Category Archives: Ego identification

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What if…?

What if the world operated in the way we teach our children?

Since my wife and I have become parents to our daughter, I have often asked myself this question, and as I was paging through my book for the first time in a few years recently, stopping at random pages, reading little bits here and there, I also came across the part where the bird talks exactly about this. How we teach our children to be honest and authentic, to be kind, not to lie, not to hit, not to hurt other people’s feeling, to apologize when we do.

We tell them that everyone is unique and should be treated with kindness and respect. We tell them that they are safe. I have not met a parent who does not have love overflowing while watching their children play with others in this way, knowing that they are seen for who they are, and that the other children are treated the same. No parent would ever wish harm upon their own or anyone else’s child, no matter who that parent is or where they are from. It is innate. The love we feel for our children is innate and beyond the limitations of this world.

The love that children express, exude, in fact are, is transcendent and that is why they will extend it to anyone freely. Everyone is always invited to the love fest that life is to them. They don’t think in categories of worthiness, they do not see difference, they are truly present to what is and their fresh egos are simply there to do their job, to store experiences and to aid in navigating this material world.

I wish everyday that my daughter and all other children would be able to stay in that experience, that state of unbridled curiosity and being. A place where kindness rules, where love and encouragement are the main attraction and sharing experiences is the main activity.

But now that she is getting ready to go to Kindergarten in the fall, I see how different things will become, how more of the ‘real world’ will begin to creep into her consciousness. How the older kids’ ego identification is setting her up to walk a similar path, and a part of me is deeply saddened by this, because I keep asking myself the ‘what if…?’

What if we as adults behaved more childlike? What if we were more authentic? What if we didn’t spread around our own judgments about everything, peddling them as ‘being honest,’ when we all deep down know that it is simply our judgment, and that it will add nothing to the world and hurt someone else’s feelings? What if we honestly tried our best to see the light in the person next to us? What if we sought out to connect with others, share a kind moment with them every single day, every single moment, to the best of our ability? What if we let ourselves be happy for others and let them know? What if we spread kindness and love to everyone we meet through a laugh, a kind word, a compliment, an encouragement? What if we sought to help others to become their best self? What if we stopped comparadging all the time? What if we allowed the world around us to be filled with love? What if we stopped taking life and other people so personally? What if we looked at life and everything in it as the miracle it truly is? What if we spoke up when we witness an injustice, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem? What if we assumed the best about each other?

What if we were all more childlike and aimed to create a world that reflected that, a world in which the love, joy and freedom we all remember from our own childhood was not limited to the first few years of our lives? What if we had a world in which all children get to have a childhood like this to begin with? To paraphrase L.R. Knost: Maybe it shouldn’t be our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world – our job should be to make the world less cruel and heartless.

What if we never had to utter the words: ‘Welcome to the real world.’

I am acting on my ‘what ifs’ as much as I can every day. I invite you to think of your own ‘what ifs,’ act on them, and see what happens in your life as a result.

Cheers,

Ralf

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The F Word

As you can probably guess, it’s not that word, I am talking about feelings of course. It has been a while since I have written here, since March 6th to be exact, and the topic had been Possibility, and how anything is possible…

At that time my mother had come home from the hospital from cancer treatment, was on a very effective medication and there was talk of her coming to visit us here in the U.S. at some point during the later summer, she was working hard at getting her strength back – and a little over three weeks later she passed away on March 29th, talk about anything being possible. I managed to get over there in time, in time to see her in her coma, still alive, not all there anymore, but somewhat still. I was able to sit with her, hold her hand, talk to her and to make sure that she was as comfortable as possible until she passed, with most of her family by her side. Both parents in a span of two and a half years.

I honestly don’t think that she saw it coming, she was so determined to get stronger, to be around, to see her third granddaughter grow up to be a teenager at the very least as she told me many times. I think she was surprised by this as much as we were, though my feeling in talking to her those last few days had been that she seemed more tense, more tightly focused on being here, and this has me wonder whether on another level she did feel something, she was preparing herself for her impending departure, but did not allow herself to acknowledge this, she wasn’t ready.

Which leads me to feelings. For the longest time I have believed that we as human beings are nothing but one big feeling. Everything we experience and are, is a feeling. I have never attempted to explain or explore that any further, until now. With what has happened, I was so broadsided by feelings, an onslaught, a maelstrom, a seemingly never ending storm of them for the past months. It was a mix of feelings and FEELINGS.

What has emerged so clearly for me is that we have both of these. The first are the ones of the ego identified state and life. The feelings we have from there are the feelings of self concern, the feelings that ultimately are about us, even though they may at first glance be about others. These feelings are always tied to the ego, they are about me. They limit my experience of life, because they inherently serve the idea of a me in the smallest way. The ego is me. The story is me. And from that position every feeling is either positive or negative and tied to the ego’s agenda of self preservation. In other words, they are conditional feelings. They are always linked to the ego and the circumstances it finds itself in. It is happy when it gets something it wants, it is thrilled at personal victory, it craves the great feeling of acknowledgement, of winning. Just as much it has us feel depressed, lonely, lost and less-than in so many ways. A constant up and down of emotion, a motion that never lets us truly be at peace or rest.

