Since living in persistent fear (dread, terror) spoils life, what can be done about it?

There are two kinds to be set aside, namely, those (i) due to an unhealthy brain and those (ii) that are justifiable.

(i) Even if you don’t suspect that your terrors have an organic cause, it may be wise not to rule out having a physical examination. If it’s available to you, why not?

(ii) Like physical pains, terrors can have good consequences. If you break your leg, your body should use pain to signal you not to walk on it until it heals. Similarly, if you live alone and are awakened in the night by the sounds of someone breaking into your house, your terror should cause you to take appropriate action.

Be grateful for this kind of terror. Like other emotions, it evolved to assist you in surviving and reproducing. If you are living in a war zone, it’s appropriate to be terrified.

Let’s here focus on the kind of persistent fear that is neither due to organic causes nor is justifiable.

Except for loud noises and falling, all terrors seem to be learned. If so, that’s good news because it means that they can be unlearned.

Suffering due to terror is, sadly, normal. Furthermore, we often lie about it to ourselves as well as to others.

Do you dread any of these? Failure. Rejection. Pain. Death. Dying. Looking foolish. Poverty. Illness. Confusion. Loneliness. Mutilation. Old age. Success. Small animals. Insecurity. Confinement. Meeting new people. Public speaking.

The more you focus on something, the more it grows in importance. This general psychological law applies in this case.

What happens when you are unable to stop focusing on something you dread?

Trust is the absence of fear. What happens when you lose trust in life itself?

Suicide may become an even more viable option. When terror obstructs us from doing what we want to do, life appears no longer worth living.

The usual way to overcome something terrifying is this: to master it, force yourself to do what you most fear doing and keep doing it until the terror dissolves.

Suppose, for example, that you are in sales and you understand that your product or service might benefit others; nevertheless, you are afraid to contact people because you fear rejection.

This is not difficult to cure.

Tom Hopkins says: simply repeat the following every morning and as frequently as necessary throughout the day: ‘I am not judged by the number of times I fail but by the number of times I succeed, and the number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail and keep on trying.’

Essentially, this involves replacing one (bad) thought with another (better) one.

When you fail, instantly reframe the failure: Rejection is not failure; it’s only a lesson in how to succeed. Rejection is not failure; it’s only the negative feedback I need to improve what I’m doing. Rejection is not failure; it’s only an opportunity to practice my techniques and perfect my performance. Rejection is not failure; it’s only a game I must play to win.

You’ll be on the way to becoming a master of selling when you stop taking rejection personally and begin to see it for what it really is, namely, an opportunity for mastery.

Notice how this involves letting go of egocentricity.

Objection: this usual way doesn’t always work. Sometimes, fearful thoughts are not so easily replaced. What should I do if I continue to suffer from them?

Reply: Replace thought with simple awareness (no-thought).

Here’s the key to liberation: the more realization, the more fear dissolves. The word ‘realization’ here refers to spiritual awakening or enlightenment (kensho, satori, identification with True Self).

Realization comes in degrees. After an initial breakthrough, it is capable of indefinite deepening or expansion.

Sufficient evidence about the dissolution of fear comes from this fact: fully enlightened sages are never afraid.

In other words, ultimately all fear has as its source identification with the egoic mind. If you are afraid and open yourself to identification with Being, your fear will permanently diminish.

Why not enjoy life more? Being afraid is optional.

Yes, it is difficult, but it is also simple: just stop identifying with forms of Becoming by identifying with Being.

As always, if you know someone who might benefit from this post, please forward it.

Related posts: Many of the posts in the spiritual well-being category relate to detaching from the egoic mind.

Additional resources: my How to Survive College Emotionally; Eckhart Tolle’s Living the Liberated Life and Dealing with the Pain-Body (3 CD set); Tom Hopkins’s How to Master the Art of Selling (2nd ed.); G. Butler & T. Hope’s Managing Your Mind.

The tapping cure is an easy, quick, safe, inexpensive method for letting go of negative emotions such as fear, guilt, loneliness, and anger that is effective for nearly everyone.

It’s easy because you can teach it to yourself in an hour or two. Once you learn how to tap, it only takes a few minutes.

It’s quick because it’s a cure, not merely a therapy. A few minutes of tapping may be all that is required for you permanently to release a negative emotion that has been troubling you for years! (If that emotion ever does return, simply tap again for a couple of minutes to release it again.)

