A Dark Time is something very different from me: a mystery/thriller!

Why should you care?

It comes with a bonus that might benefit you, namely, a 20-minute personal strategy session worth $100.00!

If you are normal, there are obstacles between where you are now and where you would like to be. Why not get some help removing an obstacle?

However, there is a catch: I may limit the consultations to the first 100 buyers who contact me. Therefore, if you are interested, don’t procrastinate.

This post is appearing the evening of Monday, 21 May 2012. The novel’s official publication date is tomorrow. I’m notifying you first so that you can take advantage of the bonus.

A Dark Time is already available as a Kindle edition for just $2.99; just go to Amazon.com and find it in the Kindle store. It is available as a physical copy for $10.99; just click here.  [A physical copy will be available at Amazon.com by 25 May 12.] Both editions include the bonus.

Simple instructions for receiving the bonus and for getting the most out of it are provided in the beginning of the book.

Even if you don’t intend to read the book, don’t you think that a private, personal coaching session with me would be worth the price of a cup of coffee?

(Incidentally, this might be an excuse to buy a Kindle Fire for $199. Do you realize that they are a loss leader? Amazon loses money with every one they sell; they hope to make money in the long term as you purchase inexpensive Kindle books to read.)

To schedule the bonus,  just write down your Amazon order number and contact me as soon as possible. (You can even use the contact form on this blog to contact me. Obviously, if it includes your contact information, I won’t publish your comment; I am the only one who sees all the comments that come in.)

One review has already appeared about the book. Click here to read it.

I am putting together a website dedicated to the book. It’s at ADarkTime.com. Over 20 reviewers have said they’ll review the book. When I learn of additional reviews, I’ll put their links on that site.

Since I have never published any fiction before, I decided to offer the consultation bonus to ensure that I over-delivered.

Who knows?

You might even enjoy reading A Dark Time! If so, I hope that you’ll go to Amazon.com and give it a high rating.

What’s it about?

A college student vanishes. Her worried grandfather asks one of her favorite professors, Max Stephansson, to look for her. What Max finds is tragic. The suspense surrounding her disappearance unfolds to yield insight at the cost of danger and death.

A Dark Time is about the causes, consequences, and morality of cruelty (in the form of rape, incest, suicide, and homicide) and desire.

If it’s not your cup of tea, so what? If you and I have a good chat, you’ll be very glad that you purchased it.

Frankly, I’m looking forward to the consultations. They’ll enable me to know what your most important roadblocks are so that I can serve you better in the future.

As always, if you think someone else will benefit from this post, please pass it along.

Related posts:   New Book Cover.

Whence restlessness? What does it mean?  How can it be cured?

Do you suffer from it?

If so, you are not alone. It’s very common. In fact, it’s so common that, when you notice it in others, you may think there’s nothing wrong with it. (It’s even easier to notice it in others than in yourself.)

It’s especially easy to notice when others are sitting. Notice how many people are almost incessantly swinging one of their legs or jiggling their feet. Of course, people in rocking chairs are almost always in motion. Notice how few people actually sit still.

I myself have often exhibited it. In fact, it was so common in my own family that I used to think it was genetic! There were similarities and differences in the way it was manifested in myself, my siblings, and my parents, but it was so common that I used to think it was normal.

Ask yourself, “Which age group exhibits the most restlessness?” I don’t know, but my guess is that it is most characteristic of late adolescence. If not foolishness, it at least always signals immaturity.

Notice how, even in stable settings such as a classroom or a meeting, so many sets of eyes are looking around. It’s as if they are asking, “What else is there?”

Contrast that with other animals. What would you think if your dog or cat, instead of lying placidly at your feet, was in constant motion? Might you not take it to a vet? What if you visited a zoo and saw polar bears or tigers incessantly jiggling or wiggling? Might you not wish that they could be returned to life outside a cage?

However normal for humans, restlessness is not a good sign.

It’s certainly not attractive. Dating guru David DeAngelo [aka Eben Pagan] advises men who want to attract women to notice and eliminate all signs of behavioral restlessness.

Notice, too, how, when people are fully engaged and focused on a task, they exhibit no signs of restlessness. The same person who always seems to be restless sitting around the living room never exhibits any signs of it while playing hockey or having sex or reading an enthralling novel.

Restlessness signals dissatisfaction.

Behavioral manifestations of it always indicate a desire for something else, for something more, for something different. “I want more” is the implicit, fundamental judgment behind it. It’s a sign that the present moment, whatever is going on here and now, is less than wholly satisfactory. Such agitation signals life being lived poorly.

Let us agree to use “sage” to refer to someone who lives well. Think of sages you have either known personally or read about. Would you say they are restless? Do you think of them as jiggling or wiggling or agitated when they are just sitting around?

Surely not. When they are sitting, they are just sitting. They are still, calm, peaceful. They are at home in the present moment, living deeply and satisfactorily in the here and now. Sages are sages. They neither suffer from dissatisfaction nor signal restlessness.

Sages lack a future orientation. They do not use the present to try to live in the future. They are not wanting the next moment to be better than the present moment.

Wanting to gain more than is available in the present is foolish, not wise. The reason is simple: when the future does appear, it is always present. The future never appears as future; it can only appear as present.

The future is a set of thoughts. It’s nothing but a set of imaginings. It’s unreal. Therefore, trying to live in the future is attempting to live in unreality!