That is the nature of this kind of feeling. Because it is tied to our sense of ego id, and this ego knows that it is the least permanent part of us, it has to constantly keep itself and us busy with feelings tied to circumstances. This way it says ‘I am here and exist, because I am feeling this because of what I did or didn’t do, I am real.’ This way our emotional life is exhausting, because it never stops.

Then there are FEELINGS. They feel very different. They are simply in us, and when there is a moment of quiet in us, they show up, become feelable. They come out of now here, out of being present to here, and they are so big and reassuring and wonderful that we deep down know that they are not personal. They are impersonal, but we get to experience them at that moment, and we get to be enveloped and held by them. We all have these FEELINGS, every human being on earth knows them. They are universal and are before and beyond our personal ego id experience. They ‘happen’ at the oddest moments and for the oddest reasons, it can be as ‘silly’ as a moving commercial on TV, witnessing an act of kindness, receiving something from someone, a hug, a smile, a thank you, a gift, no matter what. It happens when we are awed by looking at the night sky and feeling that sense of endlessness to it all. A child’s laughter, a friend’s embrace, looking at a sunset, you get the idea.

The point is they often show up without ‘any reason’ because the ego has not been involved and thus provided the logical reward system for having the feeling. FEELINGS are simply there, and they are powerful. I honestly believe it is your God or the Universe whispering in your ear, reminding you that this human life is but an aspect of a much grander existence, that it is temporary in this form and that this is how it is, and it is good that way. These FEELINGS serve as an experiential reminder that we are not just a human being, but so much more. Not that I can claim to know what that means, but I cannot dismiss the FEELING.

I think my mother could FEEL that things were coming to an end in her human form, and I think that her ego could not and did not want to face this, did not allow this, and thus kept her busy feeling her personal purpose and goal of getting stronger again, of hanging on, of staying here for all the reasons it could muster. I want to believe that when she fell into her coma out of the blue, she was at first confused and then settled into the FEELING that was there all this time letting her know that it was all ok, that everything was alright and that she would be fine on her journey back into it. And that this was her choice.

Take some time to let your self listen within. Look for that quiet spot and find out what may be waiting there for you. Those FEELINGS are a wonderful part of our lives, they immediately put us in a space of less self or selflessness that isn’t about anything but the experience of it. And when you FEEL like that, act out of it in whatever way moves you.

Cheers,

Ralf

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Possibility

Anything can happen. Anything is possible. Always and in all ways.

Like most people I live my life in patterns and habitual ways most of the time, and that is certainly useful in many ways, especially when it comes to functioning effectively in a complex world. But limiting our life to this alone and letting our thoughts run in the repetitive patterns also closes us to the magic of the above, to the fact that every moment is a possibility and anything can indeed happen. It just hardly ever feels that way when we let our mind habits run the show and control every aspect of our lives.

When we live that way, predictability is the key and makes us comfortable, and usually it is a dramatic event of some kind that shows us that anything can happen and is possible at any time. We fall in love unexpectedly, we win something ‘out of the blue,’ we have an accident, someone close to us dies. All of these events have the effect of jarring us back into the moment and into the realm of the unknown, which is where possibility resides. Our minds are brought to a halt and many people who experience a dramatic event will report afterwards that they didn’t know what to think, that they were incapable of holding a thought, that their minds were reeling. This is literally what happens, our minds are reeling because they have no preset pattern to fall into, no habitual response at the ready for the situation in which we find ourselves. People say that they felt in a daze of sorts and often cannot remember much about the moment they heard the news. Why is that?

They were busy experiencing it. Remember a moment in your life when something completely unexpected and dramatic happened, positive or negative, and you will probably have a hard time recalling exactly what was going on with you at the moment. Our habitual small mind or ego id is taking a break because it does not know how to process the new information and our big mind swoops in and instantly thrusts us into the actual experience in that moment. The full force of the present hits us. This may last for seconds, minutes, hours or days, all depending on the individual and the situation, but it happens to all of us. It’s the present moment saying hello and reminding us that while we are busy making plans, living in our patterns, life is happening and unfolding all around us in limitless ways. We choose whether we pay attention to this or not, whether we are listening or not.

All it requires on our part is to become uninterested in our own thinking and the same old stories and patterns within which we make ourselves exist. I still catch myself all day, I notice my seemingly random thinking and that it has, in fact, a very familiar tone and pattern. That it keeps telling me the same thing about life, my life, all the time, and thus making me hide from the unknown that life is, making possibilities impossible or at the very least unlikely. Constantly barraging me with thoughts of limitation, reasons why something won’t work, cannot happen and is simply not in the realm of possibility. But when we notice it, we can also consider the possibility that there is more to life than the patterns we live in. So much more, in fact, that we cannot begin to truly comprehend or understand it.

