Tag Archives: choice

by

Disappointment

That’s always fun, especially coming from a parent or partner. “I am so disappointed in you” are those words we all love to hear. Even better when they are coming from our own voice inside.

Recently I had a moment of disappointment when I found out that Flying Leap did not make the shortlist for the literary award, at three o’clock in the morning, which ended up being a blessing, because it made me move through the disappointment rather quickly. Having an 11 months old child around means that I have not had a normal night’s sleep for that many months. So it wasn’t unusual that she woke up that early and I woke up as well. Since I knew that the shortlist was to be announced that day in the morning and Ireland is six hours ahead, I figured I’d check real quick. And there was the list, a moment of anticipation and then seeing that it’s not there. Immediate let down, strong opinions on the jurors and then bummage. Since it was in the middle of the night, I quickly moved through it, took a deep breath and let it go. Then I fell asleep again. It wasn’t until the next day that I looked at what happened and all this interesting stuff about disappointment popped up. So here it goes…

The word disappointment hit me first, because I saw it differently than I ever have: Dis-appointment. So I am appointing meaning to something, except it’s a dis-appointment, and the way I read that was that it was wrongly appointed. Totally changed the experience of the word and its effect. We choose to appoint meaning and importance to something or someone, and what should happen or what they should or hopefully will do. Why do we do this? Because appointing meaning to something makes it more important and valuable in some way. And when something is important and valuable, it has more weight, more meaning. It’s an interesting process that takes place here, because obviously we choose this entirely, and what I deem important and valuable may be nothing to the next person of course. So we appoint this meaning and then, we wait. We wait to see whether the person, the outcome will happen as expected and appointed. If it happens exactly the way we wanted, we get to be happy for a while, and then the next thing gets appointed. And if it doesn’t happen, we get to feel the level of dis-appointment that is in direct proportion to the appointment we assigned to it. And then the next appointment happens. It never ends.

The good news is that we choose this, the bad news is that we choose this.

So here is how my dis-appointment about the nomination played out: I had found out that Flying Leap had been nominated by a small library in the Czech Republic of all places. I had no idea how that was possible, how a copy of the book would have made it there in the first place. So I called them and ended up talking to the woman who nominated it. What followed was really curious – her English was limited and she decided not to nominate an obvious contender by a well known author, but wanted to find something that was more unknown and deserved to be made known to a larger audience. So she went ahead and did a search in Google books by entering some specific search criteria, and three books showed up, Flying Leap being one of them. She read the first review that came up (on GoodReads, because Google owns it), which was very positive, then proceeded to look on Amazon and BN.com, and ended up reading a little bit in the book on Amazon, as well as the back cover. She shared that it was clear to her immediately that this was the book that needed to be nominated, it felt right, and it was talking about a subject matter that most people will think about at some point in their lives. So she nominated it. But she never read it. They didn’t and don’t have a copy of it in their library. At that moment I appointed meaning to all this. I chose to believe that this was some divine serendipity at work, that this meant something. Surely this book was going places on its own, and this was it. It would have to make the shortlist, because that fit my appointed story. I didn’t go as far as believing it would win, but my appointment went as far as the shortlist. Only it didn’t, and I got to experience the results of a dis-appointment, an appointment I had chosen. Once I saw that, it was done. Now I am left with a feeling of gratitude for the librarian and the experience of having seen the book nominated for something. Pretty cool. Who knows what may come next, I am not going to appoint anything else to this. I will simply be enjoying what is.

We appoint meaning to stuff all day, all the time, from the smallest to the biggest in our lives. And more often than not we end up with a dis-appointment. But rather than taking an honest look at the fact that we are entirely responsible for this dis-appointment, we build and harbor more and more emotional energy and fallout to these dis-appointments towards others and life in general. All because we refuse or are unable to see that we choose this, that we are the one setting it up in the first place. We create it, we experience it, and we hang on to it. That’s the bad news in this, because if we are willing to play with the notion that we create this dis-appointment we are experiencing, we can no longer hold anyone or anything else responsible for it, and that’s a toughie for the ego-identified life to do. The ego needs someone or something to be responsible for the dis-appointment, it’s part of the cycle. Only then can I create more meaning in my life story, more content that I can add. Dis-appointments are a great addition to the library of our life story. But ultimately it is up to us to choose this. To choose to live in ego-identification and thus with all the dis-appointments that come with it, or not.

I invite you to play with this. Next time you are dis-appointed in yourself, someone else or by someone or something, take a look at what is going on. Trace it back to its origin and you may just find that the seed was planted by you. And you may just end up dis-appointed that you aren’t anymore, but that will be the beginning of the end of ill appointments …

Cheers,

Ralf

by

Gratitude

This has been bugging me, I have to admit. The fact that I am grateful for stuff, but also manage not to be most of the time. We all know that it’s a good thing, but how often, how much are we really grateful?

Speaking for myself, my ratio could be far better. Too many days I am not grateful, really. I may have a moment or two, there are certain ‘things’ I am pretty much grateful for all the time, such as having my wife in my life, my baby girl, but that is about it. I have been thinking about this and wondering how this can be. Here I am, having written this book, writing this blog about a whole other way to live life, a way that is more aware, more conscious, more by our own choice, and yet gratitude seems to be limited. What is up with that? Shouldn’t I be grateful pretty much all the time? Shouldn’t I know how to choose gratitude? Shouldn’t gratitude be part of living this kind of life? Apparently not.