The immature, of whatever age, seem not yet to have understood this. The boredom of teenagers hanging around a mall is a symptom of immaturity, a failure to live an examined life. The root cause is the same even if we are instead thinking of bored oldsters in a nursing home.

Age does not automatically cure it because it does not automatically cure dissatisfaction.

What cures restlessness? That which cures dissatisfaction.  No dissatisfaction, no restlessness.

Since dissatisfaction always comes from separation, overcoming separation cures dissatisfaction.

So what cures dissatisfaction? The release from incessant conceptualization.

Concepts are principles of classification. To conceptualize, to use concepts, is to think discursively; it always involves separating (sorting, categorizing, classifying). However useful it can be, to conceptualize is to divide into two groups, namely, one group of objects (forms, things) to which the concept is thought to be applicable and another group to which it is not thought to be applicable.

If you are always conceptualizing, you must miss the satisfaction (peace, bliss, joy, harmony) that comes from awareness of unity.

Sages since at least the time of the Buddha have been saying this. For example, Sengcan, the third patriarch in ancient China, wrote in the oldest zen document: “Remaining in duality, / you’ll never know of unity.” [Rochester Zen Center translation.]

To experience unity directly is automatically to cure dissatisfaction. To cure dissatisfaction is automatically to cure restlessness.

How do you experience unity directly? Even for a moment, just stop conceptualizing. It’s not easy, but it’s that simple.

Sages say that living as we normally do, in other words, incessantly conceptualizing, is like dreaming. If we were to stop incessantly conceptualizing, we’d stop dreaming. Sengcan: “When you no longer are asleep, / all dreams will vanish by themselves.”

What we typically miss is experiencing the unity or essential interconnectedness of all objects. Lost, we exhibit restlessness because we haven’t yet found an object or set of objects that works satisfactorily as a self. The fundamental error is that we are looking in the wrong place: there is no self among objects. As long as we keep looking among objects for a self, our quest will be unsuccessful.

Gaining isn’t necessary. The key is to stop even trying to accumulate more and more.

The reason we try to gain is because we think there is something we lack. All desire comes from the fundamental, usually implicit judgment that there is something else that we need to live better. There isn’t.

Sengcan: “If mind does not discriminate, / all things are as they are, as One.”

Stop discriminating, even for a moment, and you’ll realize there is nothing else that we need to live better. Living well is available in the present moment, right here right now.  Living well is living in unity.

Curing restlessness is not easy, but it’s simple.

Sadly, this explains why restlessness is so common: sages are uncommon.

The good news, though, is that it doesn’t have to be this way.

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

Some related posts: Learning from Nature, Surrendering, The Future, Time Consciousness

Related resource: Eckhart Tolle’s “Realizing the Power of Now” [6 CD set].

Unthinking performance is masterful performance that is free of thoughts.  It’s liberated from attachment to the egoic self.

This is just another way of talking about the topic of my last post on character possession, namely, that creative acts come from thoughtless awareness of  Being.

In a short article in this week’s The Economist, Ian Leslie argues in favor of unthinking performance by drawing on academic research as well as on examples from sports and music.

Reaching genuinely masterful performance has two stages, namely, years of learning followed by letting go of egoic thinking when it most counts.

Leslie cites a semi-final match at last year’s U.S. Open between tennis masters Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. On a critical match point, Federer seemed to exhibit “mental frailty” while Djokovic returned a Federer serve with “nonchalance” and “such lethal precision that Federer couldn’t get near it.” Djokovic said later that he tends to do that on important points because letting go “kinda works.”

This is the kind of story that will be familiar to you if you have read The Inner Game of Tennis:  The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance. If you haven’t read it, I recommend it.

What, though, about verbal performances such as writing? Can unthinking performance work as well in that area?

Yes.

When the middle-aged Bob Dylan was interviewed by 60 Minutes, he talked, as Leslie put it, “wistfully” about “his youthful ability to write songs without even trying.” His song “Like a Rolling Stone” is recognized as one of the greatest songs ever written. Dylan said it gushed out of him like a “piece of vomit.”

Thinking can be good.  Thinking can be bad.

Even Zen masters, whose lives tend to move from one unthinking performance to the next, are not in favor of giving up thinking. Of course fresh thinking can be extremely valuable! Some problems cannot be solved without it. There’s no issue about that.

It’s the other 90% of thinking that is bad for us. It obstructs creativity, whereas being in a nonegocentric trance enhances creativity. Creativity is spontaneous, light, exhilarating, liberating.

90% of our thoughts are repetitious, needless chatter. We drag these thoughts with us into each new experience thus deadening the experience. They are heavy; they weight down on us. These thoughts are incessant background noise that diminishes what would otherwise be joyous experiences.

This wisdom has been available for centuries. Sengcan, who wrote the oldest extant zen document, writes that, if you “live in bondage to your thoughts,” it’ll be a “heavy burden [that] weighs you down.” [Rochester Zen Center translation.]

When was the last time you picked up a glass of water and took a drink thoughtlessly yet with alert awareness of your action? You probably cannot remember. A simple act like that can be beautiful.

Now, though, it is so familiar that you do it routinely without paying attention to it because you are busy “thoughting” (to use Roshi Philip Kapleau’s word) about something else.

If you can’t take a drink of water well, joyfully, lightly, how can you expect to wash yourself well? Or dress yourself well? Or do your work well? Or sustain a friendship well?