This is a much more fun place to live. We don’t have to contemplate the meaning of life here, though that is fun as well, but I am saying that what we think is possible is so infinitesimally small that it would behoove us to consider more. Think of how many people are on the planet having thoughts at any moment, how many molecules are moving about, how many processes are at work both physical and metaphysical – it is limitless, no number could be put on this. And in our deluded ego id states we think we have it all figured out… Sounds pretty funny, doesn’t it? All the great thinkers, explorers and inventors in human history have had one thing in common – they refused to be limited by what the common thought patterns at the time deemed possible. They saw beyond the limitations and knew that realm of possibility, often before they had thoughts, concepts or words to describe it. They were present and thus open to that which had in fact been pre-sent from the space of infinity. They just tuned in and paid attention.

Play with that idea. See what happens, see if your mind is tickled, your concepts start to to feel less solid, your opinions and thoughts about the world and yourself lose their solidity. What if in fact we have no clue, simply because it is impossible for us to understand that anything is possible and anything can happen. And that, as a matter of fact, this is going on all the time. What then?

Cheers,

Ralf

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Past

The past is a piece of work. We have to have it, because without it nothing would work in our human existence, absolutely nothing. We wouldn’t be able to remember how to walk, talk, get dressed, do math or act like a complete idiot. It’s essential to have it, but the key to having a useful past in our lives is to understand the difference between having a past or being the past.

Most of humanity seems to subscribe to the latter, and it has interesting consequences to say the least. When we believe we are the past, it takes on a life of its own, and it seriously limits our abilities in life regarding ourselves and others. We will limit who we are, what we believe to be true of ourselves and what we are capable of based on ‘past experience.’ So in effect we believe that because something has happened in our lives once or even a few times, is equal to saying that it will happen the same way again, so why even bother with it. Welcome to limitation nation, because that’s where that is taking us.

When we become our past experiences in this way, we cut out possibilities for new experiences in our lives piece by piece, and end up in a life that is dictated by habits, rituals, and a particular way to do things, and to think of ourselves and other people. This is the place from which we say and think things that say I, you or life has always been that way. And then we make future predictions based on this information, of course assuming for the past to repeat itself. ‘My past experience with this (person) tells me that x is going to happen here’ is a popular phrase in this world. And by operating from this vantage point about myself and others I try to make life predictable and manageable, because at least I won’t be surprised. And when things actually turn out differently than expected we think of it as the exception to the rule, thus making sure that our past stays in place. We actually use the past to blind us from the present, because we see only past experience and not what is in front of us. And with this we begin to narrow down our ability to experience anything new in our lives, the past will make sure of this with its raised finger of insecurity and fear. ‘Don’t even think of trying this,’ it says, ‘you know what happened last time…’ or ‘What makes you think that you could ever do this?’ and on and on it goes.

Luckily there are those among us who don’t work that way, they in fact have a past, but never learned to become it, and by virtue of doing so remain open to the present and keep learning and finding out new things about themselves and the world on a daily basis. Great achievements in human history came about only because those people did not let their past get in the way of their own evolution and growth. They made mistakes, they failed, they stumbled and fell, but they used what they learned from those past experiences to get better, to improve upon it and to keep going by not repeating that which didn’t work and moving forward into an unknown future. Nothing can keep these people from succeeding. And you know who these people are? Every single one of us as a child when we learned how to achieve the seemingly impossible feat of walking. I’ll let you think about that for a moment.

As we grow older, we add ego identification into the mix, and – bam! – the past becomes us, the story takes over, and with it comes the weight of endless past experiences. As I think of this, it strikes me as absolutely amazing that we fall into this trap and keep teaching each other that this is the way to be human, that this is the only way to have a life – to be a product of the past, be that past and own it. And we don’t stop with ourselves, we then do it to all the people in our lives, how many times has a parent in history looked at their child and said to them that their ‘past experience with them’ tells them that they will fail, do the wrong thing and end up in the same place as before? If all I see is the past, then I cannot see the present and won’t see the person in front of me, but my past image of them instead.

What if we became like children again, and used the past to our advantage by trusting that our mind will do a wonderful job in using the past to let us function well in this world and protect us from harm? I don’t struggle to remember that a hot stove top is hot after finding out, I just do. We naturally trust ourselves with the past in uncountable ways every moment. It works brilliantly well, we don’t have to become the past for it to serve us, there is a natural selection process in place. It makes sure to pull the past data necessary for us to function very well in this world. It is unconscious and reliable, we don’t have to remember to do this. It’s like breathing. Having a past is not only essential, it is incredibly valuable. Let it do its job, stop messing with the process by thinking you are the process. None of us are, we are the creators of past, and we are forgetters of it as well. If we trust the process we don’t have to think about it and the past takes care of itself.