It’s safe in the sense that there’s no downside to it. You tap in private by yourself. It has no side effects. It won’t cause tears or emotional trauma. It’s a perfectly benign therapy.

It’s inexpensive because it is not necessary to hire anyone. You can borrow a book on the tapping cure from a library or simply buy an inexpensive paperback. That’s it! Even if you are among the few for which it doesn’t work (and no therapy works for everyone), you will not have wasted a lot of money trying it.

Objection: If all this is true, why isn’t it prevalent? Why haven’t I heard of it before?

Reply: There are two reasons.

First, most people have closed minds – and that includes those with graduate degrees such as physicians and psychotherapists. Since it’s a new therapy, it requires some outside-the-box thinking and most people stay as attached as possible to the judgments with which they are most comfortable.

Second, nobody understands why it works.

The cure for a closed mind is an open mind. This is the mind of a philosopher, who is always probing, questioning, and testing. The reason not to settle for a closed mind is because, as I have argued before in these posts, no single judgment captures the whole truth. To conceptualize is always to distort.

The cure for staying stuck within the limits of your own understanding is having the courage to go beyond that understanding. What difference does it make whether or not an unintelligible therapy works as long as it is effective?

Suppose you had chronic pain. Pain is your body signaling you to slow down, stop, or change direction. Merely eliminating the pain without eliminating its cause is dangerous. Let’s suppose, though, that there’s no organic reason for the pain and that the drugs prescribed by western physicians have failed to bring you relief.

Would you try acupuncture?

I would. It might not work, but it might. It certainly does help some people some of the time – though nobody really understands how it works. If it relieved my pain, I wouldn’t care at all about the theory.

It’s the same with the tapping cure. It helps most people to separate negative emotions from their thoughts. In other words, they still have their thoughts, but those thoughts are no longer attached to negative emotions.

Negative emotions are one of the great spoilers of life.

We all have them.

Maybe you still regret not standing up to that bully in school. Maybe all your subsequent love affairs have been affected by the hurt caused by your being dumped by the one you took to be the love of your life. Maybe you are guilty for not being more helpful to your mother when she was dying. Maybe you are still angry at your father for something he said about you thirty years ago.

The problem is that we don’t understand how to dissolve these emotions. It’s as if we put them into a sack we carry on our backs into each new experience. We don’t want to spoil our new experiences, but we don’t understand how to empty the sack.

The tapping cure is a way to empty the sack.

Yes, it may seem weird or unscientific or too woo-woo. So?

What matters is getting your sack emptied.

It’s a self-help, risk-free method for emptying your sack.

The purpose of these posts is to encourage you to think better about living well.

I’m personally very excited about this post. I hope that you’ll take it to heart and share your results in the comment section below.

Good luck!

Recommended Reading:  Roberta Temes, Ph.D., The Tapping Cure.

As always, if you know someone who might benefit from reading this, please pass it along.

There are two ways concerning how to deal with loneliness:  you can distract yourself from noticing it or cure it.

There’s nothing abnormal about occasional loneliness.  That’s because it’s normal to be concerned with the degree of your personal dignity and self-esteem, which are based on your self-concept, in other words, how you understand yourself.  When you find yourself struggling by yourself, it’s not abnormal occasionally to feel that the odds of success would be greater if you were not struggling alone.

Like other emotions, loneliness isn’t just important to us; it also essentially involves us.  If you judge yourself to be lacking people who love you, it’s easy to find yourself emotionally down and struggling with loneliness.

The only people who are wholly free from emotional bondage and afflictions are fully enlightened sages.  Since there may be no fully enlightened sages, it may be the case that, at least occasionally, none of us is free from emotional suffering.

All emotions are analyzable into three components:  a judgment of the situation, an egocentric evaluation of that situation, and (almost always) an accompanying physical feeling or passion.

If it is mild and occasional, the distraction method for how to deal with loneliness can work.  The two chief ways for how to deal with loneliness using the distraction method are to attack the judgment and to change the physical feeling.

Suppose that you are suffering from loneliness because your lover just dumped you.  The intensity of that suffering usually depends upon whether or not it was only a superficial, transitory fling or whether it was an in depth, multi-year relationship.  It will also depend upon whether or not you understand it to be part of a continuing pattern.

It may be possible for you to use thought itself effectively for how to deal with loneliness.  To do so, it is critical to notice that no thought is wholly true.  This is because all thoughts involve concepts, which are ways of classifying objects.  In any judgment the object or objects that are its subject matter may be conceived differently.  Realizing this, you may loosen your attachment to your judgment.