What incessant, needless thoughting does is rob attention from whatever you are doing in the present moment, even if that’s only breathing.

Thoughting separates and, so, creates dissatisfaction. It divides attention. It blocks unthinking performance.

There are all kinds of practices that are available to diminish it. All the best are very simple. However, they are also very difficult. They demand relentless practice of the right kind.

The point is to return the serve or compose the song or drink the water egolessly, thoughtlessly, yet with focused awareness.

The catch is that Djokovic spent years practicing tennis, Dylan spent years practicing song writing, and, although you don’t remember it, you spent a long time practicing the coordination necessary to pick up a glass of water and drink it.  No practicing, no mastery.

All spiritual practices are designed to grind down egocentricity. Mastering one is not easy.

The ideal of the sage is the ideal of making every act an act of unthinking performance.

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

Related post:   Character possession.

Related resource: Ian ALeslie, “NONCOGITO, ERGO SUM,” The Economist, 12-18 May 2012.

Character possession occurs when the characters that an author creates take over the story.

What an interesting phenomenon!

How could it occur? How could characters that an author creates surprise that author? It seems to make no sense.

My eleventh book, A Dark Time, will be available on May 22nd from Amazon.com. It’s my first work of fiction.

Whether it’s true or not, I have always preferred to think of myself as someone who could tell a good story. There’s at least some evidence for that. For example, I lettered as a quarterback in prep school. At the football banquet, I got telling stories to a lot of my teammates who had gathered around me. They had to interrupt me to give out the awards!

Those stories, though, were true. I didn’t invent them. So I wondered if I could tell a good story if I created it.

In addition to challenging myself to determine if I had what it took to finish such a project as well as just start it and getting published, I wanted to experience character possession.

Eventually, I’m pleased to report, I did experience character possession. The characters I’d created finished A Dark Time for me.

(By itself, this doesn’t mean that I wrote a good story. Perhaps experiencing character possession is a necessary condition for writing a good story. It’s certainly insufficient. A quality tale also requires talent as well as the sustained development of that talent.)

How is character possession possible?

Using my standard terminology of Being and Becoming, let me suggest for your consideration that character possession occurs when a story, which is temporal and, so, obviously an event in Becoming, has its origin in Being.

When writers talk about their muses working on them, they may be trying to articulate this connection with Being.

The thesis I’m suggesting is not novel. Eckhart Tolle, for example, has repeatedly said that the difference in quality between pulp fiction and literature is that only the latter manifests “presence,” which is a label for what he calls elsewhere “Being” or “space consciousness” or “the unmanifested.”

The manifestation itself, the sequence of words, occurs in Becoming. However, if its origin is in Becoming, it is merely the product of thoughts (mind), which necessarily limits its quality. A work like that is, since it comes from a person, obviously limited.

On the other hand, if its origin is limitless Being, although a person may be given credit for it, it’s not really a personal work.

Think of becoming enthralled by a great musical or athletic performance. In a clear sense, the musician or the athlete who is “in the zone” is an agent of something beyond. Yes, that person had talent and worked hard for a long time to develop that talent. There’s more to it, though, than just that.

What Tolle calls “presence” is the alert yet thoughtless awareness characteristic of mastery. Being is the wellspring from which all the different kinds of creative endeavors flow. The range of creativity is enormous; it includes, for example, the physics of an Einstein and the writing of popular songs. (Tolle uses as an example of the latter “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and he could have chosen hundreds of others.)

Although I wouldn’t have thought about it in quite this way, I was conscious of character possession before I even began to write A Dark Time. In fact, I doubt if I’d ever have shown it to anyone if I hadn’t experienced character possession while writing it. If you don’t tap into Being when making something, why trouble others with it?

Again, though, merely tapping into Being is insufficient for excellence. Even a Michael Jordon in his prime while playing in the zone didn’t make every single shot.

The key to accessing Being is thoughtless awareness. Thoughts are objects (forms, items in Becoming). Being is not an object.

An analogy may help. Visualize a room. Please actually take a few moments to do it.

Now, ask yourself how you would describe the room. You’d describe, perhaps, its furniture and flooring and lighting and wall decorations. Notice, though, that they are all objects! All those familiar objects occur in a background. The background is like Being. There would be no Becoming without Being. What we normally do is to focus exclusively on objects (forms, Becoming).  (This is why Tolle sometimes uses ‘space consciousness’ to contrast with objects in space.)

What great writers and other great artists sometimes enable us to do is to stop taking Being for granted. Being manifests in Becoming.

While objects can be pointed out, Being cannot be pointed out – but those objects wouldn’t be there without it.

We access Being when we stop focusing exclusively on thoughts and other objects.

How does this apply to character possession?

It’s easy to invent a character. Just put together a list of qualities that you want that character to have. (Many minor characters, even in great works of literature, are as dead and static as just such a list.) There’s no flesh and blood in a list. It’s a character born of mind.

It’s not so easy, though, to bring a character to life. When that occurs, character possession occurs. It’s a character who comes into mind from beyond mind.

So I was pleased that I was able to experience character possession when writing A Dark Time. If, however, you think that I am taking credit for it, you are clueless about the topic of this post.

I had the discipline to put the seat of my pants on the seat of my chair for hours every morning for several months; consequently, I should be given the credit (or blame!) for that.

I did not, though, create the experience of character possession. I was only an instrument (and, undoubtedly, a poor one).

