You Are Your Own Guru

There’s no way around it.  The only way you can have experiences, the only way you can learn, the only way you can become wise, the only way you can get enlightened is by doing it your own self.  But how? 

We spend our whole lives trying to figure out the how.

It’s natural to want help with this.  It’s natural to want an easier way.

We go guru hunting to get help with the daunting task of figuring out how human life works and, sometimes, to hide under someone else’s umbrella for awhile.

We have a built-in hunger to figure life out and to find peace.  We’re hardwired that way.  Most of us look for ways to dull the hunger.  We fill our lives with enjoyments, busy-ness and time fillers.  Sometimes that works for a while, or even a whole lifetime.  But, sometimes, we get kicked off the rails and we’re back where we started, facing the old questions, “Who am I?”, “Where did I come from?”, “What is the good?”,  ”Where am I going?”, ”What should I do?”, “What is life about?”, “How can I be happy?”.  You know, the little nagging questions that can get in the way of sleeping.

Any guru worth her salt will just bring you back to the threshold of your own mind.  Any guru that doesn’t do that, one way or the other, isn’t really a guru at all but is a salesman.  You can learn from salesmen, but it’s expensive.  Then, you’re back on the road again.

Relax.  Every experience is good.  You are on a mission that will last your whole life.  Sooner or later, you will get to where you want to be.  If you pay attention, every step of the way will be good in its own special way.  Don’t be in a hurry.  You are exactly where you are supposed to be.  Savor it.

That’s the secret: pay attention.  Be here now.  Notice what’s around you.  Notice your thoughts.  Notice what you are feeling.  Notice what you are attracted to.  Notice what repels you.  Notice your behavior. Just notice, without having an opinion about it, as if you were watching someone else’s life.  You will notice habits and patterns.  You will start to realize who you are in this one instant of your life.  Then, you can have opinions about it and make other choices if you want to and see how that works out.

Life is designed to be self-teaching.  You can’t get ahead of yourself.  It’s all perfect.

You are work in progress, just like everything that lives in the Earth school.

Your only job is to be present.

NOTE TO SELF: THE TOO-SIMPLE SECRET

Most of us miss the secret behind living a happy life because it is too simple to be noticed.

It is also hidden in a place that most of us would never think to look – inside ourselves.

The secret can be reduced to one word: being.

We call ourselves “human beings” but we are really human doings, constantly busy in mind and body.  Doing, doing, doing.

We fill our lives with noise.   We can’t hear the secret which is silent.

We think that reality is out there but it is really in here.

Enlightenment can happen in a flash.  But, usually, it doesn’t.  It comes in little pops, spread out over time.

There is nothing to be done.  You already are where you want to be.  All that you have to do is to realize that.  All you need to do is to let that seep in.  You just need to allow yourself to be.  Just now, as you are.

Get quiet, breathe. Let go.

ENOUGH

This ramble came out of a conversation with fellow sculptor and philosopher Mark Hargarten last May.  I felt moved to put my thoughts down.  Here they are.

The idea or sensation of “enough” is the axle of contentment.  It signals fullness, satiation, satisfaction or completion.  When I have had enough, I can relax and throttle back on striving.  I can bask in the richness of living.  I can effortlessly absorb the wonders of my world.  When I sense that I have enough of anything, I can shift my focus to the fine texture of experience.  I can pay attention to now.

The sense of “enough” is a product of self-knowledge.  Through experience, I can get a clear idea of how much of anything it takes to make me happy, whether it is air, food, water, shelter, clothing, sex, security, fellowship, money, power, knowledge, novelty, adventure or automobiles.  Each of us has a satisfaction profile that is as unique as our fingerprints.  We come wired that way.

No satisfaction profile is better than any other.  It is our individual recipe for contentment.  It can be a road map to guide us through our life choices.  If we have an idea of where we’re going, we have a better chance of getting there.

We all come here to life on Earth to bring a fresh flavor to the mix.  No one else can bring our flavor for us.  When we grow into the unique kind of creature that we were born to be, we have done a big part of our job, our special flavor is being delivered.

That feeling of “enough” is a green light that tells us that we are on the right path.  It tells us that we should keep doing what we are doing or to keep not doing what we are not doing.  It tells us that we should be paying attention to the subtler parts of our adventure.  It tells us to proceed.

While we humans never stop desiring, nor should we, it is possible to reach that easy place where the exhilarating rush of desires, like the gentle rocking of a boat, adds zest to living without swamping it.  It is possible to find our balance and to glory in it.

This whole ramble is about externals, the stuff of ego. I see that inner peace is never far away. I just need to get quiet, breathe and be here now.