It’s as though I have to remind myself to be grateful for things. I’ll go about my day, everything is fine, I am meeting people, having interesting experiences, feeling pretty happy and content with life, and yet gratitude eludes me, and I will quite literally have to stop and consciously wonder what I am grateful for. Which means that it’s not there otherwise. This had me stumped for a while. I wanted to feel grateful, I wanted to be appreciative of what I have, and thus be a grateful, humble kind of person. The kind of person who doesn’t expect things, the kind who counts their blessings. That does sound good after all. And especially during the holidays this becomes prominent for most of us. Let’s pause and be grateful for what we have. For the people and the circumstances in our lives. Let’s stop and say thanks. When I do gratitude, it is within a world of comparison. When I had to remind myself to be grateful, I was always grateful about something in my life, such as the people, health, job. It was a gratitude attached to the opposite of all those things. If I didn’t have the people, health and job, then my life would not be as nice and I wouldn’t feel as grateful. I was looking at comparisons, and by saying that things were as good as they were, I should be grateful, because they could be worse, and in fact are worse for others. Some people do this every day, they have that moment of pause to be grateful. After thinking about this for a while something hit me.

Gratitude is not something to do, it is something to be. It is a tude after all not an ing. That’s why I had to consciously stop and make myself be grateful. I was busy doing a bunch of important thinking and had to stop it to find my gratitude. Once I paused, I felt it pretty quickly. But if I stopped the maelstrom of my thinking for longer, it turned into more than gratitude, into a sense of wonder and awe with what was going on at the moment. Almost the way I was as a kid when most of the time the world was a cool and wondrous place. Always something new to discover and do. New experiences to have, newness all around. Something happens when we are in this state, we experience a kind of gratitude for being here, for having experiences. Rather than gratitude, it is a state of grace. Being in that state goes beyond gratitude. It is not about anything anymore, it is simply a state of being. A state where I can see and experience the world differently, again and again. The only way to do this is to know that my repetitive ego identified thinking is giving me the same experiences over and over again, and that once aware of this, I can choose to not engage in it. The second I do that, a space opens up in my mind that is not filled with a particular thought, and bingo, whatever situation I am in looks pretty new and interesting. Seriously, it works.

Whenever I get pissed about someone or something and happen to notice it, I step back, tell that particular thought that I am not interested, and the release and shift in my mind changes the circumstance instantly. It lets me see the moment free of my labels and ideas about it, e.g. how unreasonable/crazy/stupid/mean/awful a person or situation is, and instead move into a state of observation, no judgment about it, and the pompous and urgent action required disappear. The situation has shifted. I am in a state of grace, a state beyond gratitude, a state where it’s not about anything anymore, but about being here and enjoying the crap out of it. Beats gratitude by lengths. Gratitude is good, don’t get me wrong, but it is limited to the world of opposites, whereas a state of grace or being is unlimited. It never ends.

Here’s to gratitude. The next time you remind yourself to have gratitude, take a look at the list of things you are creating. Ask yourself if that is a limitation on your ability to have gratitude.  If you answer yes, step back from the list, and take a look around right here, right now, and take in the world in all its wonder and awe. You may just find yourself graceful.

Cheers,

Ralf

 

by

Reactive reactionary

That’s a beautiful combination right there. Those two are the gatekeepers of the ego identification castle. When we are a reactive reactionary, we are fully engaged in the ego identification. In other words, we are either reacting to something or want to keep things just the way they are.

Reacting is what we do all day. We get up and react to the weather, the news, our spouse or partner, the kids, our own mood, the way we look, etc. We are reacting to the world and what it presents to us. So when I get into my car and drive to work, and someone cuts me off, I react. And boy, do I. In the interest of my G-Rating for the blog, I may not repeat the things that come out of my mouth in reaction to the … other person. Driving is one of my weak spots, well, that and watching my favorite soccer team suck. I easily slip into my ego skin and find myself reacting. When I am my ego, I am constantly and perpetually repeating the same thoughts over and over again. I do this to create permanence and predictability and therefore feel in control of my existence. A lot of repetition goes on there. So when someone cuts me off in traffic, guess what, been there, done that before, so I know how to react. Open and shut case. Depending on my state of awareness, I may entertain these thoughts for a couple of minutes or a couple of seconds. But I will fall for them most of the time. As mentioned, definite weak spot of mine.

What is fascinating to me about all this is the fact that I am doing the same damn thing every time. I re-act. I act the same way again and again. First in my thinking and then in my actions. So I am literally acting the same way I did before in light of the same ‘situation,’ which is to say in light of the same thoughts. That is a very limiting way to live to say the least. It denies us choice, to be able to see another way of being with a situation, or to act in a way that we may never have before. Instead we go with our well established and comfortable routine and even call that a good thing. I know my brother, sister, best friend, spouse, this is what they’re like, reliable like an old dog, you can count on them to react the same way every time, and it’s also hard to teach an old dog new tricks. By saying this, we simply solidify the idea of that person, and solidify the illusion that they are a permanent fixture in their ways. And what we end up with is the comfort of predictability and repetition. The ego enslaves us to the fake comfort of fake permanence.