It did.

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

Related post:  Rereading.

Related Resource:  My The 7 Steps to Mastery.

Is rereading books for enjoyment a good idea?

I recently sent queries to book bloggers to see if they wanted a copy to review of a novel of mine that is coming out next month. It was striking to notice how many of them referred to themselves in various ways as being addicted to reading.

One of the bloggers happened to mention to me that she never reread a novel in her life. Is that a good idea?

I wonder if habitually reading novels is a good idea. Is habitually reading books for enjoyment a good idea?

People who don’t read regularly have a tendency to stay stuck on the same thoughts, which, since the world is in flux, cannot be a good practice. On the other hand, don’t some people read too much? Presumably there’s a middle way.

What is at issue here is only reading for enjoyment. Obviously, if you are a Descartes scholar, you’d better have read Meditations on First Philosophy many, many times. If you are an editor who gets paid to edit books, that’s a different matter.

My inclination is to exclude poetry as well. If you don’t have some favorite poems that you have read many times, shame on you!

Furthermore, nobody knows many languages. Didn’t William Foxwell Albright know 25 languages (about half of which he deciphered himself)? If there’s an important book in a language you don’t read, it’s certainly a good idea to read different translations of it. In my case, this applies to such epics as The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid and Dante’s Comedy. I’ve read them in different translations and benefitted from each reading.

Many people are history buffs. Would someone who is a history buff of the American Civil War reread certain histories of it? He or she would likely read many different histories of it for enjoyment, but probably not the same one.

Does anyone read classical works of mathematics, logic, and science? Certainly. Do they, however, ever reread them for enjoyment? That’s very unlikely.

So in thinking about this topic, let’s think only about rereading novels. Aren’t they the books most likely to be reread for enjoyment?

I’m presently reading Jane Erye for the first time. It was my mother’s favorite book when she was a girl. I seem to recall her telling me that she reread it many times. If so, I can understand that. It’s a genuine work of literature.

Notice that you would never reread pulp fiction such as mysteries, thrillers, or romances. Unless you forgot them completely, once you know what happens, what would be the point of rereading them?

For example, I myself have read all the Tarzan novels, all the Sherlock Holmes stories, all the Dashiell Hammett novels, and all the Nero Wolfe stories. At the time I read them (many years ago), I enjoyed reading them. I have no interest ever rereading them.

Life is short. Every experience has an opportunity cost: time you devote to reading pulp fiction is time that cannot be spent doing anything else.

Thinking about reading novels again for enjoyment leads to other questions.

What’s the difference between pulp fiction and literature?

Nobody would seriously argue that one ought to spend time rereading pulp fiction. It would make sense to reread at least good examples of it only if you wanted to write it yourself. If you wanted, for example, to write a thriller, a reasonable way to begin would be to read, and, possibly, to reread the last ten bestsellers that were thrillers or, perhaps, the ten all-time bestselling thrillers so that you could emulate them. That, though, would not be reading for enjoyment.

Eckhart Tolle argues somewhere that the difference in quality between pulp fiction and literature is that only literature is writing from “presence,” which is one of the ways he talks about the direct experience of Being, about the spiritually awakened life. That’s a very interesting idea.

If, though, it is correct, it is likely only to be a necessary rather than a sufficient condition. In other words, it’s possible to be spiritually awake and still not be a good storyteller. Putting it differently, even assuming Tolle is correct, it would still take talent and the development of talent for someone who is spiritually awake to create literature.

If that’s correct, it would go a long way towards explaining why literature is more valuable than pulp fiction. As when we witness great athletic feats or musical performances done from Presence, reading a novel that is a genuine work of literature can be a wonderful experience.

Still, is rereading novels that are works of literature valuable? That some of us do it is indisputable. It is optimizing or optimific to do it?

There’s no way to answer until we understand why certain kinds of activities are optimizing or optimific. To understand that is to become clear about the connection, if any, between reading literature and living well, living the good life.

If there were no connection, then neither reading literature in the first place nor rereading it would be justifiable. To argue that there is some connection would be making some assumptions about both the nature of literature and the nature of living well.

Let’s assume that a novel is a work of literature only if it has been written from Being and also demonstrates talent as well as mastery of the art of storytelling.

What is living well?

If Tolle and other spiritual teachers are correct, living well is living in Becoming from the perspective of Being, in other words, experiencing life in Becoming without being trapped in Becoming, being spiritually awake.

If that’s what living well is, it is not even necessary to be literate to live well! If so, obviously, reading even novels that are literature is not necessary for living well.

Nevertheless, reading novels that are literature may be helpful for living well. If so, then rereading them may be justifiable.

Great novels are centered on great conflicts. My own tendency is to read them as indirect arguments, as gentle expositions of a point of view that emerges from an important struggle.

Great novels often show us how not to live, which is a way of suggesting a better way to live. Eliminating different possibilities that fail is certainly a socializing, civilizing task.

Literature enables us to experience life vicariously from the perspective of other people. It undermines prejudices and fosters identification with others. Since spiritual awakening requires bursting the normal boundaries of ego or self, reading literature can prepare the soil for the flowering of awakening, and, so, be an important educational tool.

This is neither a new nor a radical idea. For example, Charlotte Bronte has Jane Eyre think: “Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.” A function of literature is to break down conceptual barriers between people, which enables us to become more loving.

