Photo by: Fire Horse Leo

It’s an interesting thing, that everything in our rational mind tells us that the key to being happier is to make ourselves wrong for all the things we don’t like about the way things are:

This should be like that. And that should be like this.

The more ferociously I reject the way things are (in the pursuit of the way I think they ought to be), the more I suffer. The more it persists.

This is basic Avatar, basic Buddha dharma, Conversations with God, and on and on.

Diving into my resistance using the Avatar tools this morning, I found, that I was wishing I was someone different:

Don’t look at me now—see me as I imagine myself, sometime in the future—because that guy is going to be amazing.

But don’t look at this guy!

This guy weighs too much, and isn’t rich enough, and doesn’t have it all figured out.

Just check back in a month, when I’ll have it all together; I’ll have it all figured out!

Using this process, it became obvious—in a matter of a minute or two—that I was making it not-okay to be the way I was, and was projecting myself out into an imagined future, where everything would be okay.

To the intellectual mind, this is the obvious course of action, whenever things aren’t the way we prefer (and for the mind, that is quite frequently the way things are):

I want to be like x, but I am like y, so I will criticize myself (or my partner, or my circumstance, or the whole world), and deny it, and ignore it, and squash all my ‘x’ feelings, until they go away.

They are wrong, and I will make everything right, by pushing them away.

Then, everything will be all right again.

Hmm…

In a moment, using this amazing, simple, tool that I learned on my first Avatar Course, I discovered that this was happening, without having to intellectualize it.

Without having to think it to death—which wouldn’t have worked anyway, because my mind would have kept telling me that same thing—that I should keep pushing down those feelings I didn’t want to feel, so that I could be a “better” person (i.e., not the person I am).

In a moment, I dove down, right into that resistance, felt it, was with it, and moved through it. A few minutes later, I was through to the other side, feeling the joy of being alive.

And now, I am feeling the joy of being alive, in being human. In being who I am. It seems so simple. My mind tells me there should be something more complicated.

So, I will say it again: In a moment, using a simple Avatar tool—I dove right down into the resistance, experienced it, and let it go! No long suffering, no working it out over a period of months. I was on the other side.

A thousand self-help and self-development messages talk about how you can get rich, buy the perfect house, the perfect spouse, etc., so that you can be happy.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and Avatar can definitely help you get that, too.

But for me… well, feeling the joy of life, it made me want to write in a fashion after Lao Tzu:

Things are gorgeous because they act the way they are.

The little boy on his momma’s shoulder, looking over at me, is beautiful because he is totally present to the way he is; no thoughts disturbing that, saying “I am like this, but I should be like that.”

The light shines out of an empty hole in the world, from the space from which all phenomena arise.

Striving, everything is lost.

Letting go to the stillness of the moment, everything moves along, swimmingly, no resistance.

The ease of this present space tells me everything is okay.

In this space, peace is everywhere.

I am not a thing, I am a flow, a flow that is everywhere.

Everything marches on, in absolute perfection.

There is so much stillness available to  you right now, along this path. It is not different in nature from the Buddha dharma, or the teachings of Eckhart Tolle, or any other wisdom teacher.

But, what I have found that is different, is is fast, because it is an experiential path. It is fast, because taps in to the eternal knowing of the universe. You.

The knowingness of the universe tapped into itself, and these tools, this path, was an outcome. Come, check it out.

Photo by jez.atkinson

There are word lessons, and there are world lessons. A word lesson is an effort to convey an experience via spoken or written symbols. A word lesson can be informative or enjoyable or inspiring. A word lesson is an expression of someone’s belief. A word lesson should not be confused with a world lesson.

—ReSurfacing^®: Techniques for Exploring Consciousness, by Harry Palmer

My awareness can become so attached to I, that I forget that I am not it!

We can become so attached to our minds that we forget that we are not it.

If you have read a lot of enlightenment literature, from Zen, to Eckhart Tolle, to many others, this concept (the thought) should be familiar to you.

This morning, doing one very simple perception exercise taught in the Avatar^® Course, outside on my street, I experienced it, again.

Yet another layer deeper. Yet another life lesson.

I am life;

I am the play of shadows on a sun-dappled street in early April;

I am a field of presence.

I remember when I would study the great teachers, and I would read about how I was not my body…

I was not my mind, and awakening was not going to come through my mind.

I was bigger, brighter, and more beautiful, than I knew myself to be.

I was not even any idea I thought of as “me”.

Outside of all definition, outside of all time and space and everything, I was this definitionless presence.

Those notions were beautiful and comforting. Something they had witnessed, and were charged with bringing back to the rest of us.

Of course, what they wanted more than anything to help us experience it. “Don’t get captivated by my words,” they would always say. “Seek to find the experience.”

Condsider:

What is the difference between eating an apple and studying what an apple tastes like?

—ReSurfacing

Yet, as much as I tried to understand this with my mind, this did not get me all that far, all that fast. Worrying, struggling.

Meditation came the closest. It was so powerful. But it was so hard, too. If I was honest!

Sit there, and notice your breathing.

“But, I just remembered, I have to make a phone call…”

Meditation gives you a powerful respect for the strength of the mind.

One of the main things that is so special to me about Avatar, is that it is a path directly in to this state of awakening. Through the simplest of techniques, that takes only a day or two to learn, I am able to shift out of myself (as I have defined myself to be), and realize that I can be anything.

There is a gentleness to it, like softening in to a yoga posture, or a hot tub.

If you would like to know more about the tool I mentioned, or The Avatar Course in general, you might want to come to an introduction. It’s all about tasting that apple, and seeing what it tastes like!