What Nourishes You?

We're accustomed to search for "what makes us happy" -- and that is really the driving force behind most of the world's "consumer culture" -- the promise of finding happiness. Whether it's in a kind of car, a kind of job, or even a kind of person, the underlying promise behind it all -- whether that promise is coming from us, or coming from someone or something else -- is that it will make us happy.

This in itself is perfectly fine. I mean, why not? Isn't happiness worth experiencing?

Yes! Of course it is! However...

The challenge arises when we focus on the fact that happiness is not the most...well, scientific of terms. It's not like, say, "gold" or "oil" or something that can be measured against a static definition; and if something "meets" that definition, it's declared gold, oil, or something else. Happiness is a very abstract, elusive, nebulous term.

And because of this abstract, elusive, nebulous-ness of happiness, trying to "find it" in our life is a lot harder than it seems. Hence, we spend so much effort trying to be happy -- doing all kinds of things, making all kinds of decisions and so forth -- but rarely do we ever truly experience happiness.

The knack is -- and it's really a knack and not a strategy or anything complicated like that -- is to pay attention to what TRULY nourishes your inner being. This is much deeper than happiness; this is not about some sense-pleasure that may last a few moments but then fade away. This is not junk food for your soul. This is what really FEEDS your being -- not your ego, but you very being.

There are many dramatic movies that are all about this -- the protagonist is seeking happiness in one or many ways, perhaps manipulating or harming or doing "whatever it takes" to find that happiness, but somehow, they never experience it; until they stumble, accidentally and shockingly, upon what really nourishes them -- what really gives them the integrity that they were searching for.

In your life, pay closer attention to what really nourishes you -- not to what simply "makes you happy." Start to notice the experiences, events and perspectives that really give you a sense of grounded wholeness.

You may be VERY surprised to learn what these are -- shocked, even!

Are you a Rock or a Flower?

In the world of manipulation and hypocrisy, the idea that "might is right" continues to convince people to do all kinds of remarkably insane things; things that range from the inconsiderate to the violent to the atrocious, and all things in between. In this kind of world, the gross reigns supreme.

However, in the spiritual world -- the world of creation, compassion, sharing, love, joy and peace -- things are turned 180 degrees the other way: the subtle is much more powerful than the gross. And that is why silence and spaciousness are the supreme manifestations of the spiritual world in this physical human dimension -- the "world of phenomena." Silence and stillness are the utter peaks of subtlety; they are so porous, so inviting, so welcoming, that they are in essence not even there. They are simply the space within which other things can happen.

If you are walking the real self-help path -- not the one that tries to make you richer or more powerful, but the one that tries to inspire your level of consciousness -- then you will eventually come to terms with the fact that life doesn't actually get "easier" -- because the more you travel, the more subtle things become, and as such, the more vulnerable you become.

Many people find this paradox to be curious and best and disconcerting at worst: that the more "they become their true selves," the more challenging life seems to become. This is because they expect it to become the other way around, and yes, that would be "logical." But the world is hardly a logical place. Yes, it has laws -- but those laws answer to a much, much higher authority than mere human-centric logic.

Travel the self-help path with your eyes and your heart open. There are times it will sting and hurt in ways that it simply won't hurt those who aren't on the path with you. After all, the rock feels no pain -- but the rock is impenetrable; it is static, immobile; dead. The flower, on the other hand, releases its fragrance to the wind; and the same wind can come by and force it to lean over on its stem, or perhaps, break off entirely.

Are you going to be a rock or a flower? You must choose, and accept the reality that comes with that choice.

Circles

I don't have proof of this -- I don't think it can be proved, really -- but my gut feeling is that the universe's favorite shape is a circle. Not a triangle, not a square, not a rhombus (though that is a fun word to say...rhombus..), but a circle.

Have you noticed? Things happen in circles; in cycles. Both in the BIG sense -- such as historical cycles or business cycles -- but in the personal sense, too.