Did your lover really dump you?  Is it possible you are misunderstanding what actually happened?  Even if it did happen, there’s nothing to prevent him [or her] from changing his mind.  Furthermore, as good as it was with him, even if he doesn’t change his mind, why couldn’t a relationship with someone else be even better?  There is nothing preventing this emotional obstacle from becoming an emotional opportunity.

As you probably realize, it’s possible to think your way out of negative emotions like loneliness like this only when they are mild.

If thinking does not turn out to be effective in how to deal with loneliness in this case, you may be able to change how you feel about it.  For example, you could go get drunk or stoned to distract yourself.  You may be able to go out and have sex with someone else.  A better way, though, would be some intense physical exercise such as a long walk or run.  Exercise has very important emotional benefits.

Suppose, though, that the way of distraction doesn’t work in this case or that you would rather cure the loneliness rather than just distracting yourself from it.  Is there a lasting, really effective method for how to deal with loneliness?

Yes there is:  the cure for how to deal with loneliness undermines the critical egocentric evaluation. The judgment in our example was that he dumped me.  Let’s assume that’s true.

By themselves, facts are emotionally neutral.  Suppose it is raining in Tokyo at this moment:  how do you feel about that?  Assuming that you don’t happen to be in Tokyo and have no reason whatsoever to be concerned about the weather in Tokyo at this moment, you simply have no feeling whatsoever about that fact.

If you are lonely because he dumped you, it’s because you are emotionally attached to that fact. The heart of every negative emotion is the evaluation that this is bad for me.  The heart of every positive emotion is the evaluation that this is good for me. It’s not just that neither judgment is wholly true nor that neither can be known to be true.

Notice the “for me.”  All emotions are self-centered.  This is the key. The cure for any emotional suffering is to detach from self-centeredness.

So the cure for how to deal with loneliness is to let go of your evaluation that the present situation is bad for you. To let go of self-centeredness completely is to be a wholly enlightened sage.

Again, no wholly enlightened sages may exist. However, the more you are like a wholly enlightened sage, the less you will suffer emotionally.

The less self-centered you are, the less negative emotions will afflict you.  “Detaching from egocentricity is the key to flourishing emotionally” (from my How to Survive College Emotionally).

This is really good news:  emotional suffering is optional!

There’s even more good news: it takes no time to let go of egocentricity.  It can be done right now.  In fact, the only time it can be done is the present moment.  (It cannot be done in the future because nothing can ever be done in the future!)

The cure for how to deal with loneliness is to be found in expansion of your “self-concept,” which is what separates you from everything that isn’t you.  Loneliness comes from awareness of a lack of union between you and something else such as a former lover or a certain group of people.

What if you were not actually separated from that person or from those other people?  What if there were no “other” at all?

What if you expanded your self-concept to include everything else?  Then, of course, loneliness would be impossible.

In other words, unintentionally, you have thought your way into loneliness.  You may instantly eliminate the loneliness by letting go of your thoughts.  It’s that simple. On the other hand, the cure for how to deal with loneliness is not easy.  It’s not easy to let go.  However, it really is simple.

Furthermore, there are many ways to do it.  For example, you may become aware of the aliveness in your body [see Life Energy].  Starting to let go of loneliness can begin simply by feeling your hands from the inside!

Focusing on your breathing while meditating is a classic way to do it—and there are other methods as well.  Some take time to master, but becoming a master meditator, for example, isn’t necessary.  All that is necessary is letting go of your attachment to your self-concept, which requires no time at all.

That is all that is required for genuine happiness.

The ultimate expansion of your self-concept is identification with Being.  You are Being; it’s impossible to be without Being, to be separated from it.  Since Being is the essence of everything, because you are Being you lack nothing.  No lack, no loneliness!

This is really, really good news:  by being lonely, by suffering emotionally, and simply reading this post, you have now opened yourself up to a new way of being, a way of freedom from all negative emotions from now on.  The task becomes the simple one of using that understanding to expand your self-concept, to drop attachment to your present narrow self-concept.

All you wanted was an effective method for how to deal with loneliness.  What you have uncovered instead is the exciting possibility of living without emotional affliction!

Suggestions for Further Reading: Dennis Bradford’s How to Survive College Emotionally, Robert C. Solomon’s The Passions, and Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now and A New Earth.

