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On my professional blog I often discuss the concept that all marketing, but especially social media marketing is in most cases successful when it leverages our human need for validation. Whatever form that validation takes is irrelevant, but almost  our entire existence as humans is based on that need. We are continually fighting to establish our existence and value in the shallow world that surrounds us. Ours brains/egos want to establish validity and seek validity constantly, because the alternative means that we are no longer the “individuals” we thought we were.

• Jobs
• Homes
• Cars
• Money
• Stardom
• Friendship
• Popularity
• Belittlement
• Abuse
• Pain
• Suffering
• Depression
• Happiness
• Sadness
• Perfection
• Power
• Superiority
• Love
• Marriage
• Divorce
• Identity
• Peace
• Belonging
• Children
• Status
• Grief
• Entertainment
• Cookies
• Drugs
• Toys
• Freedom
• Office
• Privacy
• ……

Freedom from me is God.

EVERYTHING we seek is the source of ALL of our pain.

Every time you see it as or after you do it, you kill a little bit of you.

Kill you

Kill me

Be

Don’t ever fight the desire, see the desire and validate validate validate until you die too

Recently was reading(listening to) A Course In Miracles and a line about living through forgiveness really struck me and applied forgiveness to every interaction I had with others when I remembered to apply it. Of course, the more I did it the more second nature it became and I was astounded by the results.

When you live in forgiveness, you never have to apologize.

At first blush this concept sounds a bit holier than thou, but in fact it’s the farthest thing from it. Forgiving everyone before they even speak or whatever they may speak or do unsettles the ego and the mind and takes it out of defensiveness and prevents you from getting your back up. When you forgive someone deeply and completely over and over again, then when they say or do things that would normally set you off, not only does it prevent the trigger in you mind from being triggered, but it makes you see and watch your thoughts more closely as they happen. It allows you to watch your thoughts more rapidly and conscientiously, which ultimately means genuine mindfulness.

When you live forgiveness, then you live in peace.

This doesn’t mean you have to tell anyone that you forgive them. To the contrary, it would be self serving to do so and would also create strife. It’s a very simple matter of reminding yourself, that as you speak to this person, that you automatically forgive them for anything they may say or do that might offend you, hurt you, bother you, or annoy you. For some folks, you have to repeat the mantra of I forgive Sam(my friend) over and over. For others, it comes naturally and rapidly.

What’s amazing is how peacefully people respond to you and how much more you get from life and your relationships with friends and un-friends when you’ve already forgiven them. Not only does it advance your mindfulness practice in a rapid fashion, but it improves their life too. When you aren’t responding negatively to anything someone says then you reduce their propensity to do the same.

Give it a try today. Pick one person or everyone you meet and give yourself the gift of forgiving them no matter what they do, BEFORE they do it.

As you progress things begin to dawn on you that never did before.

Time will be the death of us all.

Maybe my binge drinking alcoholic uncle is actually trying to kill “the self” and not himself, his identity or physical self. It’s doubtful, but possible. What is more likely is that he’s trying to escape the same suffering we all experience, but using his mechanism of choice. Unfortunately his choice kills him and all those around him, by slowly destroying our will to care.

The really interesting thing about my uncle is that he’s studied Buddhism. He even had to detox once in a Buddhist monastery, but he still is fast asleep.

I often find myself thinking of ways to user Buddhism to solve problems I encounter in my life or for others, but its not something you can apply to someone. The very act of thinking about it means I’ve already defeated my purpose.

Slowing things down.

One aspect of awakening is that you mind less waiting for things or taking a longer route. You still get impatient and annoyed, but you can see that emotion, watch it and it then disappears and you are free to live in the moment. Its almost like you become two people and one is observing the other and providing guidance to peace. Essentially though, the ego is dissolving or lessening its grip or hold on you.

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I began my “professional” career managing political campaigns. It was a fast-paced and exciting adrenaline filled life. I can see now that it was fulfilling whatever I thought was missing within myself.

It was also vicious.

My hunger for involvement with and about politics never really went away. Up until just a couple of years ago I was still heavily involved with politics on a daily basis. I would spend large numbers of hours reading blogs, understanding the news, getting angry, viciously debating and fighting with others. It was all for naught.

I’m beginning to understand that it just doesn’t matter. Not it just doesn’t matter in the sense of you can’t change anything because the evil government has us by the neck, but rather it just doesn’t matter because in the grand scheme of our existence, those actions, anger, and involvement really don’t matter. More along the lines of what we do and how we feel and how we get angry isn’t as relevant anymore.

What I can see now. Is that my anger and involvement didn’t accomplish a whole lot. I can do far more as an awake person that I can with politics. My involvement in politics was just another lost existence. I’m so much happier now that I don’t get myself worked up over political maneuverings. I find that I’m able to easily pull away from it. Yes I want more compassionate people running our world but I’d like to see more mindful people running our world so compassion isn’t necessarily needed.

A new study came out recently that said we’re pretty much the same as we will always be from birth on. And that we don’t normally change. I think that’s probably true for our unconscious existence but being mindful can transform every aspect of who you are and what’s important or not.

We pigeon hole our lives and our “selves”. We are expected to have a career and stick with it, so for the most part we do. Then one day we realize we never got to be a dinosaur.

Just be.