The ego is also the ultimate reactionary. It wants to keep the status quo. It does not like change and has to keep things as they have always been, so that it may keep up the illusion of control over its own existence. It holds on to patterns and rituals and declares them essential. The perfect reactionary holds traditions as holy and sacred. They may not be challenged or questioned, and most certainly not changed. That is tantamount to sacrilege. They may not be messed with. If you dare to, you will be met with fierce resistance. This can go as far as physical violence. The ego will stop at almost nothing to defend its status quo and that can include its own demise. It never questions the origins of its dearly held traditions it is willing to die for. It will not entertain the possibility that it was simply made up by someone at some point. Everything the reactionary is so attached to was indeed made up at some point. But the idea that it could be changed or unmade is unthinkable.

There is another level to all this repetition, which is habit. Habits are what the ego is really good at. As the keeper of memory, it is actually the best at it. When I do something a couple of times, the ego stores this experience and makes sure to automatically pull that information when needed. So I will remember not to touch a hot stove. I will know not to grab a knife by its blade. This is incredibly practical and helpful. This does not limit my life experience, it makes it safer. It does not make me fear or hate stoves or knives. I simply use the information to make sure I won’t get hurt. I will remember how to speak my language, how to do math, drive a car, get dressed, eat, walk, etc. All of this is automatic and enhances my experience as a human. It’s a beautiful design. And then we start turning these habits into us, and bingo, we are a reactive reactionary.

All because we forget that we are temporary, that the ego is nothing but the story keeper of our human existence. Because we fall so deeply asleep to forget our own impermanence and that our life is but a mere moment in the vastness of all life. Billions of people have come and gone, billions of stars have come and gone, and billions upon billions will continue to do so. To the ego this is the most frightening fact of all, because when we dare to think like that, our life loses its importance to us, it becomes something we get to enjoy and do, and is no longer who we are. Our mind gets cleared up and quiets down. We begin to get back to our original state of human beingness, not human has been or human will be. The ego goes back to doing what it is designed to do, to give us a safe trip through human land.

Next time you see yourself re-acting, stop the show and realize that you are in the (insert your name here) show and get to call the shots about how this particular episode is going. You are the writer, director, producer and star of this show called your life. And who wants nothing but re-runs all the time?

Cheers,

Ralf

P.S.: I can now talk about the nomination for my book, check out The Book page on the site if you’d like to know more.

by

Life

This is going to be my most personal post yet, I reckon. My wife and I had a daughter in May. My book was nominated for a literary award in Europe. My father passed away last week. Bam. I can see people reading these sentences and going from ‘aww’ to ‘oh no.’ Interesting, because I don’t.

It’s life. Yes, I have gone through these experiences, and I am doing it in a way that some people find and found ‘unusual,’ and others may have thought to themselves that I was nuts in some way. Because I often don’t fit what’s generally expected, normal or even accepted behavior in our current culture. Going through my life experiences the way I choose to most of the time now has truly changed my perspective, and having had these notable events happen to me in the span of five months has shown me that my perspective has taken hold in me and cannot be pushed aside, even by my own ego. And I am glad that this is so. Let me explain.

Before our daughter was born, I had heard numerous stories from other friends who are fathers how having this baby born changes you, how when you see them for the first time, you realize your life is no longer about you, that there is someone else now you have to think of first, and that you are instantly in love the moment you lay your eyes on them. Well, not for this father. Labor was amazing, all natural, no interventions, and I was awed by my wife’s resolve, groundedness and strength. I knew women were strong, but holy crap, that was some kind of strong. Then our daughter suddenly pops out, is placed on my wife, I see her for the first time and my thought was: ‘Holy shit, what the hell is this?!’ No bursting heart, no realizations of any deep kind about anything. Just a big unknown I was looking at. I struggled with this silently. My ego stepped in, trying to make up a positive feeling for me, when that didn’t work, it began to analyze me and concluded that there was something wrong with me. My wife sent me home (it was 5 am), and when I returned a few hours later, she asked me right away what was going on as I walked in the room, and I told her that I didn’t know what to feel for this baby, that I had no sense about it belonging with me. She looked at me and said, ‘me neither.’ Bless her. We laughed and talked about it and decided to trust that we would feel everything in our own way and timing. And we did. We love her until death, she is a hoot, and she has become part of our lives only another parent can understand. But we do not own her. We simply chose each other to share our lives here on earth as child and parent, and we love her, and we will do our utmost to take care of her, and most of all, not fill her head with our own stories of what (her) life should be about. But that it is her choice, always.

So then my father dies. We didn’t live close to each other, so we would talk on the phone or skype, and we knew how to have distance without creating one. In the past few years he had joked more frequently that he was tired of living and really wanted it to be over. One time last year he and I were talking and I asked him if he’d be willing to make a deal with me about this; that he would tell me when he was done joking about it and was serious. He agreed. The call came this August. He had developed some more issues with his prostate cancer, nothing that couldn’t be handled, but on the call he said to me, ‘I am serious, son. I am done. No more.’ It was beautiful how clear and peaceful he was about it. Within a couple of weeks he lost 40 pounds and went downhill fast. I flew to see him and hung out with him for two weeks, talking, laughing, having fun and reminiscing about life and what it is and isn’t about. We talked about his upcoming departure, and that was good too. No fear on his part, more curiosity, if anything he was worried how my mom would do without him. He bounced back for those two weeks and everything I wanted to say and share with him I did. Except my daughter, which was alright he said. After I left he plateaued for another two weeks and was gone within another two. On his terms, and in his way. And I was with him all the way. And now that is complete.