As always, if you think this might benefit someone you know, please forward it.

What is abiding or genuine happiness?  Is it really possible to attain it?

I’ve argued elsewhere that the popular notion is muddled. If so, permit me here to clarify it using some suggestions by Eckhart Tolle.

Our topic is not the temporary feeling of being pleased; rather, it is the abiding joy, serenity, or peacefulness characteristic of living well or flourishing. It is the result of successfully mastering life.

Sadly, we are often so focused on just getting by that we fail to develop a clear vision of how, ideally, we would like our lives to be.

When looking into the heavens on a clear, dark night, what do you see? You may see the moon and some planets, but mostly you see stars, right? Those points of light are mostly distant galaxies. What else do you see?

When I asked a group of people that question recently, nobody attempted to answer it. It was obvious they were all puzzled.

So, what else do you see?

Try this: if there were no space between the stars, how many stars would you see? If there were no distances among them, the points of light would all coalesce.

So, there aren’t just stars in the night sky, there is also space itself, which we tend not to notice. Without the space, though, there’d be no multitude of stars.

We may think of the stars as the “content” of the visual field and space as their “context.” In general, we tend to focus only on content and to ignore context.

Similarly, what do we typically see when we enter a room? What, really, is a room? What is the essence of a room?

What we typically see are the contents of a room, its furniture and furnishings. They are not the room itself.

What is the room itself? It is not its walls, floor, and ceiling because they are only the boundaries of a room.

A room is space! Space (void, emptiness) is the essence of a room. Rooms are for containing objects and, without space, rooms could contain nothing.

It’s possible [and, I think, plausible—see Substance] to extend this analysis to individuals, which are clusters of qualities. Typically, we notice the qualities of an individual but not its essence, which is no-thing, emptiness.

Let’s use the content/context distinction to explain the form/formless distinction. A “form” is anything it’s possible to single out for our attention. It makes no difference whether or not it exists or is taken to exist. Thoughts (including dream objects) are forms. Perceptual objects such as trees, lakes, and clouds are forms. Emotions are forms. Every distinct thing or object is a form.

What isn’t a form? Formlessness. We don’t have a set word for it, but I do give a partial list of words that have been used to refer to it in another post (see Being). It’s traditionally called “space” or “emptiness” or “void.”

For example, in the oldest Zen document we have, Sengcan, the third Zen ancestor in China, writes that “deep truth” is “perfect like vast space, / where there’s no lack and no excess.”

How is this relevant to understanding genuine happiness?

I’m using the adjective “genuine” to distinguish our topic from ordinary happiness, which is transient. Unlike the ordinary state, genuine happiness does not come and go. It abides. In fact, it’s not temporal at all; it’s eternal.

Genuine happiness comes from Being rather than from Becoming. Even if that’s so, we may pay attention to it or not. In other words, while it is always (timelessly) available, we may not always be available because we who are absorbed in Becoming may forget or ignore it.

Ordinary happiness is of Becoming, whereas genuine happiness is of Being.

Here is a critical point: since all forms are Becoming, no form or arrangement of forms abides. All forms are in incessant flux.

This is why ordinary happiness does not abide: its causes are always fleeting.

Sadly, most of us spend most of our lives trying to get forms just the way that we want them to be in order to sustain our happiness.

This ordinary way of life must fail. Why?

Even if we could get all forms exactly the way that we want them, that particular arrangement would quickly disintegrate.

This is why the way of gaining or achieving is hopeless. This does not entail that it’s foolish to seek or enjoy some forms, some gains or achievements. It only means that gaining or achieving cannot lead to abiding happiness.

When we focus exclusively on content, we condemn ourselves to suffering. Because this way of focusing is unnecessary, suffering is unnecessary. [As usual, I’m assuming the important distinction between pain and suffering.] Avoiding suffering requires greater balance in focusing.

When abiding happiness is the goal, context and content are both important. Abiding happiness requires paying attention to both form and formlessness, to Being as well as to Becoming.

What does this mean?

After all, it’s easy to understand what it is to focus on forms, to think about forms. It’s to single them out by perceiving, conceiving, or imagining them. What, though, is it to think about formlessness or Being?

There’s the rub! It is impossible to think about Being. Being is unitary. Being is simple. There’s nothing to understand or conceptualize!