Similarly, paraphrasing what Wittgenstein said about language, David Loy writes: “The limits of my stories are the limits of my world.” Since literature expands the boundaries of our worlds, it expands the boundaries of our lives. This is because, as Alasdair MacIntyre puts it, “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”

What about spiritual awakening? Alan Clements: “The only true story is ‘no story’ and therefore one must dissolve into the one and only freedom – the ultimate nonstory – that of union with emptiness, or zeroness, or nirvana . . . “ Literature cannot get us there, but it can enable progress.

What about repetition? When we fail to learn a lesson, doesn’t life give us the opportunity to relearn it?

It can be quicker and less painful to learn and, if necessary, relearn about life lessons from books rather than outside them. At least if you are like me, you may have a tendency not to understand one of life’s important lessons at the first opportunity you have to learn it. It may require re-exposure.

If so, at least sometimes, it may be a good idea to reread novels that are works of literature. There’s nothing necessarily wrong about rereading books for enjoyment.

Doing it too frequently is a hindrance to living well, but, since literature can aid the journey to living well, rereading it occasionally may well be helpful.

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

Related posts:  RELATED POSTS:  Knowing What To Do, Your Self, and Epistemology.
Additional resources: the works of Eckhart Tolle and David R. Loy’s The World is Made of Stories.

Do you spend much of life leaning, being temporally off balance?

That’s always been my foolish tendency, and I suspect that most people share it.

The future cuts both ways.

This is an important reason why we are stressed. Stress occurs when two forces are pulling in opposite directions. Even as we are leaning into it, we both desire and fear the future.

Because we are dissatisfied in the present moment, we look forward to not being dissatisfied in the future. We have a tendency to think that our lives may improve over time. We imagine future fulfillment.

For example, we may hope for a grand encounter, a wonderful long term relationship with a new lover. We may hope to win the lottery and end our money problems. We may hope to become healthier by losing weight and reducing insulin resistance. We may hope that our children will overcome their obstacles and begin living more satisfactorily. And so on.

We have a tendency to hope that our present problems will be solved in the future. So we may look forward to improved lives. We want that to happen.

On the other hand, all we really know about the future is that it will mean the end of us. Death is inescapable. Even worse, we have no idea when it may occur!

Even if death is still a long ways off, we may become seriously ill. We may lose even what is giving us satisfaction today. Certainly, we shall grow older – and probably fatter and more wrinkled as well.

We are, therefore, quite stressed. We are both anticipating and fearing what will happen tomorrow. We are leaning.

How can we stop leaning?

It helps to remind ourselves that the future never arrives or, rather, that it always arrives only in the guise of the present moment. We never experience the future. We only ever experience the present. It is always now.

Therefore, if fulfillment or salvation is to be found at all, it must be found in the present moment. How could it be found in the future if the future is never experienced?

The future is nothing but a set of thoughts, mere imaginings. Since we control what we think about, we control the future.

Sengcan was the third Zen ancestor in ancient China and the author of the oldest extant Zen document. In it he says: “The wise do not strive after goals; / the foolish put themselves in bonds.” [Rochester Zen Center translation]

I confess that, even though I had it memorized, I used to ignore that stanza. Why?

I always seemed engaged on some self-help project or other to become more successful. For example, I attended school to learn how to become more successful in the future. Talk about leaning!

I was like a perpetual undergraduate who was working hard to make the future better for myself and others.

A noble flaw? A grave mistake?

I’m not denying that it is possible to follow directions and to become successful in different areas of life. It certainly is possible, over time, to lose weight and keep it off, to become stronger and fitter, to increase your net worth, to date more people, to become a better parent, and so on. There’s nothing wrong with such activities.

However, isn’t there a lot wrong with leaning into them?

For example, if I am exercising, I may motivate myself to imagine being fitter or stronger tomorrow if I exercise well today. However, it would be far more satisfactory just to be fully engaged in exercising without thinking about it. Just be the exercising. Let go of the thinking about it. Why?

Here are two ways to think of it.

First, to think about something is to be separated. If I am imagining tomorrow’s better body while I am exercising today, then there’s a separation between mind and body. What I’m focusing on is not what I am doing.

That’s very important to notice for a simple reason: separation is always the source of dissatisfaction. When my thoughts are split from my activities, I’m dissatisfied because of that very separation.

If you disagree, try to recall any episode when you were dissatisfied when there wasn’t such a split. Then recall some episode when you were thoroughly satisfied – and notice the absence of separation.

Second, thoughts are noise, static, interference. Therefore, it’s not surprising to realize that the more I think, the more noisy my life is. Instead of being peaceful, calm, and refreshing, it becomes unpleasant and even frantic!

It does not follow that all thinking is bad. Thinking is an excellent way to solve problems.

Roshi Kapleau used to distinguish between thinking and “thoughting.” “Thoughting” was useless, repetitive, compulsive thinking—and that kind of thinking is precisely what is occurring whenever we find ourselves leaning into the future. The ideal is to use thinking whenever it is necessary and beneficial to do so, but to let go of thoughting completely and permanently.

Restoring balance is the cure for being out of balance.  Letting go of leaning by focusing fully on the present moment is the cure for leaning.

In theory, this is quite a simple solution, isn’t it?

In practice, though, it is very difficult. To accept the present moment as it is, to allow it to be, to let go of all resistance, is letting go of the egoic mind. It’s to give up having enemies. It’s to identify with Being.