I have been through both of these life changing experiences, and I felt stuff. The whole time I did. From fear, to worry, occasional self-judgment, joy, sadness, loneliness, you name it. Point is, I felt those things, but I never became them. My perspective on life in general and mine in particular have aligned. The perspective that my life is not mine to own, but mine to experience, and that I choose that experience every moment of it. Nothing can change that anymore. Not the birth of my child, not the passing of my father. They represent to me the eternal rhythm of the cosmos (or whatever you may call it) breathing in and out. There is nothing and no thing that is permanent. First we forget this, and then we try everything we can to not remember this. We lose our perspective on life. We get sucked into our story, and we will fight until death to maintain it. And we tell each other all the time that our stories are real and that who and what we are as a result is not only ok, but justified.

The most interesting challenge for me in going through these experiences this year thus far has not been my own feelings, it has been having to listen to other people’s attempts to try and share in them by coming from their limited story perspective. People were well intentioned, I know that, but most of them were coming from their story, and from reiterating the agreed upon collective stories around the joys (and trials) of becoming parents, and losing a parent. I get it. I can appreciate their honest wish to share and to support. But most of it was not helpful, because it wasn’t real. It was a story. The few people that were simply in a space of being with me, asking what they could do, without expectation, were the helpful ones. They did not have to say anything, their presence was what was helpful. Throughout all of this, my perspective remained solid. I will feel what I feel and keep moving through life. I am in a great place about having a daughter, and I am in a great place about my father having gone back to swim in the quantum soup. I am in the unknown as it is. That’s life.

We come in with a breath and we leave with a breath, how beautiful is that? So I wish for you that you can gain your perspective on your life that lets you experience it in all its facets, without having to become trapped in it. No matter what you are going through, remember that you are going through it, but you aren’t it, you are the experiencer. You get to choose what that looks like, no one else, again and again.

Cheers,

Ralf

P.S.: I am not allowed to publicly talk about the literary award nomination until November, when the list is announced.

by

Change

What’s the deal with change being so hard, especially when we don’t want it? And even if we want a change, it still takes some adjustment that can be uncomfortable. Why is that?

Change is the enemy of permanence, the very thing that the ego uses to make itself seem real. Thing is, nothing is permanent. Absolutely nothing. Literally. Let’s think about this for a moment. We like to believe in permanence in our lives to varying degrees, certain habits and rituals that we do repeatedly, people that we love and have in our lives, etc. Even though we somehow know that none of this is permanent, the repetitive nature of our thinking let’s us believe that they are. It gives meaning and certainty to our lives. We may rationally know that things never remain the same, that they change all the time, but on the level of experience it doesn’t really register. We like things in our lives to be just so to one extent or another. Some people can get very adamant about things staying the same. When I do what I can to keep change out of my life, I am missing a very vital point: That change is the nature of life. There is nothing we can or have to do about it, except to see it or not.

This is what makes all the difference. If I don’t see change, I am resisting what is. Resistance is the flip side of change. They go together. Resistance as I mean it is not a conscious resistance against something, it is a subtle, ongoing and very powerful trick of the mind to keep us in a state of predictability and permanence. This resistance is made up of the constant talk in our minds about the situation at hand, how it’s good, bad, right or wrong, uncomfortable or wonderful, sad or happy, and on and on in opposites it goes. It’s the labeling that goes on internally all the time. It tells us what to think about what’s in front of us, and by doing so we give ourselves only the experience our mind allows us to have. Let’s say we’re going to our favorite restaurant to have our most favorite dish in the world, and it has all this expectation and joyful anticipation attached to it. We look forward to it all week or at least all day and can’t wait to have the experience. And then we get there and the restaurant has gone out of business. Shock, dismay, disappointment, maybe even rage. We cannot believe it. The night is ruined. I will never have the dish again. Life has been changed and altered in a way that I did not expect or want. We are resisting what is at that moment. We do not want the reality before us to be real, we do not like it and refuse to accept it, at least for a while. That is the resistance I am talking about. It keeps us from accepting what is. Sometimes only for a few seconds or minutes, sometimes for months or years. This happens when we hold on to resistance for a long time, like a grudge against someone, or some other misfortune that has happened to us. We resist the way things are, and instead hold on to our mind’s picture of how it should be. And then we may walk into another restaurant that night, just because we need to eat something, and end up meeting the love of our life, who knew? We all have had experiences like this where a dramatic or even unfortunate event lead to something that far outweighed the drama and instead presented us with a wonderful new gift. All resistance does is prolong the drama in our minds, which is a result of the tension we feel between what we would like the world to be versus what it actually is.

What is important to understand is that the level of subtle resistance in our daily lives is in direct proportion to the uneasiness we may feel during any given day. The more we resist to what is in numerous small ways during a day, the harder of a time we have. Why is traffic so bad, why is my spouse or partner such an ass, why are the kids so difficult, why is my toast burnt, why are people rude, why is it raining, etc.? The second we ask questions like this in our minds, we are resisting what is, if in the smallest ways. The answer to every single question we could ever ask about the circumstances in our lives is always the same: Because it is so and we choose it to be so. I know that’s another toughie, and I still have trouble with this too at times. Still how it is, whether I like it or not. When we do not accept life as it is in every moment, change becomes a pain. Accepting what is without resistance leads to a natural relationship with change.

