It Was the Best Candy EVERRR!

At my last public seminar, I was guiding my attendees through an exercise in Awakened Attention.

We all sat with an unwrapped Werthers Original candy on the table in front of us.

I asked everyone to simply look at and experience the candy without thought for a moment, then to slowly unwrap the candy, like it was a delicate and precious gift.

Then, after experiencing its texture and shape, I asked everyone to place it in their mouth and with all of their attention on the candy, experience it without thought.

We all sat in silence for a minute or two, then I asked for feed-back regarding experiences.

After a moment, one young lady looked like she had something to say so I directed my attention to her.

Her face lit up as she said in a beautifully child-like way: "It was the best candy EVERR!"

The whole room erupted with laughter as it was recognized that she so perfectly gave voice to everyones experience, demonstrating the power and pleasure of Awakened Attention.

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Finished!

Wow!

I can't believe it is finally finished!

I handed in the manuscript for my book:

Waking Up to Life!
The Art and Skill of Awakened Attention

A Guide for Awakening to the Power,
Presence and Passion of the Living Moment

It is roughly 300 pages and full of practical suggestions, personal insights, stories, examples and fun.

Here is the Table of Contents

Foreword
Introduction
Important Definitions

Part 1
1. We Are Asleep
2. Dream Worlds
3. Dream Characters
4. Sleep Suffering
5. The Sleeping World
6. Wake Up Calls
7. The Struggle To Awaken
8. Awakened Attention
9. Waking Up
10. Waking Up to Life!

Part 2
12 Faces of Life
Life is Miraculous
Life is Awareness
Life is Becoming
Life is Embodiment
Life is Love
Life is Yes
Life is Creativity
Life is Mystery
Life is Now
Life is Soul
Life is Dying
Life Is

Appendices
A Note To Event Planners and Conference Coordinators
Products, Services and Contact Information
An Excerpt From the Book- Ruthless Words

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Losing 'My' Mind to 'The' Mind

From the Forthcoming:

Waking Up to Life!

The Art and Skill of Awakened Attention

One of the most dramatically transformative understandings you might receive is also one of the most difficult to swallow if you have never considered it before. That understanding is this: the mind is not ‘yours’, and many or most thoughts that appear in what you call ‘your’ mind, actually appear in ‘the’ mind, unbidden and unsolicited. Most thoughts simply arise spontaneously, in accordance with your history, conditioning, education, predispositions and tendencies. Simply put, thoughts happen, thinking happens, you don't do the thinking.

Yes, you read right. Thinking happens but you are not the thinker.

The beginning of freedom is the realization that
you are not the thinker.
~ Eckhart Tolle

So rather than replacing negative mental activity or self talk with positive mental activity or self talk, what happens when we recognize or simply notice the mental activity is happening? What happens when we become the noticer or the watcher of the mental activity? Is it possible to see the mental activity, and in that seeing to become a passive bystander, while not buying into the minds chatter?

The jig is up!

I understand that I have become accustomed to listening to that little voice in my head. The mind is what the mind does: it moves. The mind likes to stay busy, it doesn't like to wait, it wants what it wants now, it knows it all, it is a liar, confused and scared.

The mind is especially uncomfortable with uncertainty.

William Keats coined the phrase 'Negative Capability', defined as: when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. There are not many minds that like the sound of that.

The mind says "uncertainties need decisiveness, mysteries should be solved, doubt will fall to proof" all the while irritably reaching after fact and reason. The mind does not like not knowing, period. The mind will even create stories to replace uncertainty.

THE mind.
THE mind is busy, THE mind is overactive, THE mind is distorted, THE mind is not 'mine'.

Whew! That feels a lot better.

One should say, it thinks, just as one says, it rains.
~ Litchenberg

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The Stick of Compassion

An excerpt from the forthcoming
Ruthless Words:
Unsentimental Quotations From
the World's Wisdom Traditions

If you were to walk into a Zen Buddhist meditation hall or 'Zendo' you may be shocked to see them engaged in an very old tradition called 'keisaku' (Japanese: kyosaku). Keisaku is a form of a 'compassionate wake up call' always administered at the request of the meditator. Either while sitting in meditation or 'zazen', the teacher will at their own discretion, strike the student on the shoulders with a long pole or stick. Swwack!

This loud and dramatic form of 'wake up call', while on the surface may appear harsh or cruel, the intention of the teacher is one of encouragement, alerting students to their mindlessness in zazen. This "reality check" represents the teachers sword of wisdom and the means to cut through delusion, or the world of thought, concept and interpretation. The moment you are struck you are left with the bare actuality of that moment, the stark, naked, direct, non-conceptual experience of aliveness. No future and therefore no hope. No past and therefore, no 'self'. All that is left is the immediacy of awareness of aliveness as such.

May the quotations in this book serve as a 'keisaku' wake up stick, compassionately smacking you awake and alive, reminding you that your Life is now, the past and future but memories and dreams appearing in the sleeping mind. Swwack!

We do not know it because we are fooling away our time
with outward and perishing things,
and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself.
~ Paracelsus

Swwack!
Swwack!
Swwack!