Please find out for yourself. The next time you catch yourself thoughting furiously, just relax into the present moment. What more effective spiritual practice is there?

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

Related posts:  Nonresistance, Seeking, The Future, Surrendering, and “Self Image.”

Additional resource: Eckhart Tolle’s “Through the Open Door” (2 CD set).

Ordinary time consciousness leads to dysfunctional living.

At least that’s true for literate, civilized humans. If so, since you are reading this, it’s true for you.

The good news is that this isn’t a problem without a solution. Once you understand it to be a problem and that there’s an alternative, you may choose the alternative as a way of ameliorating dysfunction, in other words, as a way of living better.

So what is it and what’s wrong with it?

Time consciousness is just consciousness or awareness of time.

Ordinary time consciousness is taking each moment of time as nothing but a stepping stone to the next moment. Ordinary time consciousness is taking the present as nothing but a means to the future.

For example, let’s suppose that you are hungry. You take some money to the market? Why?

To buy some food. Why?

So that can take it home, prepare it, and eat it. Why?

So that your hunger will disappear. Why?

So that you are not bothered by hunger, which will enable to focus on whatever you want to do next.

When you are going to and from the market, it would be ordinary to think about preparing the food. While you are preparing the food, it would be ordinary to think about eating it. While you are eating the food, it would be ordinary to think about what you’ll do next. And so on.

Notice that this prevents living well because it prevents satisfaction: there’s always a next step, always something more to do, always some future event to consider.

What, though, is the future event? It is a thought. In fact, it’s imaginary. Since the future doesn’t exist, it isn’t real.

Therefore, living this way entails that all your real experiences are infected by being in the service of unreal ones! That is dysfunctional living, living poorly.

The alternative is to let go of thoughts about the future. Yes, they can set present behavior. If you didn’t want food later, there’d be no point going to the market. Present experiences can lead to future experiences, but the best way to have good future experiences is to have good present ones, which means ones that are lived fully, without separation.

The trick is, once you set a future goal, let it go. Forget it. If you don’t, your life will be one of slavery rather than freedom.

I think this is what Sengcan, the third Zen ancestor in ancient China, meant in the oldest Zen document: “The wise do not strive after goals; / the foolish put themselves in bonds” [Rochester Zen Center translation].

That initially puzzled me. It took me years before I even thought I understood it. He’s right!

When we focus on future goals, we are focusing on what isn’t real. We are separated from what is real, namely, present experience.

How simple!

If, like me, you habitually have fallen into the bad habit of focusing on some time to come, you are, unintentionally, creating suffering for yourself (and those around you).

It’s not an easy habit to break. It is very simple to break, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. To break it, practice focusing only on what is available in the present moment.

It helps to remind yourself as frequently as possible that the future is unreal, that it never arrives except in the guise of the present moment. The future cannot be experienced.

Furthermore, the present moment may be your last moment.

The quality of life depends upon the quality of experience. To be separated in thought from present experience diminishes the quality of present experience, in other words, it causes suffering.

If you practice shifting from ordinary to extraordinary time consciousness, you’ll diminish suffering.

I hope that you test that for yourself to determine its truth. If you do, you’ll be glad that you did.

Related posts:  The Future, Genuine Happiness.

Colleges are filled with people seeking a better life. Who outside college wouldn’t like a better life?

It begins with dissatisfaction: why would you look for anything unless you thought it was missing?

What is it that people really looking for?

They’ll tell you it’s a well-paying career, a good love affair, a happy family, or a little piece of fame. Though they may think that that’s what they are looking for, those are superficial goals.

What’s behind them is a desire for a better life that will create the satisfaction that comes from a live well-lived. Why, for example, would you want to raise happy children if you didn’t want the satisfaction that comes from doing that successfully?

There are two fundamentally different kinds of seeking.

There’s no standard terminology here. Let’s call the most common one the way of (I) seeking understanding and the less common one the way of (II) seeking insight.

After clarifying what these are, I mention the most common mistake regarding them.

(I) Understanding is conceptualizing (classifying, sorting, categorizing, labeling, separating). To understand what-is is to conceptualize it correctly. If you think what I’m sitting on is a chair, you understand; if you think what I’m sitting on is an elephant, you misunderstand. Concepts like chair or elephant are principles for classifying objects. So understanding is conceptual (discursive, classificatory) thinking.

To some degree or other, we all do it simply to function in Becoming.

The method of understanding comes from noticing relevant similarities and differences. Coming to understand a new object (thing, form) involves relating it to previously understood objects by paying attention to how it is like and how it is unlike them.

This kind of seeking is dominant in the western philosophic tradition. Plato’s Socrates is the paradigmatic western philosopher. He engaged in the “dialectic” or give-and-take of argumentation that is inseparable from thinking hard about relevant analogies.

Developing fundamental understanding requires persistence as well as rigorous intellectual effort. It’s an active process that requires hard intellectual work. It’s always a gradual process.

It always proceeds on the basis of the logic of noncontradiction [where ‘F’ stands for some concept, an object cannot simultaneously be both F and not F] and the identity principle that an object is what it is and cannot simultaneously be another object.

I believe it’s much better to have fundamental understanding than to be confused.

The problems with respect to this method come from the fact that it is limited to the domain of Becoming. For example, since Becoming is in incessant flux, the task of understanding or theorizing is endless. Furthermore, it cannot yield the most important kind of ethical knowledge [though explaining this here would take us too far afield].