Please do not jump to the conclusion that, because it is impossible to think about Being, it is impossible to apprehend it. It’s not. It must, however, be apprehended nonconceptually. This is why Sengcan says that to seek it “with thinking mind / is certainly a grave mistake.”

Abiding happiness requires the direct, nonconceptual awareness of Being. It requires that we abstain from ceaselessly focusing on forms, on Becoming. Genuine happiness requires a balance between Being and Becoming.

How can we directly apprehend Being? Sengcan’s advice: “just let those fond opinions go.”

Opinions (beliefs, judgments) are nothing but thought forms. To let them go is to stop thinking. It’s that simple.

Genuine happiness requires learning how to stop thinking.

Notice that you cannot think space itself. What is it? What is void, emptiness, nothingness? Forms are singleoutable, but formlessness is not singleoutable.

Genuine happiness requires that we stop thinking (judging, conceptualizing), that we let go of all forms. Genuine happiness requires (nonconceptual) awareness of formlessness (Being).

Though simple, letting go of our obsession with forms is difficult.

Genuine happiness requires focusing on the space between stars or, in a room, on the space between pieces of furniture. This initially feels quite unnatural!

It is only if we are willing to let go of incessantly focusing on forms that we are able to apprehend formlessness, which is required for genuine happiness.

That letting go is not only necessary for genuine happiness, it is sufficient for a glimpse of genuine happiness.

An initial breakthrough into Being can, and should, be expanded and deepened. As that occurs, genuine happiness increases. Ask any sage.

I mention this so that you don’t make the mistake of just focusing on an initial breakthrough. The goal is not a few minutes or hours of genuine happiness, it’s to abide joyfully for the rest of your life.

Sages (successful philosophers) experience Becoming (forms) from Being (formlessness). Genuine happiness occurs when total absorption in Becoming becomes balanced with the direct apprehension of Being. No balance, no wisdom.

Genuine happiness changes nothing — and  everything!

SUGGESTED RESOURCES: “Imbalance about Happiness” in my 5 Ways to Diminish Failure Almost Instantly. Eckhart Tolle’s “Realizing the Power of Now” (6 CD set). There are related posts in the spiritual well-being section of this website.

Please forward this to any friends and other loved ones who might benefit from it.

Worshipping idols is a very popular pasttime that should be avoided at all costs.

What are they? What’s wrong with worshipping them? What’s the alternative?

They are what Christian thinkers call the “anti-Christ.” Whereas Christ is supposed to be the means to eternal salvation, fulfillment, and freedom, the anti-Christ is only a means to the endless slavery of always seeking more.

It’s the difference between gods and God.

Idols (gods) are mind-generated forms that are mistakenly thought to be real means for acquiring more.

Recall everything that comes and goes. Recall the moon and the tides. Recall the sun and the clouds. Recall the heat of summer and the cold of winter. Recall the greening of the earth in spring and the colors of the fall. Recall the rise and fall of empires. Recall the birth and death of humans and all the other creatures. Recall the waxing and waning of fame and fortune.

All that comes and goes, all that is temporal, is of BECOMING rather than of changeless Being.

Idols are gods, denizens of Becoming rather than of Being.

They are always somewhere else. They are always out there to be sought or gained. They are such stuff as dreams are made of. They are objectives, aims, and goals to be achieved.

Gods are never right here right now. They are neither immediate nor within.

Gods are reality’s substitutes. However, they seem to be real and are not recognized as unrealities.

They may be valued bodies or places or situations or circumstances. They may be owned or desired. They may be demanded or achieved.

Their purpose is to supply our lacks by giving us value that we do not have.

Or, rather, that is their purpose for anyone who still believes in gods. To believe in godss is to be enslaved by littleness and to be awash in loss.

To believe in them is to believe that we must seek beyond our little selves for the strength to withstand the suffering of the world.

Grasping at gods is an attempt to overcome the world’s misery.

Each god is a means to obtaining more gods.

The trick is not to think about idols but to immerse yourself in acquiring them. As long as you are working hard gaining more and more, you’ll think your life has a worldly purpose and remain, though dissatisfied, hopeful that gaining just a little more will finally bring you peace.  Isn’t that how most people live?

Those who are slaves to gods are willing slaves. They enslave themselves.

A Course in Miracles compares idols to the dreams of children. “Nightmares are childish dreams. The toys have turned against the child who thought he made them real . . . he thinks the thoughts are real.”

