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.

William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury

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.

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.

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.

• 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.

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.