(II) Insight requires letting go of all understanding; it’s impossible to think your way to insight. “Insight” is the nonconceptual apprehension of what-is. Whereas conceptual apprehension is indirect because it proceeds using concepts, insight is direct apprehension.

If so, obviously it cannot be explained using concepts or language! Words and concepts are denizens of Becoming.

It can, of course, be contrasted to understanding. Whereas understanding is active, insight is passive. Unlike improving understanding, it’s impossible to attain insight by thinking harder. Whereas understanding is limited by the logic of noncontradiction and the identity principle, insight isn’t. (Zen koans are the most notorious examples of this.) Whereas understanding is achieved gradually, insight is often achieved suddenly in a kind of mental cataclysm. Whereas understanding involves gaining, insight involves losing, in other words, letting go of all concepts. Whereas functioning in Becoming is impossible without some understanding, functioning in Becoming is possible without any insight.

Such contrasts, though, are useful for clarifying what insight is not rather than for clarifying what it is.

Insight is conceptually unintelligible or indescribable.

The reason for this, however, is perfectly intelligible: unity cannot be conceptualized. As soon as anything is conceptualized, it is divided (sorted, classified, categorized, labeled). Thinking changes unity into plurality. Plurality can be thought and understood, but unity cannot be thought or understood.

Unity is logically more fundamental than plurality. Without unity, there would be nothing to be plural; there could be no multiplicity. If we take unity to be Being, this is why sages often say that Becoming comes from Being, that the “essence” or whatness of all forms is the formless. [This is the heart of a “nonsubstance” ontology that I have considered elsewhere.] Being is often said to be “empty.”

Both understanding and insight have their own kinds of wisdom. Sages may have great insight without even being literate. Great thinkers may lack direct awareness of Being.

The greatest philosophers (lovers of wisdom) have both kinds of wisdom. The greatest philosopher was the Buddha, who was a master dialectician as well as someone intimately familiar with Being.

If so, what’s the most common mistake?

It is neglect of Being. Even despite occasional spontaneous direct apprehensions of it, most people proceed as if they were nothing but slaves to Becoming.

For example, most people seem to fear being dead. (I don’t mean fear of dying a painful death, which is a fear of pain; distinguish being dead from dying.) Why?

They fail to identify themselves as Being. They typically only identify with some form or set of forms: their bodies, their experiences, their thoughts, their emotions, their stories, their kinsmen, and so on. This is a tragic mistake.

Each of us is infinitely valuable. Each of us is sacred. Each of us is Being. None of us is separated from the whole. None of us is only an item in Becoming.  (This is why sages do not suffer from loneliness, greediness, or other emotional afflictions of separation.)

Being is deathless and timeless. Our forms are temporal, but our essence is not. Hence, fear of being dead is irrational because it mistakenly assumes that we are not what we are.

There is much more to be said here, but this may be a sufficient example. “Being blindness” can only be cured by insight into Being. It’s not a matter of thinking more; it’s a matter of directly realizing what already is.

Here’s a secret: it is impossible to realize Being and continue to suffer.

(Please don’t confuse pain with suffering. As living bodies, we experience pain, which seems – at least occasionally – inevitable. Suffering, though, is wholly optional.)

Seekers suffer or they wouldn’t be seekers. Realizing Being is the end of seeking. Fully realizing Being entails the abolition of suffering.

By all means, improve your understanding. However, given that you already have enough understanding to function in Becoming, what is critical is opening up to Being.

In other words, most people should focus much more on Being rather than on Becoming, on insight rather than on understanding. Sadly, it’s the opposite.

You already have everything you need not to suffer. There is no need to spend life seeking for something you presently lack. Since all forms are impermanent, no forms can yield permanent freedom from suffering.

Dropping your habitual, incessant conceptualizing for one moment is sufficient to grasp that truth directly. Nothing else is needed to live well. Nothing!

Living well is living with a balance between Being and Becoming, which means experiencing forms from the standpoint of formlessness.  Forms, objects in Becoming, cannot be experienced until Being is realized.

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

Related posts:   the most important relationship, body practice, realize being, time freedom, an unfettered mind, life energy, ordering objects.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCE: Eckhart Tolle’s “Through the Open Door” (2 CD set).

Worthless evidence sometimes negatively affects our judgments.

As any even mediocre epistemologist can confirm, nobody has a clear concept of nondemonstrative evidence.  So nobody understands what its worthless variety even is, much less the damage it can do.

What’s interesting is that that variety is able to affect our judgments negatively. It seems as if we use a small number of heuristic principles that enable us to simplify complexities.

If we lacked such principles, we’d be in worse shape than we actually are when making judgments, particularly judgments about what to do or not to do. The reason is that they often work quite well.

On the other hand, they can lead to important, systematic errors.  It’s hardly surprising that oversimplifying doesn’t always work well.

What’s interesting is that, because the errors that it leads to are systematic, if we are careful and thoughtful it’s possible to avoid them.

For example, worthless evidence doesn’t have to skew our judgments unfavorably – yet it does when it comes to resemblance or representativeness. It’s been shown experimentally that, when we lack worthless evidence in a certain kind of case, our judgments will be correct and that, when we have worthless evidence about the same case, our judgments will be incorrect!