The willing slaves who worship gods are like dreamers who think their thoughts are real. As long as they continue to judge that they are real, they will continue to dream, to worship gods.

As soon as they let go of judging, they will awaken to realize they have been dreaming.

Idols, though mistakenly perceived as real forms, are nothing but thoughts. They are not entities; they are nonentities. They are nothing more than mental formations considered in abstraction from the mind that created them.

They are not necessary. They are merely limits.

There is no need to look elsewhere or outside for eternal peace, which is available right here right now. Wasting life chasing gods distracts us from our true calling.

There is no need to wish for more. Everything is available right here right now.

Do you fear anything?

“Whenever you feel fear in any form . . . be sure you made an idol, and believe it will betray you” (from A Course in Miracles).

What you fear is always something temporal. There is nothing eternal to fear. Gods are a symptom of confusing the temporal with the eternal.

Is it really the idol you desire? Is it really the idolatrous form that you covet? No.

Is there really just one piece of your life missing? Hardly.

You want Being, unlimited wholeness, but forget that Being has no form!

Since you are Being and since it’s impossible to desire what you already are or have, it’s impossible to want Being.

Wanting idols is a trick of the egoic mind. To sustain itself, it encourages you to think that little pieces of Becoming are satisfactory substitutes for Being. Of course they are not!

There is no satisfactory substitute for Being. How could what is limitless be limited?

Sometimes you are aware of thoughts and sometimes you are not. Gods are nothing but deceptive thoughts created by the mind to fill the void between yourself and Being.

What void between yourself and Being? The emptiness or loneliness you feel? Emotions, too, are tricks of the mind. (See my How To Survive College Emotionally.)

If you are Being, there is no separation between you and Being.

Thinking or feeling that such a separation is real is willing enslavement to the mind.

To realize that, just let all idols go. Drop them all. Completely.

Nothing else is required. In other words, substitute no-thought for thought. Substitute awareness for incessant conceptualizing.

Simple? Yes.

Easy? No.

The only way to live well? Yes.

Peace is being wholly at ease.  Lacking peace is the root of all evil.

Being unsettled is so commonplace that we sometimes forget there is an alternative.

As Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) famously wrote in Pensees [Thoughts]: “Tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos dans une chambre.“

“All human misfortunes derive from one single thing, which is their inability to be at ease in a room at home.”

Could you do that? Could you sit quietly, alone, in a dark, silent room and be wholly at ease?

If you wonder, “How long would I have to sit there?” then the answer is a resounding ”No!”

It is impossible to think about time or anything else and be wholly at ease.

To think is to conceptualize, which is to sort or compare or contrast. It is always the egoic mind that thinks. “The ego literally lives by comparisons” (from A Course in Miracles.  All the quotations in the rest of this post are from this book).

If so, it’s instantly obvious why it is impossible to be peaceful: we are too egoistical, too self-centered.

Another way to say this is that we take ourselves to be temporal, enslaved by time. Time is conceptual, a product of the egoic mind. “Both time and delay are meaningless in eternity.”

Another way to say this is to say that we identify with our thoughts, particularly our autobiographies (life stories, self narratives).

Yet another way to say this is that we identify with our bodies, which are temporal. The egoic mind interprets the body as itself. This identity judgment is the wellspring of human dissatisfaction.

Either the egoic mind or Being is insane. There is no middle ground.

In fact, properly understood, this is good news: if we use “(to) do” to refer only to bodily acts (as opposed to also including decisions or other thoughts), sanity does not require us to do anything!

“To do anything involves the body. And if you recognize you need do nothing, you have withdrawn the body’s value from your mind. Here is the quick and open door through which you . . . escape from time” into your real identity, which is Being itself.

Peace is Being.

If you are unable to be at ease, it’s because you have not forgotten the body. As long as you do not completely forget the body, you will remain trapped in time, in Becoming, in dissatisfaction.

All that is required is one instant: if “just for an instant, you are willing to see no past or future,” you accept Being without reservation.

One moment of no-thought is all that is required to be wholly at ease. Notice how thought cannot think time without thinking of past or future; it cannot think the present moment except as fleeting unintelligibility.

“Nor is a lifetime of contemplation and long periods of meditation aimed at detachment from the body necessary.”

Being at ease requires, just for a moment, letting go of identifying yourself with your body, with your thoughts, with time. This is the meaning of detachment.

Being wholly at ease requires practicing focusing on the present moment.