Living with the past is a great thing. It makes for a life of curiosity and discovery. It keeps us safe while letting us play in a world of possibilities. It’s a great servant. But it’s not who we are, unless we choose to believe so.

So with another year coming to an end I invite you to play with this, hang out with your past tonight, have a drink and share some memories. And then say thank you and send it on its merry way to be an aspect of you, and not who you are. And then begin again by creating a new past, one where learning becomes natural and you are not bound by your past, but supported by it. It may just lead to a great story to tell about the past in the future…

Happy New Year.

Cheers,

Ralf

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Once

Everything happens once. You will read these words only once. You will think about this very idea once. You breathe once. You see the people you love in your life once. You have every thought and feeling once. You only exist once.

But we don’t see it, it’s as if we do everything we can to hide from this fact. We are blessed and cursed with this ego, the keeper of our story, the one that needs to hang on to as much information as possible to make the idea of ‘me’ possible and life known and predictable. We form habitual thought patterns that give the illusion of things happening over and over again, with some variations, but at the end of the day, we think ‘here we go again’ a lot.

And as we do this, we lose our ability to see, to be present and experience the uniqueness of each moment as it occurs, because it gets hidden and muddled in that cloud of our thinking. Our lives turn into predictable and planned patterns, no matter if they are positive or negative, they are still patterns. Funny thing is, every single time I have a similar thought and repeat it, it is yet happening only once each time. Through all the repetition they stop feeling unique, but we have every thought and feeling once. Again and again. Stepping outside of the pattern thrusts us into the moment, and with that comes an instant ‘Vu Ja De,’ that feeling we get when we are sure that this has never happened before … and the realization that it will never happen again because it happens only once, right here and right now. Everything in existence exists only once. Every moment, every occurrence, every wisp of life in and out of form. Nothing and no thing repeats itself, ever. Literally.

At first this notion made me very sad and bummed me out, because this meant to me that life was utterly fleeting. If all happens only once, then there is nothing to hold on to after all, it happens once, never to happen again. Kinda depressing actually. But as these musings go in my life, once they show up, they don’t leave me alone until I pay attention and look a little further into it. This one was uncomfortable because it touches that last border, that veil in my life that I will never be able to fully understand and frankly stay away from: The fact of my own eventual departure from this plane of existence. Much like the character in my book, I struggle with this. And thinking about everything only existing once makes this much more real.

If everything only occurs once, then how can it exist? How can there be continuity in anything? How does anything grow? How can I exist? That doesn’t make sense to me, and yet I know somehow that this whole ‘once’ thing is true. Being in time is the answer. We live in a concept and state of time, though this is fluid at best, and it provides the succession of singular events, the whole ‘one thing happens after another’ idea. Cause and effect. Physics. It all builds on one another, and all of this is possible because we live within the concept of time. Without it, it all goes out the window. Stepping outside of time for a moment makes the moment unique, showing us that it is happening only now, once, never to return. Only through our ability to step back into time by remembering it, can it ‘return.’

Do you do or have anything in your life that makes you feel great? Maybe a favorite meal, drink, activity, person, any kind of circumstance? One of those things you love to do? We love that feeling and long for it, and thus we repeat the activity, but all we are doing is recreating the feeling, repeating the behavior to reproduce it again and again. In fact we are simply doing a lot of re-ing, and thus are simply giving ourselves a carbon copy. We are missing out on the onceness of it all. Nothing wrong with this, except it puts us in a state of varying degrees of blindness to the moment.

This has been with me for the past few weeks, and by allowing it into my awareness, I have noticed more around me. It started by thinking about everything happening once, which led to some anxiety at first because it also meant that it may be the last time I got to experience whatever I was experiencing at the moment, but slowly it has transformed into more of a wonder about life. I find myself being struck by the onceness of a taste, a thought, a feeling, and I see that nothing repeats itself, except my thought about it. My mind has become a little quieter so that I can pay better attention. It is sad and awe inspiring at the same time. It all happens only once.

Play with this yourself and try it on for size. What if this is true and everything happens only once? Hold this idea in your mind during your next meal, conversation, bike ride, interaction with anyone, ‘this is only happening once, never again.’ You may just be so glad that you got to be around while it was happening.

Cheers,

Ralf

 

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Dropping it

Haven’t been here in a while, life got a little busy. And while doing the life thing, something occurred to me repeatedly during the last few weeks. ‘Dropping it’ is absolutely essential.

A couple of people have read my book and liked it, and some of those people know me. It has happened a couple of times that someone has said to me ‘You wrote that book and look how you are acting right now…’ That has always struck me as odd, and frankly I didn’t know how to respond to it, people have said it when I was having a bad moment and acted accordingly, when I was in my ego, tired, caught in a mood. I would almost feel guilty for being ‘less than perfect.’ Then I started to check myself, especially when my mind was in a funk, and began to be critical of my own spiritual understanding, development, etc. No fun. Once I dropped the self-critical analysis and relaxed about it, it hit me: I dropped it.