That’s when change becomes a part of life. We live with the awareness that everything is in constant flux and motion. Ask any physicist about this. Change is the only constant in the world. Nothing is at a standstill, ever. Think about all the molecules and atoms in your own body right at this moment as you’re reading this, that are coming and going. Things dissolve and are created every single moment. Never ending. If you think that you have the same body that you had yesterday, think again. If you think that the home you walk into every night is the same, think again. If the people in your life are the same, think again. Because it is the thinking about these things that keep them seemingly the same, not the ‘things’ themselves. All of the above is different every moment. Never the same. Ever. I know that I am repeating this, because it so important to consider and eventually see. To make it part of our lives. The body, the home, the people in our lives, anything and everything are never the same, except for the thoughts we allow ourselves to have about them. It is thus our thinking that makes change a challenge and hard, not change itself. Change simply is. All the time, all around.

So when you find yourself in resistance the next time, e.g. pissed off, upset or disappointed with the situation at hand, see the resistance you are putting up to what is and allow yourself to consider the possibility that this may simply be your mind messing up your day. And then look at it, laugh at it, and move on. Who knows what may be next, and what change life has in store for you?

Cheers,

Ralf

by

The Impersonal Life

We take so much shit personally in life. Seriously, it’s out of control. We are all prone to doing this, just think about it.

We will actually sit in traffic and wonder why it is happening to us. We will get to the check out at the store, all the lines are busy, and we will think that this always happens to us, especially when we’re in a hurry. Bad weather ruins our grill party, flight delayed, car accident, cut off in traffic, dropping a plate full of food, someone else late for a meeting, someone does not return our call/email, guess what, it’s personal, it’s against me, and it sucks. Talk about full ego identification. May as well call it the ‘life is about me’ syndrome. Funny how that sneaks up on us and sets up shop in our consciousness. Once that has happened, life is a very personal affair. Everything is in some way about me, me, me. I know, I say that a lot, but that’s just how it is. In the ego id life, that’s how things come out, that’s what it’s all about. In all these different ways.

One of those ways is to take shit personally. As listed above, most of it doesn’t hold up as a personal issue for very long when looked at with a bit of perspective, meaning whenever we are not in the middle of it. Then it is blatantly clear that traffic is just traffic, lines are lines, etc. But when we are in the middle of it, it sure looks personal. I have taken it personally when a flight on one of my business trips was delayed because of a tornado outbreak in the Midwest. I actually sat at the airport, exhausted and wanting to get home, and felt sorry for my ‘personal bad luck’ that these tornadoes had to hit when and where they did, so that this would happen to me. Not a thought about all those poor people in the middle of that. As I am writing it, it sounds horrible, but at the time it made sense. Notice something? When we take shit personally, it’s seriously about me. We become self-absorbed monsters who couldn’t care less about anyone else. It may only last a few seconds or minutes, or even a lifetime, but while we are in this state, we are not very caring and loving people. Because this shit is about me, damn it, and who looks out for me but me?

I used to think that the alternative to this is to try and think of others before me. To focus on other people’s needs and make my own second. This way, I figured, I would be a good person who will do good things for people. After that I could focus on my own stuff. It was as if thinking of others would make me more selfless and force me to not think of me first, and also not take things personally. After all, if I am at the airport with my flight delayed, I would divert my personal frustration immediately to think about the poor people who may have gotten hurt or lost their homes. My flight delay loses its drama. There is nothing I can do for those people at the moment, but thinking about them and commiserating may help in some way at least. Only, it’s still about me.

I know that this is the moment where I lose some people, because it seems so awful to say that thinking about others is about me. But it is. The only thing that happens here is that we shift the focus of our very personal thinking away from ‘me’ and onto others, but in doing so, my ego id remains fully intact, because now I get to feel good about ‘me’ since I am a good person who cares about others. Others now will see me this way. I can see me this way. I care about others and put them first. That’s the kind of person I am. A good person. And others should know this and recognize this. I give of myself to serve others, others are more important than me. Do you see what’s happening here? It’s still about me. Granted, I may actually help someone else, but it’s not freely shared, it’s given from me to someone else. Strings attached, and if only to be thanked or seen as a good person.

There is a whole other way. It’s the way that is a natural byproduct of living with as opposed to as my ego, or outside of ego identification. Life gets increasingly impersonal. Quite literally, shit simply happens, and we actually choose it to be shit or not. The choice thing again. When we live life more in the here and now, we see choices before us all the time, in all kinds of ways. And if I choose my life experience moment to moment, then why choose to take what happens personally? It actually isn’t, it’s just life happening and unfolding in front of our eyes. It is what it is. Then we choose to turn it into a personal matter, or not. The former leads to all of the above, the latter gives us the impersonal life. We are participating actively in our lives, but we aren’t it. We feel what we feel, but we aren’t the feeling. We experience what we experience, but we aren’t the experience. We are the creator and observer of all this. Life becomes very intoxicating and interesting when lived that way. We still get to do it all, without having to be it all. We can share whatever we choose to share with others freely, and expect nothing in return. We help because we feel compassion, not commiseration. Our lives have a different quality when they are impersonal to us. There is more space and freedom, and more of a sense of sharing in it all, with everyone else. Totally different motivation for one’s own existence. Life is a more expansive affair that we share in, as all others do, and we get to choose our participation in it. Moment to moment, again and again.