GOOD DAYS

Immersed as we are in the familiar routines of ordinary life, it is easy for us to lose the sense of wonder that we had as children.  Each fresh morning is a new birth filled with bright possibilities.

 

I ask myself, will I make my day a rerun of my yesterdays?  Or, will I see, with clean sight, the chances that are open to me?   Will I see the possibilities?

If yesterday was delicious, I might follow a similar path and set up a version of yesterday that I can enjoy today.  But, I don’t need to be locked into a version of yesterday unless I want to be.  I might have commitments like a job or family ties that seen to lay out the skeleton of my day but the flesh of it, the tone of it, the flavor of it, comes out of my attitudes and expectations.  I get to choose those.

It’s all about choice and choice is about thoughts.  One important thing about thoughts is that I can change them.  They are more or less under my control.  I can contradict a bad-feeling thought by internally changing the subject or I can reward a good-feeling thought by paying attention to it and approving of it.  I need to be noticing what I’m feeling/thinking to be able to do this.  The key is attention.  I need to be focused.  That means that I need to be awake to my feelings in the moment. 

It is true that one thought leads to another.  It is also true that any thought will lead to another that is like itself.  I can enjoy an ascending series of good-feeling thoughts or a descending cascade of miseries depending on my starting thought and my reaction to it. That’s my choice.

Every moment can be a new start.

The best place to start is with gratitude.  If I begin my fresh new moment by saying and feeling “thank you” for good things in my life, I will kick off a positive chain reaction.  This attention to good things will allow me to notice other good-feeling opportunities that I can act on to keep my energy flowing in the right direction.

The better it gets, the better it can get.  The opposite is also true.

We are all chain-thinkers.  We run on habit.  If we take the trouble to redirect our thoughts toward good-feeling ones enough times, this pattern will become our habit.

While our best alternative is to be alert, alive and fully present in every moment, the habit of choosing good-feeling thoughts is a pretty good second choice.

PROGRESS

In the “developed” world the surface of life is changing at a furious rate.  New ideas, technologies, inventions, products and behaviors crash over us and suck us powerfully into an ocean of novelty.  We can hardly get our collective breath.  And, the rate of change is accelerating.  Our video game has been speeded up to such an extent that the images are beginning to blur.  Human generations can hardly find a common language to use to connect with each other as they are immersed in technologies whose generations are unfolding in months rather than decades.  We are dancing faster and faster.

We think this must be progress.  There are so many good things wrapped up in it.  If we are among the winners, we live longer, most of our children get to grow up and we live abundant, easy lives.  If anything, we have too much of everything.  We are fat and we suffer from the diseases of wealth.

Sure, we work longer hours for fewer dollars and live from paycheck to paycheck and feel no security.  We are contract or temporary workers.  We live with anxiety.  Our intimate relationships, if we have any, are strained.  We live in “starter houses” with “starter mates”. Marriages have become revolving doors.  We expect to “upgrade” several times in life.  Computers, phones, cars, houses, locations, jobs, spouses and the myriad of things that we fill our lives with are all up for grabs.  Easy come, easy go.

But, Homo Sapiens is physically, biochemically and emotionally the same creature that lived as a hunter/gatherer on the African savanna all of those ages ago.  We have conquered our planet and climbed to the top of the food chain, leaving a huge swath of extinctions of fellow creatures in our path.  Now, we are flirting with our own extinction and looking for ways to escape the rock that we have long called home.

It doesn’t have to be this way, people.  We don’t need to be this way.  We need to change, deeply, inwardly.  I am here to tell you that we can do that.  Let’s start now.

BEING HERE NOW

Being present in your own life is the same as being fully alive.  It seems silly to even say that.  We all think that we are present in our lives all of the time, at least during waking hours.

The truth is that we are mostly running on habit, conditioned behavior.  Or, we are daydreaming, lost in memories of a past that does not exist or projecting futures that also do not exist.  While we are busy doing these things, we are absent to the present moment which is the only time that does exist.  It is only in this moment that we are alive.  Most of us spend most of our time not being alive and we don’t even notice.

What to do?

Control of attention is the key.  If I can purposely pay attention to exactly what my senses are reporting and to what emotions I am feeling, I am here, now.  It takes effort to do this.  So, at first, it will seem like a lot of trouble to stay present.  My attention may wander back into habitual tracks.  When I notice this, I’ll refocus my attention back in the moment.  It’s a little tug-of-war that I play with myself.  It’s good to keep a sense of humor about this.  If I persist long enough, I will notice something interesting.  I will begin to habitually focus my attention on the present.

What a weird idea!  Habitually being alive!  I’ll settle for that.