Apparently there is a belief out there that when you reach some sort of level of understanding or ‘expertise’ in self discovery and awareness, you stop having human frailties. As in you never lose your cool, are always calm and collected and have meaningful things to say about stuff all the time. That is not only a tall order, but simply a bunch of bs. As long as we are human, we are human. We will lose it, have bad moments, think thoughts that make us act like an idiot, or occasionally a total insensitive jerk. It happens. What matters is what we do with it. Like dropping it.

As I was becoming more aware of the analysis I was doing on me, I also noticed that whenever I would get into a funk about something, I would drop it as quickly as I started it. And once I dropped it, it was gone. And with that the feeling was gone as well, and quietness returned to my mind. I first noticed it with my daughter when she would get into a typical two year old state of terror about something, and I would react to it. Once I saw myself reacting to her and saw how we were entering into a sparring match of wills, I would simply drop my thought and idea about her behavior and instantly calm down. This removed any emotion or reaction I had been experiencing with her and leave me in a state of calm observation. As a result, two things would happen: I would have completely different ideas and options available in how to be with her, and she would notice that I wasn’t reacting to her anymore, which would often shift her state of mind as well.

After I caught on to this I began to see my ‘crazy’ moments not as much as a reason to feel bad about my own level of consciousness or development, questioning everything I may or may not know about this ‘stuff,’ but instead began to see the opportunities to perfect the art of dropping it. This has added another level of fun to living life. When I notice me having a bad moment and saying something mean or acting like an ass, I immediately drop it. Just let it go. Allow myself to accept that I am human, and move on. It is amazing how instant the shift is. I go from ego id to being present to my mind and the moment, and thus am pulled out of the drama. Ego id drops and with it this incessant need to be right, to have to convince the other, to show someone what they really should do or see, etc. And it changes the situation and experience, the other person tends to notice the shift in energy, and thus the interaction will change as well. Pretty cool.

I realized that the comments people made about my state of imperfection were absolutely accurate, I just took them personally because at that moment I was of course in my ego identified state, and thus reacted to it. No learning or insight in that. Once I caught on to the awareness around dropping it, and that wanting to be more aware in my life did not mean being super human, I was free to be human. And as a result I have been reacting less, getting into funks a little less often, enjoying life yet a bit more.

As always, I invite you to play with this as well. Next time you are in a ‘thing’ with someone or a situation, when being right or wrong is what it’s all about, stop for a moment and ask yourself whether you want to be right or wrong, or simply drop it to see what may be on the other side. You will instantly feel better, because dropping stuff makes us lighter.

Cheers,

Ralf

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Projections

I know that ultimately my blog posts and ruminations keep circling around and back to the same. Here is another awareness, another piece of consciousness creeping up on me. I think that this may be one of the reasons I haven’t written lately, because it always seems to be about the same ‘thing…’ I wonder if I may ever reach the point that I have said it in enough ways, discovered and became aware of enough, to be done? Guess I’ll find out.

Projections have really been on my mind ever since we have had our daughter. From the day she was born I became über conscious of my own mind’s thinking which was so full of the memories, stories and assumptions about me, and the world around me. I think this happened because I was in the presence of this pure and unclouded new earthling that was a blank canvas of consciousness. I vowed to myself that I would do anything possible to try and show her the world with as little projection of my world put over it as possible and instead would simply help by describing it and for her to form her own thoughts on things. Going alright thus far, but I have become painfully aware of these projections going on all the time, and in ways I never expected.

As I have been observing other parents and people hanging out with our daughter, I began to notice how much people project themselves onto the little beings. It is completely unconscious and innocent, but it’s happening. I have actually had another father tell me that he was tired of his six-month-old trying to manipulate him into feeling sorry for her. That hit me between the eyes, because this particular person is actually very manipulative, and it was shockingly clear to me that he was looking at his daughter through his unconscious lens and thus projecting his own process onto her. A six-month-old does not know how to manipulate, they barely understand that they are a singular human being, so this was a humdinger for me to listen to. I gently asked him to consider this fact, but he shook his head and stuck to his story. This is what I am talking about. We look at the child, and if we are not awake, we look at us instead. And then we base our actions on our own projections and assumptions. As I am writing this, it hits me how messed up that is.

Being with my daughter has put me on high alert with my own movie projection that is going on. I can see it playing more and more and walk out of the theater to make sure that I see my daughter and not my projection placed on her. I don’t always succeed of course, but when I get caught up in the show, I snap to it and stop whatever it is that I am doing at that moment, and then everything shifts and she comes back into focus. It always feels so good, too. Since I have been at this I have begun to see how my projector is running a lot in my everyday life as well.