Our lives are just a story, and we are the creator of this story. When we think we are the story, shit is personal. When we are not the story, there is no shit and it’s impersonal.

Next time you take something personally, pretend to zoom up above your head and survey the situation you’re in, or look at it as if you were weeks in the future looking back, anything that will help you create some space between you and the drama at hand. Then see what happens. You may just find yourself in a space of compassion for that poor schmuck taking it all so seriously and personally and have a lighter sense about it all.

Cheers,

Ralf

by

Beyond busyness

There is busyness and then there is busyness. The first is the level of thought activity that has become accepted as normal in our culture, the second steps it up a notch and looks a bit much even to ‘normal’ people.

I have a few people like this in my life, do you as well? They are so busy that I can be around them only for short periods of time. It is that intense. They can barely sit still and have a hard time focusing on anything, or on the person in front of them. Not only are they incredibly busy in their thinking, they also have to pay attention to every single thought. It is as though they live in a constant state of heightened alertness and can never shut it down. Every thought is interesting, every idea has to be considered, every notion looked at. It never stops. I look at them and wonder how it is possible for someone to do this, and to be unable to stop it. One thing that has occurred to me is that they are addicted. Completely and utterly addicted to their thinking. This is a very hard way to live. Much like a physical addiction, we crave the object of our addiction all the time and in increasing doses and levels. Only that in this case there is no object to the addiction. It is untouchable, immaterial, comes and goes and yet makes us possible: Thought.

In and of itself thought is a wonderful tool that gives us the ability to function and create. Without thought, we would not exist. It’s a wonderful ‘thing.’ For someone who lives beyond busyness however, thought runs amok and takes up the entirety of their existence in a way that makes it impossible to be present. For people who are addicted to their thinking in this way, the present is hidden. They cannot see it or experience it, because they are in their thinking all the time, or rather are their thinking. And thoughts are always time bound, about the past, present or the future. They have lost the ability to be the thinker and have fully become the thought. This really limits their abilities and possibilities. All they are is whichever thought they have, and since there is one thought after the other in constant succession, they cannot see that they have a choice about the thoughts they have, because they aren’t having them, they are them. When I am something, I will do whatever necessary to defend it, for by defending it, I am defending me. I am my thoughts, so I will defend them and go to great lengths to do so. To the point of harming my own body. People like that will develop physical symptoms sooner or later, or they will end up in physically dangerous situations due to their lack of presence. And unless they are interested and willing, they will never change this.

It would not be so hard. As always it has to start with a choice. To entertain the possibility that we are not our thoughts, but the thinkers. That they don’t show up on their own, but have to be thought by us. We do the thinking. Not someone else. They are not put in our minds by anyone but us. A thought addicted person considering this is akin to an alcoholic admitting that he has a problem, it’s the first step. This will open the door to more choice. When we are completely our thoughts (or completely ego identified), there isn’t much choice. Thoughts simply come all the time, unstoppable. The moment we consider that we are the thinker, choice reenters the picture. Just that bit of awareness will change our perspective. We see that thought is happening, rather than being it. This opens the door to stop. To simply choose not to have a particular thought. To see it, acknowledge it and send it on its merry way. Once we start this and stick with it, our perspective on our thoughts gets clearer and eventually our minds quiet down and less thoughts show up.

Then we enter into a world where we are the thinker. We realize that we have thoughts and thus get to choose them. We are no longer victim to them and develop a natural kind of quality control which makes sure that our thinking is serving us rather than the other way around. Thought becomes our vehicle to create our experience at every moment, whatever we choose that to be. Thoughts that feel too busy or intense are of no interest to us anymore and thus they move on quickly and show up less and less. Our lives go through a tremendous shift. To the fully addicted this sounds at best practically impossible and at worst like a nightmare. The nightmare being that we end up having no thoughts to speak of and turning into empty, thoughtless vessels. Far from the truth. We are able to have the thoughts that fit the moment, no more and no less. It is far more efficient than any busy mind could ever be.

If you find yourself to be beyond busyness, and managed to read this post to the end, I invite you to consider the possibility that your thoughts are simply that, and that you are the thinker. Play with that idea and see what happens. You may just end up choosing something else entirely. Or not …

Cheers,

Ralf

by

Rationalization

If opinions are the currency of the ego exchange, then rationalization is the Federal Reserve for this currency. And it will print endless amounts of currency…

Living in ego identification requires a lot of rationalization to justify all the crazy bs our ego comes up with and make it seem at least reasonable and at most absolutely necessary. As a matter of fact, justification is the flip side of this coin. Those two live in beautiful harmony and co-dependence with each other. When we are totally into our ego identification and thus fully committed to being the story it makes up about us, we have to follow through on the story in order for it to work and continue. This is where rationalization comes in. It is a tool for the ego to make us believe and do what is necessary to perpetuate the story, and for it to make sense. Have you ever done something that later on made you wonder whether you had lost your mind? I certainly have, and this is only possible because our ego id story has this built in bs justifier, called rationalization.