Take some time today and for the next little while paying attention to the circles and cycles in your life; don't judge them or evaluate them, just try and notice them. Are certain problems emerging with regularity? Are you reacting in a way that compels you to live in a kind of routine; one that you don't want?

Then the trick is to go into a different circle; one that leads you to inspiration, to compassion, and to peace (remember, if you are peaceful, you will make others peaceful as a by-product; if you aren't peaceful than you CANNOT make anyone peaceful, either -- you cannot give to others what you don't have, and if you don't have peace how can you make others peaceful?)

Notice your cycles; your patterns; your circles. And then create new ones!

The Ego Can't be Happy

Here's something pretty weird that, if you can somehow grasp and remember, there probably isn't much more that you'll ever have to know. This is enough.

The ego cannot be happy.

There. The end. Write that down somewhere and whenever you're unhappy, remember it -- and you'll eventually start to see (or maybe see right away, who knows?) that this is oddly and powerfully true.

Now, many of us will need some more time with this cryptic little statement -- the ego cannot be happy -- so let's take a few big steps back and take a look.

For starters, by "ego" I don't mean "egotistical" as in prideful or boastful. That is the conventional usage of the word ego, but it's certainly not the mystical one. In the most basic sense, the ego is any sense of separation from the whole. That sense of separation need not be boastful or prideful -- it need not be someone telling you how great they are. It can be the opposite, too: someone who is telling you how bad they are, or unworthy or even humble they are. Or, on an even more subtle level, it doesn't even have to require speaking at all. A person can just believe, inside, that they are separate -- good, bad, better, worse, smart, stupid, successful, failure -- in order to activate the ego.

The ego is the idea of separation. It is the very notion of having a separate agenda from the whole.

Think of your body.

Right now, look at your hands. Pick a finger; any finger.

Now, imagine that this finger that you're looking at "decided" that it was not merely a finger, but a completely separate entity.

How absurd is that? What would this finger do? Well, it would start to worry a lot, that's for sure -- because it's just one mere finger, and "survival" in this world needs other things: it needs other body parts. But the finger, believing that it's separate, lives in perpetual, ongoing fear.

That's what we are when we submerge ourselves in the idea of ego: we are in perpetual fear. We cannot not be in fear, because to identify with the ego is to identify with fear.

Why? Because the ego is not real, but think that it is. And because of this fundamental disconnect, the problems of the ego can never be solved. Yes, the ego thinks that it can solve them: some more money would be nice, a better spouse, nicer weather, whatever. But really, has it ever worked?

You have received SO many things in your life that you thought you wanted -- that your ego claimed it needed. Are you satisfied?

No. Not because you're excessively greedy. Because your ego is not real and as such you cannot satisfy something that doesn't exist. It's an empty hole. It will never be happy.

Success doesn't lead to happiness. Neither does failure. Winning doesn't work; and we know that losing doesn't either. Great relationships don't work (because they don't stay great), and no relationships is even worse (because we are bound to each other -- we are all relatives of each other).

Whatever you name will not work -- and you know from experience, that nothing has worked.

Not because you haven't tried.

But because it doesn't work.

Identification with the ego is a total commitment to misery.

The exit?

Stop identifying with your ego.

Start, instead, watching yourself as you do things. As you interact. As you reflect.

Discover a well of deep silence within that is your true self. This is your eternal witness. This is what you came into this life with. And if you start looking from these eyes, you'll realize that they don't age. They are the same eyes that you used as a small child.

Except now, as an adult, you can see the world again -- like T.S. Elliot says, for the very first time.

Hell is Other People

Eckhart Tolle is one of many gifted Spiritual Teachers who enjoy (and yes, I think it is enjoyable to them) quoting Jean-Paul Sartre's observation that "hell is other people." But what makes this quoting by Tolle and others so insightful, is that while they agree with Sartre's point, the utterly disagree with Sartre's level of understanding.