These projections are of course simply another way to describe the eternal story telling my ego does in all these different ways, but it has been painful and helpful for me to see it this way. It shows up in the simplest stuff, the other day I started saying to my bride ‘Well, you know how (fill in the blank) makes you think…’ assuming that of course it would make her think exactly the same thing as me. These words actually came out of my mouth?! It was one of those nasty little projections doing its thing. Of course no one but me thinks what or how I think, period. But these little projections make me believe that anyone worthy of my attention would be in the same theater as me, watching the exact same movie with exactly the same reactions to what is going on. It sounds silly, but that is precisely how these projections work and in the process create that very limited world view and experience that we have.

Think about this, and how many times in any given day we do this. Why doesn’t this person see how wrong, stupid, ignorant, silly, annoying, dumb, offensive, insulting, etc. they are? This is a question asked from within the theater looking at someone sitting in an entirely different theater and us wondering why they would ever watch their movie, don’t they see how silly their show is? Come over here and join me in my theater, where we watch it all in Imax 3D, it’s like the real world in here. We show you how it really is, not like your little show over there, 16mm projector, sound all messed up, in black and white. Can’t you see that it is just a movie? Come here, let me show you reality. This shows up in the real world in the form of well meaning advice, criticizing, judging, all out fighting, and eventually, war. And we are all missing that we are being duped by our own show.

Having been aware of this little charade has made my life more exhausting lately, simply because there is so much of this going on, but I am also grateful to see these projections, because it is just another way to catch on to the intricate ways of my ego trying to keep me bought into the idea that I am my story, and that this story is all I am.

So here’s to all of us looking around once in a while to make sure we are not sitting in the theater of our ego projections where we get fed nothing but what we already know in so many different shades of grey (see how I did that?). Let’s get out of our seats, and walk out of the theater to see what is really going on. It may end up being a much better experience, especially since we wouldn’t know what’s next…

Cheers,

Ralf

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Coming and Going

The past seven days have been quite eventful around here. My favorite aunt passed away and one of my best friends welcomed a beautiful baby daughter into the world. Wow. Funny enough, this made me reflect on all the coming and going that is going on all around us, all the time.

My aunt, who became my aunt through my marriage to my amazing bride, was one of my favorite people. She had already suffered from MS for decades when I met her, and she was reduced to control of her left arm and hand, and that in limited fashion. But that was the only limitation that existed in this remarkable woman, for she was working on transcending the limitations of the human body. That is how I experienced her. When she ended up bed ridden for months because of some medical complications, I ended up going to her house weekly to read books to her and have the most amazing conversations about her life, our shared philosophy on things and what it may or may not be all about. This was an incredible time for me, and I hope for her as well. The first time one of the staff nurses came to check on her when I was there, she introduced me as her nephew, as if I had always been. It touched me so much, how she so naturally just thought of me that way and allowed me into her life. It reminded me that at the end of the day we are all human, all on the same planet, all mortal and doing this thing called life. And she chose happiness over self-pity or depression any day. Given her circumstances, this was a wonderful thing for her to choose, and it was not always easy of course.

Many times we would talk about how life was an inside-out affair and that she often would visit places in her mind and go on trips to places of and not of this earth, contemplating life and what may be beyond. She would tell me that doing this was giving her a sense of peace and acceptance of her condition, and a sense and experience of freedom at the same time. She told me so many stories of her childhood and pre-MS life, but they were never filled with regret or bitterness because that was lost. And she always talked about what MS had given her, and she would always say one thing: ‘MS showed me the deep and true love that my husband has (had) for me.’ I will leave it at that.

Within a week of her passing, one of my best friends welcomed a baby girl into his life. This is a man of great heart and compassion, who has loved our little girl since her birth in the sweetest way, and I knew then that he had no idea what would happen to him and his capacity to feel love once he had his own child. When I talked to him yesterday morning, he was in tears of joy in the face of such overwhelming love, we both ended up crying. One second your child is but an idea or concept, and the very next second, it is here, on earth, and we are in its presence. There is a purity of presence in a newborn that transcends all language and concepts and can only be felt. It is the most amazing, wonderful and awe inspiring feeling a human being can feel, I believe. It changes you instantly and completely, and for the rest of your life. And you never want to be without it again. I know that my friend is feeling this right now as well. At first our mind cannot process it, because it is outside of our experience, outside of thought. Outside of the ego identification, that is what makes it so powerful.

Only a parent can fully relate to this particular experience of love of course, but any and all human beings have the built in capacity for this. There never has been or ever will be a human being that is not born in the same state of utter perfection and purity of feeling. We all start out this way, and thus we all know what this state is like, whether we are conscious of it or not. That is reassuring to me. The world is in such a mess, and sometimes these days I feel like an alien visiting earth and observing the level of insanity that people engage in is beyond me, but at the same time I know I am part of it, I am here and I chose and choose to be here. So I vow to do my best to be.