The ego will make anything look rational and reasonable to us if it serves its perpetuation. Literally anything. When taken to the extreme this can lead to what we may call mental illness, or horrible trespasses against others (or us). There are mentally ill people that will very reasonably and rationally explain to you, why garbage trucks actually eat people and this is why they have to stay away from them. There are people that can very rationally explain to you why they have to take drugs. This list is as endless as humanity may have thoughts on this planet. There are also a lot of normal people that will rationally explain to you why they knowingly make a product that will harm others. There were (are) people that will very rationally explain to you why they are standing on a train platform at a concentration camp and send people to ‘work’ or into the ovens. Do you see how intricate and perfected this ego tool is? Rationalization will have us say and do things we would never do if we had some perspective. But when we are completely immersed in our ego story and its perpetuation, the perspective we have is limited to the rational and justified options of my ego story. In other words, the perspective is limited to me, me, me.

Rationalization starts out really harmless and takes us wherever we need to go in our story in baby steps. The drug addict didn’t start wanting to kill themselves with drugs, they had to get there one step at a time. It takes time and a lot of rational ego id thinking to get us there. The doctor on the train platform did not start out ready to send people to their certain death, it took time and step-by-step rationalization to get to that point. The ego identification route is one of constant whispers in our mental ear, constant little compromises to get us to take that next step into the story, so that it may continue and make sense. Rationalization provides the ego with the mental ammunition we need to close that access point to our Self, the observer, the common sense, whatever we may call it, that would give us a broader perspective. To open that access point, we have to be willing to stop.

Stop the train of thought even for a moment. To create a space in that deluge of our ego thinking that immediately opens up a gap. Have you ever found yourself going crazy over something and out of the blue you saw yourself going crazy and literally stopped, because you saw the craziness? That is what I am talking about. None of what I write in this blog is rocket science or some big secret that requires years of earnest study, it is ultimately simply a choice. At any and all times, a choice. Whenever we choose to stop and see where we are coming from at any moment, our perspective shifts. We see more. We realize that we can choose to walk away from the story. When we step out of the story, we find ourselves in a land of opportunity, a state where we do not have to rationalize anything in order to do it. We simply feel what makes sense to us at any moment, and our actions are no longer about perpetuating some story, but are about expressing our choice, knowing full well that no one else has to agree or made to agree with it. The motivation is no longer me, me, me, the motivation is being in a space of boundless expression. In that space we are not interested in perpetuating anything about us, we are interested in what is. To be with it, to experience the life situation we find ourselves in, whatever it may be, and move through it. Movement is more interesting than anything else. Life takes on a flow that is pretty amazing actually. When something ‘bad’ happens, we experience it and move through it, when something ‘good’ happens, we do the same. There is nothing to hold on to. That sounds pretty irrational and crazy, right? Well, it does to anyone living in their ego identification anyway…

As always, I invite you to play with this. The next time you see something crazy in yourself or someone else playing out, choose whether you are going to step in and do something to stop it or not. If you don’t, the craziness will only build, if you do, something will shift instantly and your perspective right with it. Promise.

Cheers,

Ralf

by

Choice

Choice is a beautiful thing. It’s also a real toughie, because if you believe that it exists, your life is your choice, and if you believe that you don’t have a choice, then someone else is choosing for you. In either case, not easy.

I choose to believe that we have choice. About everything, every moment of our lives. No exceptions. As a matter of fact, this really showed up for me in the book towards the end during an exchange between the bird and the protagonist, where they discuss that everything is made up:

“”…I can make up anything I want about anything then.”

“Absolutely.”

“So I am made up as well?”

“Continuously. As long as you choose to.””

It’s such a short little line with incredible implications. This basically says that we choose to make up ourselves, or in other words, we choose to exist. Now, I have heard something of this nature before, but never in that context. Think about this, we choose to exist. As long as we choose to exist, we continue to have this human experience. When we choose not to, it’s done. What happens after, well, who knows. The point is that by and through our choice, we exist every moment of our lives. If and when I choose to end my life, it ends in its current form. Now, this is where an interesting conundrum arises, because this concept makes sense when we actively choose to end our life: we can jump off a building, drown ourselves, take pills, shoot ourselves, set ourselves on fire, drive off a cliff, jump into a volcano, in short there are a lot of ways that we could do this. It makes sense that this is our choice. But what happens to that choice when we die of natural causes or through a tragic accident or event? Is that still our choice or is this the point where we say that someone or something else is choosing that for us? We like to believe that, because who would ever choose an untimely or horrible death, right? But this is where we have to make a very fundamental decision about our take on choice. If I believe that I can choose my existence to end, than this is how it is, no matter how that choice shows up or plays itself out.

I either choose me or not. If I do, than this happens all the time, under all circumstances, always, and in all ways. The kinds and number of choices available to us depend on two things – whether we believe we have a choice and our awareness of it. In the past few years this has become increasingly visible to me. I have been experiencing my own life as a result of my choices more and more. It begins with the mood I find myself in, moves through the circumstance I am part of at any moment, and ends with my place in the universe. It’s my choice. I choose every thought I have at any moment in my life, and when I am aware of this, I choose and thus create a kind of thinking that is clearer rather than confusing, that produces calm rather than agitation, and puts me in charge of the experience I am having. This is very empowering and also freeing. The choice is mine. All the time. To believe this changes our lives.

