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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.

They say our friend Paula died in a freak accident. It wasn’t. There are no freak accidents. There are no accidents unless you call reality an accident. Accidents are the culmination of a series of moments. No, really they are just a moment. Too many moments are required to get to that moment to say any one thing, moment, or person is responsible.

For that matter, this blog post is a freak accident.

So, did our friend die, because she decided to buy a new Dodge and then met the man that would ask her out and then convince her to go against her better judgement and get on a motorcycle and not wear a helmet. Did the Dodge cause that?

What about the woman in the car that hit them? What moments and circumstances lead her to that moment. Maybe it was the distraction that caused her to change lanes in to them…

Where does fault truly lie? It doesn’t. Millions of factors go into any circumstance or moment. Our application of fault or cause is another component of our delusion.

I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might
forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying
to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even
fought. The field reveals to a man his own folly and despair, and victory
is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury

The only crazy I have left is based on perceptions of others that only I perceive.

I am beginning to “see” myself attending more to the present. The remaining sticking points in my mind are those things that cause me emotions, that are related to how I perceive other people perceiving me. It’s liberating to realize that I can see where i am and where I will be.

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 find that when my bags and jackets have a lot of pockets, I add more and more crap to them and weigh myself down with things I will likely rarely or never will need. This is true in life as well. The more things we have an interest in and the more things we try to occupy our minds with, the more we get bogged down, spread thin, and hopelessly lost in our thoughts. Its too easy to lose track of mindfulness, when you have 20 diversions for your mind. We think that all those pockets will make us better organized, but in fact they just make a bigger mess and more stuff that is disorganized. We have to learn to reduce the pockets in our life and focus on that which is most important – being aware of our racing monkey minds and being aware of our thoughts as they arise. When we reduce our pockets, we reduce our thinking and this in turn allows us to live enlightened existence.

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.

The world is collapsing… imploding. Our greed has us pinned against the wall.

• Economic collapse
• Environmental collapse
• Moral collapse

Greed driven by mental chatter. Suffering.
We create our disease and try to cure it with more of the same disease.
Seeking things is driven by our internal mental chatter.

Mindfulness is our only cure. The cure is already in all of us.
Seeking. Seeking. Seeking nothing, but finding pain.

Can you feel it within you?
Its there. Waiting for you to see it.

The end of suffering.

Just listen. Listen to your chatter.

There’s another you in you. Not really YOU, but what you see as you.
You aren’t you really. You are we.

The chatter is constant. Stop and listen to your thoughts.

Just listen.

Don’t judge. listen.

Its liberating to find out what you thought was you… isn’t.
The identity you hold too is a sheet of glass. See through it.

The moment you see it is the moment everything starts to get better.

Starts… No instant cure.

That babbling bum in the street is no different from you. His chatter is just audible, more anti-social.

As I write this my chatter says “publish a book”, “be respected and well regarded by others”.
It makes me chuckle.
Our chatter wants us to be liked or hated. It wants us to be an object. Recognized as ME.

Can you see it now? Listen.
For 30 seconds see and hear your thoughts…

Watch them parade in front of you. It’s amazing when you see it.

Right now they own you. but they need not. It need not.

Just listen. For now.

Just see.

Its no secret that I am an avid follower of politics and am a very biased Democrat in terms of my political leanings. The more I practice, though, the more I find myself chilling out the fierceness in my points of view. That is not to say that I do not still get angry or scared or just emotional about politics, but I am realizing more and more the true import of my views versus reality. Its easier to see, I guess.

As I interact with those with whom I would previously have been angrily conversing, I realize that they live in an entirely different reality than that in which I live. When I hear them put forth a point of view, I am amazed and almost fearful that they can see things the way they do and that they don’t naturally see things the way I do through my lenses. It’s a simple intelligent analysis after all. How could they think anything else?

The more I see my attitudes and opinions for what they are – the ego grasping at straws for relevance – the more I can see the insanity of our existence, belief systems, and delusional behavior. Certainly I am not rid of my own, but I can see mine now whereas before I would plunge my existence into hateful rhetoric.

What becomes crystal clear is the amazing power of the ego to transcend our true reality.