It’s true that letting go, actually detaching, is difficult; however, all it takes is one instant.

The body is not who you are. Your thoughts are not who you are. Your ego is not who you are. “This little self is not your kingdom.”

You are Being.

Underneath all your trials and tribulations, underneath all your dissatisfaction and suffering, underneath all your real or imagined misfortunes is peace, being wholly at ease.

The cause of all suffering is not realizing who we are. We misunderstand ourselves.

We are not humans having occasional experiences of Being, we are beings with human form. It’s the difference between experiencing Becoming from Being and experiencing Being, if at all, from Becoming.

Are you depressed? “When you equate yourself with a body you will always experience depression.”

Are you insane? When you equate yourself with your story or thought system you will always experience insanity.

Are you deluded? When you equate yourself with your ego you will always be delusional. “The ego . . . is nothing more than a delusional system in which you made your own father.”

Are you unsettled (dissatisfied, hurting)? When you forget timelessness and only preoccupy yourself with time, you will always be unsettled.

“As always, your choice is determined by what you value. Time and eternity cannot both be real, because they contradict each other.”

It only takes an instant.

Living better is simple:  just do one thing at a time.

You’re probably familiar with this idea, but you may underestimate its importance. For example, are you clear about why doing one thing at a time reduces time stress?

Since stress comes from simultaneously being pulled in opposite directions, aligning the previously opposed forces automatically reduces stress [see http://dennis-bradford.com/1074/stress-relief-exercises/]. If you practice implementing this idea when engaging in routine tasks, you’ll quickly feel a lot better.

For example, let’s suppose that you wash the dishes daily. As you are washing them, you think back over your life to how many times you have already washed the dishes. What a waste! Shouldn’t you have been doing more important work?

Since you don’t enjoy washing them, you think ahead to all the times in the future when you must wash them. You dread having to wash them every day for the rest of your life.

Besides, there are plenty of present tasks that are better you could be doing if you didn’t have to wash the dishes. You could be having sex or reading a book or watching a movie. The more quickly you rush through the dishes, the more quickly you can be living a more enjoyable life.

Of course, some of your attention, too, must be put into what you are doing. Lest you break a wine glass, you do need to pay some attention to the washing.

Is this a familiar description of how you engage in routine activities?

Were you doing one thing at a time?

Obviously not: in addition to paying some attention to what you were actually doing, you were remembering the past, dreading the future, and desiring to be elsewhere. Instead of being focused on one thing at a time, your thought was scattered in four different directions!

No wonder washing the dishes is so stressful. So, if you let them, are brushing your teeth, walking down a hallway, cleaning your house, or getting dressed. All routine and all boring!

That’s a foolish way to live. Why not enjoy routine tasks? Why not enjoy life?

Remember how it was the first time your mother permitted you to wash the dishes? It was fun! Playing in that warm, soapy water and proving that you could do it without breaking a wine glass was an enjoyable, challenging experience. It certainly wasn’t boring.

Once you practice doing one thing at a time, washing dishes need never be boring again. The reality is that each experience has never happened before and will never happen again.

The only reason you are ever bored is because you are misusing your mind. That’s the only reason anyone is ever bored.

What has happened is that you have unintentionally gotten into a terrible habit, namely, instead of taking experiences one at a time, you have been using the present moment as if it were nothing but a stepping stone to the future. The implicit assumption is that, since the future may be better than now, let me rush through the present moment to get to the future.

That is the height of foolishness. Why?

The future never arrives! It is always now. It is impossible to experience the future. The future is unreal; it is nothing but an imaginary thought you are thinking now. You have foolishly been preferring a conceptual phantom to the wondrous fullness of the present moment!

The present moment is the only time we ever get. The future always appears as present, doesn’t it?

We all make the same mistake. To become wise, simply stop making it.

Really taking one thing at a time means never treating the present moment as if it were nothing but a means to some future end. How? Focus fully only on what you are doing. How? Practice as continuously as possible.

Objection: doesn’t this mean that you cannot prepare for the future? Reply: No. When planning for the future, do nothing except plan for the future! Preparing is a task that also can be done one thing at a time.

Once you get good at only doing one thing at a time, think how much your sex life will improve or how much more you will enjoy eating or even just walking!

Practicing one thing at a time is a very clever way to live better. It’s simple. Anyone can do it.

Will you?

[For more on this topic, I recommend the books and audio programs of Eckhart Tolle.]