We all come, and we all go. My aunt went to where my friend’s little girl just arrived from. And short of a belief that we all may have about what that ‘somewhere’ may look like or be, we can agree that we come out of someness and return to it at some point. Lest we forget that we are eternally temporary. All of us. Every thing. We tend to remember this during times of coming and going, also known as birth and death, but then we move right back into our daily routine of habitual patterns that are but a mere echo of those feelings of awe and humility in light of the impermanence that is present in those moments. Our lives and planet would be greatly altered if we all decided to live in awareness of this rather than turning from it as we usually do. It’s a gift to be in the presence of those that are coming and those that are going.

So I invite you to spend the rest of just today to look at yourself and all around you like an alien visitor to the planet. Look at your own body as the vehicle you get to use during your visit here, and dare to think about the fact that your departure is always imminent. You may be asked to board your flight back home at any moment. Use the time you have, use it to love, to laugh and enjoy your stay here, for it could be over at any moment.

Goodbye Aunt Ruth, and welcome Maya.

Cheers,

Ralf

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Lost and Found

Guess I had a summer break without planning one. I have had some posts itching in me for the past couple of weeks, so tonight the first one is on.

I have had many experiences with getting lost, in myself and others. There are limitless ways of getting lost and limitless degrees to getting lost, but the reason for it is always the same: complete ego-identification. That is the beauty and simplicity of it. When we get lost, we have all these ways of describing, defining, defending and justifying our lostness. It makes sense to us and once we are lost, we are already fully committed. Once we’re fully committed, it gets harder and harder to see it for what it is, ego-id, and instead becomes a closed logical circuit that builds on itself. It’s akin to buying property in Crazytown.

Getting lost takes a lot of thought. Thought is at the root of our human experience of course; without it, we wouldn’t exist. Unconscious thinking is the issue and is what we employ on our way to getting lost. It may begin with a harmless remark by someone, with an action, anything really that we notice and hold on to, in whatever small way. That tiny bit of holding on, and the thought that goes with it, is like a seed. If we happen to forget to water it through repetition, it will disappear, but if we begin to repeat the notion and keep revisiting it, it will grow. This can happen over years, months or within seconds. Once it takes on some weight and thus meaning for us, the thought will swell up, gain momentum and compound. When that happens we are lost in our thinking and no longer experience it as thought, but as fact. Has someone ever come to you with an issue they had with you, often a while ago? And once they get started you are almost overwhelmed by the sheer amount of thinking they have done about it, and the level of assumptions they are relying on in their minds? It can be quite the spectacle, and we can see that they are lost in their own thinking and rationale, and it has nothing to do with what actually happened any longer. The thinker has become the thought. At that point they’re lost in that thought package, in the ‘issue’ they have.

I have done this so many times, and until I gained some insight into the very elaborate trappings of my ego-identification and how it functioned by making particular thoughts and their patterns real to me, I ended up in Crazytown frequently. Didn’t own property there, but certainly kept an apartment. It’s fascinating to me how even now my thinking can get to me and lead me into lostness. One of my favorites is still the idea that I haven’t amounted to anything in my life. If I am very tired, have an off day and my mood is muffled, this is one pattern that can get a hold of me pretty quickly. Thing is, no one knows me better than I do, so if I fall for that thought pattern even a little bit, bam!, I am right in it. It’s like a hurricane in my head at that point. ‘What have you achieved? No one likes you, you really have no friends. Everything you have ever tried amounted to nothing. Your life is impermanent as it is, and there ain’t much time left, so you may as well face the fact that this was pretty much it…’ On and on it goes. I get completely lost in my thinking. And of course I am the only person on the planet who feels this way at that point, so loneliness usually comes along with it.

The good news is that we can be found again. Sometimes it’s something or someone on the outside that snaps us out of it. It’s important to remember that even though it’s seemingly coming from the outside, we are making the shift internally, snapping out of it. I say that because we never want to lose sight of the fact that we always create the life experience we are having at any moment, and that means that we are always creating our experience. Not to be too repetitious, but it is so important for us to remember, because if we are lost and someone we meet says or does the right thing that has us stop our thought pattern and gain perspective, we often think that they did it for us, but they didn’t. It is of course wonderful to have that happen and have people like that around, but we are the ones who hear them and make the shift. Then we find ourselves again. We realize that what we have been dealing with was not a reality, but our unconscious thought pattern. That what we thought was real, was just that, a thought. A compounding thought nonetheless that kept adding to itself only to create more reality, more fact and justification for feeling the way we did. It does not matter how long we were lost, or to what extent, once we become aware of our thinking as the source, it’s over. Just like that.

In my case I feel as though I am waking up and begin to notice the present moment again. Once I am in that space, gratitude about my life flows in and my mind settles down. Getting found does not mean that I begin to recite a list of successes in my life or come up with anything that counteracts my litany of ‘poor me’ thoughts; that would be like painting my apartment in Crazytown a nicer color. Getting found is all about becoming aware of the pattern, and letting it be. It’s all about not being interested in the drama, the heaviness, the quality of it any longer. That is truly enough. Disinterest kills nagging thoughts.

