella Monterosa"

Consciousness expands from being an infant through different identifications with social groups. The highest level on average is the national level. We identify with our family, our neighborhood, our state, our nation. Why not our world and beyond?

When survival of the team or family depends on loyalty, it is important that we are able to identify with that level. Our survival at this point is becoming more and more dependant on a world view. There are views beyond the world view, but the world view would be the next meaningful level of identification.

At the base of this identification is the ego clinging to an idea about itself. The problem starts when we let that identification get so deep that we make choices that are against our values. Nations that go to war would be potentially the greatest example of this. How does taking human life become so easily justified during war? It does because it falls under the umbrella of protecting a nation. Protecting the idea of "us". But there is only "us" in a world view. There is no "them".

Nations often fight because they are lost in value systems that are out of sync. If we were able to widen our level of identification to a world view, we would grow past many, if not all, of our conflicts.

Do we gain anything, or lose anything by identifying with different levels of social structure? Is it better to identify with a neighborhood by being in a gang, or a city by being proud to be from that place, or a nation, or the world? There are less people to fight, less outsiders as we widen our identification.

The next view beyond world view would be a universal view, or a unified view. I only mention this to say that we are not done once we're at the world view.

We use these levels of identification to grow. We expand as we move from one view of our group to the next wider view. That said, what would change if we, as individuals, started to identify with a world view, instead of a national view?

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Show music:

At Home And Unaffected

Decomposure Unschooled Records

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• Download the mp3 of "Whose Side Are You On?"

In this talk we widened the definition of an itch to include not only physical itches, but also emotional and mental bothers as well.

How can an itch be beautiful? We described actually enjoying an itch. Diving into the feeling without judgment allows us to experience itches in a different way. Energy then actually becomes literally beautiful.

Another way to see the beauty in an itch is to realize that they are the largest anchor there is. We use bothers, and itches as reminders to bring our attention back to the moment, back to our breath.

We don't want to be itch free, we want to be itch proof. The itches don't stop coming, so being itch free is unrealistic. But we can learn to be itch proof. We can be strong, and fearless. We can learn to sit through bothers.

Itches actually become the beauty of life. To start, we need to become aware of what we sit through now and what we run from. We need to become honest with ourselves about what moves us around.

Itch/scratch is the iconic representation of pleasure and pain. The immediate urge to "scratch," or the rushed push to fix a "problem" is one of our most limiting qualities. The itch is a bother and we want it gone. That very behavior, in its many facets, is our core problem.

We need to learn to become awake when things bother or itch us. Introduction to anchors was one easy way of staying connected, but the biggest anchor is the itch itself. We should learn to deal with itches, bothers, and problems rather than run from them.

We can and should scratch an itch when our attention should be elsewhere, like a conversation. Just try to be mindful when we do. But while we should be kind with ourselves, we can also be honest and realize that as we are bothered to scratch we are at times asleep. We can learn, "Oh, maybe I should have watched that itch for a bit. Maybe I could have learned from that." We will see as we become more honest with ourselves that we are at different times more asleep than we thought.

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Show music:

Consolidated Mojo

Billy Boy Arnold
Electro- Fi Records

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What are anchors? The dictionary defines an anchor as something that is the source of security or stability. I'm discussing using things that occur in the world as reminders to bring your attention back to the moment, or back to awareness.

Examples of anchors are things like:
    Going through doorways.
    When we walk somewhere.
    When we listen to people.

Why use anchors? It is a way to bring stillness into the everyday experience. Many people learn to meditate on a seat, but have difficulty bringing that peace into the world they live in. Using anchors is the beginning of that practice.

Stillness is available anytime. Use anchors to learn that truth.

When is it okay to think?

When something makes you angry, there are two healthy ways to deal with it. You can become still, or you can investigate the situation using your mind. So at what point should you use your mind or thoughts to work with a situation? You should use your mind when you are aware you are using your mind.