Dinosaur
By Bruce Rogers

When he was very young, he waved his arms, gnashed the teeth of his massive jaws, and tromped around the house so that the dishes trembled in the china cabinet. “Oh, for goodness sake,” his mother said. “You are not a dinosaur! You are a human being!” Since he was not a dinosaur, he thought for a time that he might be a pirate. “Seriously,” his father said at some point, “what do you want to be?” A fireman, then. Or a policeman. Or a soldier. Some kind of hero. But in high school they gave him tests and told him he was very good with numbers. Perhaps he would like to be a math teacher? That was respectable. Or a tax accountant? He could make a lot of money doing that. It seemed a good idea to make money, what with falling in love and thinking about raising a family. So he was a tax accountant, even though he sometimes regretted that it made him, well, small. And he felt even smaller when he was no longer a tax accountant, but a retired tax accountant. Still worse, a retired tax accountant who forgot things. He forgot to take the garbage to the curb, forgot to take his pill, forgot to turn his hearing aid back on. Every day it seemed he had forgotten more things, important things, like which of his children lived in San Francisco and which of his children were married or divorced.

Then one day when he was out for a walk by the lake, he forgot what his mother had told him. He forgot that he was not a dinosaur. He stood blinking his dinosaur eyes in the bright sunlight, feeling the familiar warmth on his dinosaur skin, watching dragonflies flitting among the horsetails at the water’s edge.

http://www.flashfictiononline.com/f20090204-dinosaur-bruce-holland-rogers.html

My wife hasn’t ventured out into the water with me. She is ego dominated in almost every way and lives in deep pain at times. So, I wanted to see if I could plant a seed of realization and awakening.

I ordered a couple of copies of the book Loving What Is by Byron Katie. Her concepts are the same as all the mindful approaches in that their goal is the cessation of thought. She takes that approach by getting people to review the thoughts in their lives that cause the stress. By challenging the thoughts and breaking them down it helps people see that all belief in thought is useless.

My wife read the back cover of the book and thought it meant I was trying to accept a miserable life, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I told her as much and just asked her to read the book.

Her response today might as well have been coming from the girl in the Exorcist. “I was so aggravated and bored reading about that woman asking those questions, I couldn’t keep going. It just pissed me off. I stopped reading! How stupid!”

I told her that I appreciated her making the effort and to try again to just read it. Who knows… maybe a seed of awareness was planted in the dark shadows of her ego and we’ll see a mushroom grow or a flower bloom later because she’ll put the seedling out in the sun.

Seeing the ego in action like that is fascinating with awareness. Incredible to see it work.

I am finding that most of the texts I read about mindfulness pitch it to users as ultimately resulting in enlightenment, but we as humans are skeptical about religions promising great success. What I am beginning to understand is why they say not to pursue it. Pursuing it makes it an thought or idea for the brain. It makes it a human goal to attain rather than a mindful living. That is why pursuit kills the hope of enlightenment that really shouldn’t exist in the first place.

The message is to just be, but unfortunately that is impossible to “understand”, because when  we try to understand it is impossible to be. Its funny how it all starts to seep in or should I say become apparent as you progress on the path to nothing.

Those perplexing silly things that teachers say have a point, but you can’t express the point. So, the key is to observe the thoughts. Slow them via observation and not via thought. I am slowly seeing it permeate all of my thought processes. I still get angry and resentful and annoyed, but often its with myself. Neither is a good thing, but the fact that I do see it makes it all the more worth it to be “practicing”.

Practicing is just what we say it is. It means being being. Trying to be. Seeing and sensing presence and riding it.

I know. I know. Its all vague and silly sounding, but if you just stay with the fundamentals of knowing, being, and seeing that get repeated to you by one teacher after another, then you will start to “see”. I am just now starting to see more and its quite the relief.

Competition amongst egos seems to be at the core of everything we do as humans, but just a simple reflection on what that reaps, should be enough for any soul to resist, but instead we believe that the death of our ego is inherent in losing ANY competition and on we go fighting to win win win. This is especially true in our silly country where everyone is taught that success only comes through competitiveness.

I saw this vividly recently when my 3 year old was playing soccer. It was wonderful to see that he had learned to be gentle and loving and that his exposure to other kids had not reduced that, but we also wanted him to succeed at the competition in soccer and that meant being aggressive, which he wasn’t inclined to do. When we released his compassion “bonds”, we created a beast and were scared of what we saw, so we had to step back and reflect on the fact that life can’t be a competition, because ultimately there are no winners or losers in life. none.

So, how do we stay mindful of this inherent need to compete in order to save ourselves. I do it with the simple mantra “life is not a competition”, “nobody wins”. Remembering this reminds me that my egotistical thoughts of winning are manufactured and not mindful and it brings me back to mindfulness and presence upon my thoughts.

This is an inspiring piece at the NY Times Magazine. 

“I felt saved by Zen,” he told me. “The Humpty Dumpty image is corny, but it’s right. Meditation put me back together. It helped me overcome the split between the body and the mind. The question that remained was what to do with emotions and the self.”

The story of a man confronting his buddhism in conjunction with his emotional baggage despite being a Zen master.

If he hadn’t been so distraught, he might have laughed at the absurdity of it: a Zen master in the waiting room of a psychoanalyst. He was a connoisseur of contradictions, an unsentimental man with a “Zen noir” temperament and an un-self-sparing wit. “Anywhere I hang myself is home,” he liked to say.

via Enlightenment Therapy – NYTimes.com.