So welcome back to all who are here. I hope you have had a great summer and managed to stay found most of the time. If you got lost and found yourself again, welcome back as well. If you became lost and still are, I hope that you will consider that it’s all a thought (pattern) and that no one except you gets to decide whether you stay interested in that line of thinking or not. Give it a shot, you may find it (helpful).

Cheers,

Ralf

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Curiosity

I have been a curious human all my life, though the quality and intention of my curiosity has changed over the years. It went from insecuriosity to curiosity.

Insecuriosity is the kind we employ and have when we are in an ego-identified state. In that state, curiosity has an end in mind, there is a reason for it, I have it to achieve something, usually for me. I am curious about people or circumstances because I will gain something from it. It is a curiosity linked to an outcome, not curiosity for curiosity’s sake. The feeling with insecuriosity is investigative, I need to find out, I have to know, it is important to me to gain information for whatever reason. There is an end I have in mind. I used to do this all the time, I would meet someone new and my ego mind would size them up and analyze instantly how meeting this person was (going to be) meaningful to me. Were they simply interesting? Would knowing them further my career/agenda/personal goals? Was it simply cool to call them an acquaintance or even friend? If any of those came back as a positive, I would engage in insecuriosity about them. I would be an ‘active listener’ and ask many questions, and I would try my best to find out as much as I could about them. I did this for two reasons: I would create more trust and intimacy with them by knowing something personal, and I would gain insight into them that could be used at a later point. Even writing this makes me feel icky inside now.

This ego-identified curiosity is not authentic, because it comes from the limited experience of me, me, me and thus is about me. It is not about the other person. It is about finding out information for ego advancement and gratification. Most people do this. I now see it in others all the time, there is an element to their curiosity that wanes. It comes and goes and depends entirely on their level of interest in what I may or may not share, and how interesting or useful this may be to them. Haven’t you ever met someone who seemed curious about you, asked you questions and you ended up feeling as though you were either talking to yourself, or conversely felt invaded upon? The kind of conversation that may as well not have taken place, because you could feel that it wasn’t actually about a genuine interest in you as a person, but about something for them? I remember watching the movie Bowfinger a few years ago that was chock-full of scenes of this kind of curiosity. Every single moment of curiosity between people in that film was about the insecuriosity about each other. Once someone’s curiosity revealed that the other was uninteresting or unimportant, the conversation ended or drifted into nothingness. A wonderful portrayal of insecuriosity.

Authentic or natural curiosity is another world. Literally. We enter another world when we are truly curious. In order to be curious in that way, we have to suspend all self-interest and judgment. We have to be engaged in the business of now. The only thing that I am curious about is being here and experiencing it with as little interference in my mind as possible. This applies to people and circumstances equally. I talk about this to my business clients all the time, because this is not only powerful, but also extremely practical and effective. When one of my clients faces a dilemma with a colleague, the first thing I ask is whether they have gotten curious about it. Almost without fail, they have not. Instead they talk about everything they already know about the person and their behavior, why they’re doing it, and what the best solution would be to remedy the situation based on their assumptions. This is of course not very helpful and usually quite off the mark. That’s when we talk about how to get curious about the situation and/or the person.

This takes some willingness on my client’s part to acknowledge that they have been operating purely on judgment and have never taken it upon themselves to talk to the person at issue with genuine openness and curiosity. One client once had a team member who would leave the office at stroke of five and go home. They would often do work from home at later hours in the evening, but never stay in the office with the other team members to finish an important project or help make a deadline. They never came to team events, always saying they were busy. When pressed a bit by the team, they would give elusive answers and never really explain their lack of team spirit. The team began to question the motives and value of this team member. The manager was flustered and didn’t know what to do, this was damaging to the team spirit, but they also felt that this team member was productive and a good performer. Instead of judging the behavior and trying to come up with their own answers, the manager decided to take the team member out to lunch privately. After spending some time talking and sharing on a more personal level, the manager asked for permission to speak openly. At this point all he wanted was to find out from the team member what was going in their life that made them behave the way they did, and that if they couldn’t or didn’t want to share, that would be alright as well. He went into the conversation with curiosity for curiosity’s sake. The team member opened up and shared that their spouse was dying of cancer and that their job was keeping the roof over their head. Their spouse was extremely weak, and the only quality time they could spend with them was after the nurse left for the day at 5:30 until their spouse went to sleep around nine every night completely exhausted. That was the time when the team member could get on the computer and do some work. They did not want to talk to anyone about this because it was so painful for them. They were also drowning in debts from insurance co-pays. They swore the manager to secrecy, which he honored. After the spouse passed, the manager got permission and shared the story with the team who ended up hosting a fund raiser for some of the medical bills.

We never know what may be on the other side of unbridled curiosity. It starts with us. We have to be willing to be curious about ourselves and our own intentions and judgments. Next time you find yourself judging away about someone or something (including yourself of course), sit down and have a meal with yourself, get curious and find out where all this is coming from and what it’s all about. That curiosity may just lead to curious insights.

Cheers,

Ralf