For Tolle and others, the idea that "hell is other people" is not about other people. It's about ego. And when we use ego here, we aren't referring to "egotism" or "excessive pride" or any of the other wildly inaccurate uses of the word "ego." In the clearest sense, ego is simply -- and specifically -- a state of duality or of separateness. Ego is what makes people think that they are separate from existence itself (and hence, the things in existence, such as -- but not limited to -- other people).

Confused? Let's slow down a little -- or rather, let's back up a bit.

We commonly think of "ego" as something that someone has "too much of" and is therefore being egotistical. So when you run into that (sigh) relative who won't stop talking about his great job or his whatever, it's common to wait until he's gone and say aloud: WOW, what a giant ego that guy has!

But this application of ego is incorrect; because ego is by no means limited to "bragging" or "boasting" or "pride." Ego means identification with form. And by extension, identification with form means -- because it has to mean -- that things are separate. In other words, one cannot identify with form without, in the same process, separating existence into (arbitrary) categories.

Hence, even "nice people" -- really humble ones -- indeed, have an ego as long as they identify with their humility or nice-ness (and if you want to find out just how big their ego is, go ahead and tell them that they have one in the first place and then watch them freak out! :)

So to start making sense of what Tolle and others are saying about Sartre's "hell is other people," observation, we first have to understand what Tolle and others define as the ego: it is a fictitious, arbitrary, and 100% mind-constructed "thing" that separates reality into smaller pieces: good, bad, nice, nasty, helpful, harmful, and so on. And because we live in an utterly mind-dominated society, we can also say that we live in an utterly ego-dominated society.

So, yes, when we meet other people -- and we see them as 'others' because we are seeing them through our fictitious ego -- naturally, without question, it's going to be hell. Oh, it may seem like heaven for a while...but invariably, every relationship turns into hell. This is not pessimism -- it's hard core reality. People who "manage" to survive together almost never do so because they want to; rather, the costs of the alternative (measured not necessarily in financial terms, but social and other ways) is just too high. But if they could have a wish granted...you know what that wish would be!

Why is this happening? And why are people running around from partner to partner, trying to avoid the hell that is intrinsic in every mind/ego-run relationship? Because, sadly, people are not identifying the root cause of the problem. The problem is NOT with other people. The problem is not with you, either. The problem is with the ego and its need to view things as separate.

That's why people who live "in nature" and away from people can seem quite peaceful -- because there are no OTHERS to reveal hell -- but that peace is quite artificial -- just drop them in a big city or in a big group, and watch the peace vaporize. Real peace doesn't turn into violence merely by changing the scenery. Real peace is not circumstantial; it is permanent. It doesn't change with context.

Meditation is simply -- and quite ordinary, really -- an effortless effort to take you to a state of conscious egoless-ness. You go into this state during deep sleep, but because you aren't conscious, you aren't aware.

Any meditation that takes you into thought is not a meditation. It's just exercise, and probably, harmful.

What You Seek is Inside

Have you ever wondered why different people dream of different things? I mean, why do some people dream of wealth while others -- who may not be wealthy in the financial sense -- dream of something totally different? Or why do some people yearn for that ideal life partner, while others really don't care that much about idealistic romantic love at all?

Is it because we're all so fundamentally different that we yearn for different things?

Well, that's possible, sure. And that's probably what most of us believe: we're all different, we all have different paths in life, different perspectives and levels of awareness, and all of these differences influence our personal dreams.

But...look deeper into this. Though it's unarguable that, on the surface, many of us want "different things" -- the person who dreams of money is, without question, desiring something different than the person who dreams of a fulfilling relationship, but to simply stop our observation at this level is somewhat short-sighted. Yes, the objects of desire are indeed different, but the ultimately goal is amazingly similar. It's more than amazing; it's staggering.

You see, at the deepest level of our being -- prior to our beliefs, our thoughts, our interpretations, our logic, our language -- we all want the same thing. What differs, quite dramatically in some cases, is how we think we can achieve it.