What I am trying to convey is that thought is okay, it just needs to be conscious thought. So what is conscious thought? Thought that sweeps us away into a busy mind is an example of unconscious thought. Working out a problem, finding patterns, working with logic, setting appropriate boundaries on certain levels, using judgment to discern things are all good uses of the mind, as long as we are aware we are doing it.

Challenges will not stop. Neither will "good" and "bad" emotions, feelings, situations, etc. When we change, the world still comes, but we can deal with the world differently. By being detached from the ego, we can free ourselves of being upset that we are sad. So sadness doesn't stop. Instead, we become okay with sadness.

Depending on how deeply in the world I'm going to live, the more things tend to define me. And hence, the more I need to protect. Be aware of what you are protecting. Be aware of what you are attached to.

Two sides of being alive can be described as thinking/experiencing, or thinking/being, or mind/body. Philosophers have discussed mind and body for ages. The goal is to have mind and body in the same place (here) at the same time (now). We could call the act of accomplishing that a higher state of being.

We don't want to avoid things through meditation. The act of dropping thought is used to learn about thinking, and to show that thinking isn't all there is. It is not used to abandon thought entirely. Krishnamurti's book "Think On These Things" was mentioned to point that out. It was also mentioned that Krishnamurti often suggests "looking at things deeply" which implies using thought.

To sum up, it is okay to think when you are aware you are thinking. Thinking is a tool, and we need to learn to use it as such.

How can we "achieve" when stillness seems to oppose goals, the future, etc.?

Mentioned that many people were interested in this talk. That seems to be because we are much more interested in how the achieve things, rather than being interested in stillness. However, that misses the point. We need to learn stillness first.

Three things this talk tries to accomplish: Show that there can be stillness in motion. Discuss the seeming paradox of stillness vs. accomplishment. And I'm hoping to point out that bringing stillness to actions we perform allows for the best performance possible, in all things.

Discuss what stillness is. It is a mind free of time. It is a quiet mind. It is the expression of meditation in action.

Why are goals okay? Doesn't that contradict with being "free of time?" Literally it does contradict. Having intention is a sane goal. That differs from having an obsessed mind, bent on achievement. Time exists on some levels, but not all levels. It is always this moment. However, the practical aspects of life remain.

What is excellence? Our exterior is a reflection of our interior. When we change internally, that change will begin to show itself in our achievements and outer life. Sports figures talk of "being in the zone" when referring to peak performance states. The zone is achieved when we pay attention to the process rather than the outcome of a situation. It is the focus on the moment fully that allows for our best performance. When we are "still" our entire brain and being can be put to work toward our goal. Simply put, we perform better at everything when we are present with what we are doing.

Discussed what being present feels like by telling a story about my plants. Mentioned ways to begin bringing stillness to achievement through watering those plants. Also discussed that stillness can be an attribute of anything we do, no matter how complex.

Stillness is the goal, so it better allow for goals. Achieving stillness in motion will be the beginning of a new way of being for you, and the world. As an immediate side bonus, our performance in all things will increase as we learn stillness in motion.

Beginning to define awareness, mindfulness and disconnected states of being.

The desire to become aware is really the first fundamental shift (there may be more shifts later, but this is the first profound one). So what is awareness? How do we use mindfulness within awareness? And what is disconnect?

An example from Anthony Robbins: We don't want money, we want to be happy, we want the feeling money gives us. You are disconnected when details like this aren't clear. We need to be aware when we are not happy. More importantly, we need to become aware of what will make us happy. Mindful meditation is one way to develop these skills.

Busy mind is an example of being disconnected. Getting caught in a belief system of the news, or chasing money at the expense of peace or happiness is being disconnected.

Mindfulness is one pointed. It is being able to leave your mind on something and keep it there. So when we meditate, we are making an effort to develop mindfulness of our breath. But mindfulness is not all there is, awareness is the awakened state that we also want to cultivate.

