Dear Permission to be Powerful Reader,
Your spirit knows you in your entirety.
From birth to death and beyond.
All within context. It knows the future.
It’s part of a vastly greater intelligence.
That silent talker gets lost in our day to day.
Because your mind covers it up. It’s the most profound illusion of all time.
If you could really see the world for what it is, not for what your mind wants it to be…
You would be stunned. The mysteries of life would solve itself right in front of you. Be quiet, even when you’re restless and your mind is noisy.
Especially when your mind is noisy this is a big opportunity.
Here’s something one of my teachers at the Zen Center taught me recently. It’s so ironic how we get lost in our problems. We obsess over them.
Constantly catastrophizing or looking for ways to fix them.
We worry ourselves to exhaustion.
But funny thing. You don’t actually have to solve your problems. Not at all. You don’t even have to try to fix them.
Here’s what you do — as taught to me by my teacher:
You just sit, and watch your breathe, and you give that problem the space to unfold. You watch but you don’t invest.
Allow yourself to relax into the problem. Find the space to allow the problem to be there without trying to do anything about it. Without trying to control it in any way.
Then…
There’s no then.
No next…
You just let it be, and quietly observe it.
Here’s what invariably happens.
Keep in mind that when you’re sitting in quiet detachment, you’re not expending energy, like you would be by thinking about the problem.
The thoughts are there, but you’re not investing in them. Instead, you’re sortof letting them pass through you.
You can see them, but from a different perspective. It’s more like they’re washing through you. You don’t exist.
When you observe your thoughts from that place of quiet detachment… You can directly perceive your own emptiness.
Often that emptiness has an aroma of bliss and peace that isn’t of this world. In that state of total relaxation, you can perceive the world around you much more completely.
From this new persepective, the world — everything in existence — appears to originate from you. Because, in fact, it does.
How dope is that?
People can’t wrap their minds around why I meditate so aggressively. Why am I doing another seven-day meditation retreat next week?
Why a new one every month? Most men don’t get this motivated unless money, sex, or food is involved.
This is what they’re missing out on. Yet, somehow, I can never find the words to bridge the gap in their understanding. I feel so misunderstood and unseen. What’s new?
The world looks completely different when we remain silent. You access parts of your being that may have gone unnoticed your whole life.
Yet, it is there, waiting for you. Closer than close. More familiar than familiarity itself.
This secret universe that you’ve missed, for your whole life, hides lifes greatest treasures. Hands down.
We spend our whole lives searching.
For money, love, status, acceptance, recognition, security, adventure, you name it…
But the great irony is:
Nothing will ever fill the hole in your heart.
It is a black hole.
The only way to fill the hole… is to forget about the outside world and start living in this new place.
You may not know it yet…
But this is your second nature.
Easier than easy.
It’s your natural state.
Your suffering mind could not exist without it.
It is what you are beyond your mind…
History…
Trauma…
Conditioning…
Someone speaks…
Words travel, until they land on your eardrums.
You percieve sound.
Your mind perceives it.
Your mind makes noise.
It reacts.
It projects.
It compares.
It keeps telling your neverending story.
But in silence, you can see the intelligence that comes before the mind.
Some of us are so alseep, they’re too gridlocked in their mind to perceive my message.
If this is you, then all of this sounds like gobbledy-gook. I probably sound like I need to have my head examined.
You watch the news every day. Every single day. Whatever is on the news always seems so important.
Yet we forget what we watched so quickly and move on to the next dopamine it. Your mind says it’s so important, but your spirit knows it’s poison.
Your spirit knows, this is your mind feeding on negativity — and it’s as addicted as they come.
This is your mind rehearsing ugliness constantly — ritualistically — yet we wonder why we can never find true happiness.
How can anyone argue that we are not asleep? Politics is one of the most divisive and ugly practices, yet we can’t get enough of it. So many seeds of division.
Most people don’t get why I like meditation.
I’m not running from the world; I’m running to something.
And once you’ve touched it, once you’ve seen even a glimpse of the intelligence before thought, the peace behind the noise, everything else feels like a cheap imitation.
Most people won’t get it, but that’s okay.
Truth doesn’t need consensus.
Until next time,
Dancer, Writer, Buddhist.
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