What we all want, in the deepest core of our being, is to simply be. We can call it "peace" if we want, but even that term may not be that helpful, since in so many ways "peace" is seen as a commodity; something that is to be achieved in the future, or protected, or fought for, or whatever. It's hardly viewed as a state of being; it's really more of a political word than a mystical one, and has been for quite a while.

But, really, if you truly go inside yourself and see, what you really want is to feel whole; to feel integrated. To feel at peace with yourself; to feel alignment. And to achieve that wholeness, that integration, that peace, you think that there is one "optimal way" -- which is through money, or relationships, or something else.

In other words: you want to go from point A to point B, and you think the only way to do it is through [enter desire here]. You're convinced -- self-hypnotized, perhaps -- that your desire is the only way to get there.

The problem is...

You often get what you wanted, but you don't achieve the integration, the wholeness, the PEACE that you wanted. And when that happens, it's ridiculously easy to find many reasons for it: something hasn't fallen into place, things didn't work out the way that they "should," other people are being needlessly difficult, luck is bad, or whatever.

The root, core misunderstanding is simply that you thought you needed something that you didn't need -- and so when you get it, even if you get more than you wanted, you never actually needed it in the first place. You needed integration, wholeness, peace. THAT'S what you want; you just think that there's only one "optimal" way to get there.

Experience will tell you -- if you pay attention -- that your being is much more energized by present moment attention than it ever will be to future-oriented desire. That's why little children are so remarkably happy -- they haven't learned about future yet. They haven't lost track of the present moment; they live in the now.

By all means, desire wealth if you wish, or a fulfilling relationship. Why not? But don't ask of them things that they cannot give to you.

Find your peace now, in the now. That's where it is.

And then, build from there.

WHERE ARE YOU?

In some shopping malls, you’ll find these maps that give you a kind of “birds-eye view” of the different stores and places in the mall; and the different ways to get to them.

For example, these handy mall maps will tell you that the sports equipment store is next to the pet store, but not next to the office supply store (because, as the map happily tells you, the office supply store is across from the little stall that sells those giant pretzels).

Now, all of this is good and helpful – knowing where the stores are, and which “roads” get you to the store that you want to visit, is…well, yes, it’s good and helpful. But...

It’s not enough. There’s another missing piece of information that is absolutely, uncategorically, utterly essential.

You need to know where YOU are on the map. You need to find that blissful, even spiritual little dot that says “YOU ARE HERE.” With that little dot you can go ANYWHERE in the shopping mall; and you’ll always go towards your desired destination.

But without that little dot – and really, on a big shopping mall map it does seem like a small detail, right? – you’re merely “lucky” if you find your destination; and if you do, you’ll probably never be able to find it again (unless you keep getting lucky...which you won't).

Forrest Gump thought that “life was like a box of chocolates.” Okay, sure. Why not?

But I’d suggest a slightly more…urban version of this wisdom: life is like a shopping mall map.

There are places you want to go; and places you don’t. And once you know where YOU are, you can find your way towards these places/avoid these places.

So. That compels us to ask: WHERE ARE YOU?

Seriously. Right now. Where are you? No, I don’t mean physically – I don’t mean the city in which you live, or the country, or anything defined by some outer criteria. I mean INSIDE you. Where are you?

Are you tense? Fearsome? Resisting reality? Are you being nourished by some kind of inner complaining? Are you projecting yourself OUT of the present moment into the future, or thrusting yourself back into the past?

Or…are you simply WHERE YOU ARE. Are you inside your being; are you alert, aware, open, and co-existing with reality?

Remember: being aware and co-existing with reality DOES NOT mean that you become a passive vegetable who does nothing and cannot make positive change. In fact, just the opposite is true: ONLY when you are aware and co-existing with reality can you clearly and consciously SEE what needs to be done – and what you can do to help make that happen.

So from now on, as you go through life’s many situations – some tense, some pleasant, some positive, some not – always ask yourself: WHERE AM I?

Find – or rather, RE-FIND – yourself on your internal shopping mall map. And then happily go where you really need -- and really want -- to go.