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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

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.

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.

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.