Awareness is the watcher in the back, without judgment We watch ourselves and allow it all to be. So it is not only the quality of watching, it is the quality of forgiveness. It is the quality of understanding. This is the beginning of wisdom. We start to watch our thoughts and emotions and we stop judging them. This allows us to open to a freedom of being. We don't have to be as critical as we are. Our inner dialog has gotten out of control.

Why is it unwise to get attached? As everything is made of change, when we try to hold on to things, events, feelings, etc. we will constantly be disappointed.

Audio track mixed to describe a busy mind.

First step of dealing with a busy mind is to become aware that it is occurring to you.

Next step is to bring your attention back to your breath.

There are many things that make up a busy mind. Emotions, anxieties, fears, joys, etc. You can go down each path to work with your mind, but it's most important to learn to drop your thoughts. Drop all busyness, even though it may feel like you need to work on the content, it is ok to drop thoughts.

Do we want to spend all our time "busy," or would we rather find peace and sit in that? We need to learn to be fulfilled.

Busy mind leads us to do things to "ease our pain" in excess (such as watch TV, drink, smoke, etc.). It's important that we learn the middle path between fixing our problems externally with "aspirin" and sitting with discomfort. We need to learn when to stop chasing our problems.

Who do we really want to be? Would we rather free our minds and grow, learn, and express? Or do we want to let our minds run on and on endlessly?

A discussion that begins to talk about ways and times to bring presence into the world. If you practice meditation, these methods will be a good extension of that practice. If you don't meditate, this will be a good introduction to what meditation is and can be used for.

Mentioned Thich Nat Han and his discussion of doing the dishes mindfully rather than with a busy mind. Also discussed eating mindfully.

Untrained minds will have difficulty being where they are.

Anchors are things that remind us to bring our attention back to the present moment. They remind us to wake up. Anchors discussed in this talk include: Waiting in traffic, waiting in line, eating, doing the dishes, vacuuming, etc.

Gave a brief introduction and instructions on how to do walking meditation.

Lastly, mentioned that if we don't learn how to be contented where we are, we will never learn to be contented at all.

A discussion about duality, morality, and the motion of pleasure and pain.

Story of farmer and his horses shows the relativistic qualities of good and bad.

Judgment is the common theme underneath the motion of time and the attributes of good and bad.

Exercise of pinching your arm can be used to learn to sit in discomfort without judgment.

Duality is born from the self's original feeling of separation. Me-not me, up-down, in-out, good-bad are all born from that.

Would learning about the relativity of good and bad affect the world?

Anchors of language - learn to watch your own thoughts and words.

Our problems dissolve when we bring our attention and presence to them.

All problems are based in this one fact: We have become dissatisfied with our situation.

Once we are dissatisfied, we have two choices: 1) Try to bend the world to our will, or 2) surrender and accept the situation - bring presence to the situation.

Surrender is the same as bringing your attention back to the breath. It is very powerful, not weak.

Every time you are aware that you have a problem, bring your attention back to your breath.

How to meditate: Bring your attention back to your breath. Repeat as necessary.

Discussed exercise from Eckhart Tolle to show the energy/aliveness underneath experience. Showed that energy as the oneness of being.

Mentioned that five minutes of meditation a day is all we need to get started down a very important road of growth.

Our mind is capable of opening our focus to many things at the same time.

Discussed real life applications for meditation and presence. Use it to work with anger, sadness, physical pain, etc.

Meditation has two qualities. One is where you sit in the stillness of presence. This is where true joy comes from. This is the experience of now. No judgement, etc. The other state is when the mind is busy. This may not be as pleasurable, but this is where we learn. These are the workout reps for the mind. The is where we grow. Notice you are lost in thought and bring your attention back to the breath.

Mentioned Pema Chodron's quote about the fact that if we knew where our pain came from, we would meditate like our hair was on fire.

Discussion on inner becoming, judgment, time and self. Mentioned J. Krishnamurti and Eckhart Tolle.

Talked about the illusion of being only in time and discussed that pure experience is escaping time. Judgment is the birth of self and time. We are not only separate, in judgeless experience we fall into oneness.