How far does this choice thing go then? As far as I can tell, all the way, and I am not sure what this means exactly, but I can feel it. This goes as far as believing that even if I was murdered today, that this was my choice. That I chose to find myself in that circumstance, to act the way I did, and to end up getting killed. I truly believe this at this point, and with this I also believe that we choose our lives at different levels of awareness, some of which are not visible to us in our current state of humanness, but are nonetheless ‘there’ and real. I believe that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, and that we may only be aware of different aspects of this at any time. Including the choices we make at different levels about this human life we are having. By choosing to believe this, the horrors we create, the trespasses we commit against each other, look different. When we dare to believe that we are the creators of our experience at different levels, obvious and hidden, at all times, then the possibility comes into view that we also choose all the horrible things mentioned. We choose this outside of our human view, but we still choose this, and we choose from a place where the duality of good and evil, pleasure and pain, right and wrong, have no meaning. Because limitless, all inclusive beingness is all there is ‘there.’

Told you this was a toughie. It still is for me, and I could be completely wrong, of course. All I know is that choosing to believe in choice this way has made my life more spacious, peaceful and fun. I choose my life at any moment, and am grateful for that. How about you? As always, I invite you to play with this in your life. Will you or won’t you? What’s your choice?

Cheers,

Ralf

 

by

Control

Control is everywhere in the ego identified world. It really likes to hang out with need. It’s like this: Control and Need walk into a bar. They go up to to the bartender and Need says: “I need a drink now!” Control says: “Yes, but make that three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large slice of lemon-peel. Got it?”

Control is as important as need in ego identification, and one of them tends to be behind the actions we undertake out of that state. They are the foundations of ego identification. Because in an ego id world, control is an essential tool in making the ego more real. If I can control something or someone, then I exist. Only someone that is real and has some measure of control over the world, exists. This is the basis from which the ego operates. So it finds things to control. Our own thinking is where it begins, if I cannot be in control of my own thinking after all, where else is there to go? Once that is established, we go forth and establish all kinds of domains under our control, no matter how limited that may be. It’s not about the ‘amount’ of control that the ego seeks, it’s about control. That is why having control over the oddest or sometimes seemingly most insignificant things can be so important to people. And then we go ahead and laugh at those people, because they get so bent out of shape over nothing, they should see our lives, and the really important things we are in control of… Ego identification abounds.

The tough part with this control addiction of the ego is that in good times, when things are ‘under control,’ we get to feel good somewhat, while always having to make sure that things stay that way of course. We have to check on people, make sure tasks are done correctly, always demonstrating to ourselves that everything is just so. Have you ever caught yourself on a morning, and things were off somehow? Your mood was bad, your spouse was difficult, your kids were a nightmare, your car was old, your job sucked, etc.? Almost inevitably at some point during a mental shitstorm like that, the thought that we really don’t have control over our own life shows up. We then either keep going with it, and end up feeling worse and worse, until that moment when we have to throw up our hands and say ‘I don’t have control over anything in my life!’ or we commit an act of control. Make a decision that affects us and (even better) someone else as well. We make the kids do what we want them to, we tell our spouse or coworker that we need them to do something for us, and they do it, and bingo, we feel more in control again. Taken to the utmost extreme, our minds go completely out-of-control, we succumb to every thought we have, and we end up in varying degrees of mental illness. The ego after all says (to quote the bird from Flying Leap): “…that control is the measure of a certain life, and that knowing what is real is the test of your existence.”

Thus is the story that comes with control, it’s one or the other, I am in control or out-of-control or somewhere in between. It’s a game of duality, and a game that only works in duality. Outside of duality, it has no existence or meaning. Outside of ego identification, that is. That is the other possibility.

What if control was of no issue? What is we simply showed up in our lives and control was literally of no interest to us? This is not about being for or against it, it’s about living a life beyond control, where it does not matter in our experience of life. What does matter to us, is that we have choice. We choose (our) life, moment-to-moment. No one does this for us, and thus no one or no thing controls what we experience. We create our experience. If you can entertain this as a possibility, your life will change dramatically, and control will go right with it. If we live in a world where we alone create our experience, and we know this about others as well, control makes no sense. I create, you create, whatever we wish. This does not mean that we cannot have clarity around what works and doesn’t work for us, quite to the contrary, we are more clear on these matters. But we do not express this by means of controlling the other, but simply by expressing our view. It’s not about control, it’s about choice. It’s about all of us choosing our life circumstances. They are not imposed on us, which would mean someone or something is in control of it.

Most of our human systems on the planet are built around control, beginning with our own personal ego identified worlds, extending out to groups, nations, and any and all belief systems that tell us how to be. But it only works as long as we believe that we need to be in control to be real, once we choose not to believe this, the world is a different place. Starting with our own.

As always, check this out for yourself. The next time you think that something in your life is out-of-control, and you notice this, stop for a moment, and see how it feels. Then notice how your mind is trying to find a controllable action, something to get you back in control, and how you need this to feel better. Then don’t. Choose to not engage in this, choose to say that you have a choice, and see what happens. You may just find yourself creating something entirely different.

Cheers,

Ralf