Suppose that there are 100 people in a group.  70 are lawyers and 30 are architects.  What is the probability that one individual selected at random is a lawyer?

Everyone unhesitatingly thinks it .7.  That’s correct.

However, the situation changes when some irrelevant information is added.

Suppose we select an individual at random from the same group.  Suppose someone is told that this person, let’s call him ‘Jim,’ is 30 years old, single, childless, and talented.  Furthermore, Jim is well-liked by his colleagues and it appears that he will be very successful in his field.  What is the probability that Jim is an architect?

People in fact say it is .5!  That’s incorrect.

The correct answer is the same as before:  .7.

In cases like these, irrelevant information negatively affects judgments.

Why?

It’s likely because of resemblance to a preexisting stereotype.  In this case, presumably Jim resembles the stereotype of an architect more than the stereotype of a lawyer. Whether or not Jim’s description resembles the stereotype of an architect more closely than it resembles the stereotype of a lawyer is irrelevant.  However, prior probabilities are ignored when such irrelevant information is provided.

It’s like a wrench that falls into the works and causes them to go awry.

When people are asked to judge the probability that Jim belongs to a certain subset or class, their judgments can be negatively affected by worthless information.

Usually, our everyday heuristic principles work well enough.  However, when we are making important decisions, it’s wise to be more critical of our own thinking.

Epistemologists will be unsurprised by this, but it may come as a surprise to many people.

Related post:  Epistemology.

Suggestion for Further Reading:  Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Judgment Under Uncertainty:  Heuristics and Biases,” Science, vol. 185, 1974; reprinted in Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Why is self-improvement so difficult? Why is it so difficult to eliminate unwanted behaviors like overeating or smoking?

The answer is important, because it reveals a critical strategy for living better. Understanding and mastering the strategy permits flourishing; ignoring it obstructs important, lasting changes.

The answer is also counter-intuitive. It seems that, because we decide what to do or what not to do, all we should have to do to achieve significant self-improvement is to make better decisions. However, as you probably realize from personal experience, evolving to the next better level seems never to be easy.

There are two self-improvement strategies:  the external and the internal. The external focuses on behavior, whereas the internal doesn’t.

It’s natural to begin focusing on the external. Since we want to eliminate a bad behavioral habit, it’s natural to focus on that behavior.

Suppose, for example, that you want to reduce your percentage of body fat. You decide to switch your metabolism from sugar-burning to fat-burning by dramatically cutting your carbohydrate intake. This doesn’t mean eating fewer calories; it means dramatically reducing calories from carbohydrates and replacing them with increased calories from proteins and fats.

It’s easy to begin an external self-improvement strategy. How? Simply measure the grams of carbs you consume each day. Decide on some maximum level and then commit yourself to staying under it.

Suppose that you decide to consume today not more than 30 grams of carbohydrates. As soon as you begin to approach that maximum, whenever you feel hungry it’s a matter of satisfying your hunger with calories from proteins or fats instead of carbohydrates.

You may have tried such a system. It requires commitment, but it can work.

After all, it’s always easier to improve what you can measure than what you cannot measure. Using a food counts book to measure grams of carbohydrates is easy and takes advantage of this fact.

The only thing wrong with such external self-improvement strategies is that, in practice, they don’t work well! In theory, they work fine. In practice, although they can work, they usually don’t.

This is one reason why so many of us wind up yo-yo dieting. Our percentage of body fat rises and falls. It never seems to get sufficiently low and stay there.

This is also one reason why it’s best not to go on diets. Dieting doesn’t work to produce lasting fat loss.

Before you jump to the conclusion that nothing short of surgery can help you, consider the internal self-improvement strategy.

What is it? How could it work?

Have you ever had this happen: you simply find yourself finishing a bag of cookies, a piece of chocolate cake, or a sandwich? You realize that you must have wanted food and, while paying almost no attention to what you were doing, you raided the refrigerator.You became conscious again of what you were doing only after you had consumed some carbohydrates.

It’s as if you went automatically, without even being aware of it, from the desire to the (unwanted) behavior. The attachment to carbohydrates isn’t even noticed. Since, when digested, all carbohydrates become sugar, it’s really a sub-conscious sugar addiction.

Similarly, smokers sometimes just find themselves smoking without having consciously decided to take out and light a cigarette.

The problem is understanding something more important than the unwanted behavior: it’s the inattention that preceded the unwanted behavior.

Inattention is a lack of attention, a lack of “mindfulness.” The bad habit really has become automatic. The urge for sweets or a smoke (or whatever) seems automatically followed by the eating or smoking (or whatever).

Habits are the flywheels of life. Without having developed a lot of them, it would be impossible to accomplish everything that we normally accomplish in a day. In that sense, habits are, overall, very beneficial.

The problem is that some habits, like attachments or addictions to sweets or nicotine, have deleterious consequences. Not wanting the consequences, we try to break the habits in question.

If we use the external strategy of self-improvement, we usually fail and seem stuck.

Freedom is possible. It is possible to break any bad habit. It’s even simple to do so. It’s just that it’s not easy.

All it takes is mindfulness, paying full attention to the present moment. Doing this requires persistent discipline and commitment, which is why almost nobody does it.

The internal strategy of self-improvement, though, is the best way to freedom. All it requires is persistently paying attention. It’s never a matter of forcing yourself to adopt some behavior. If you practice taking control of your focus, your behaviors will naturally improve.

It is not easy to notice our desires (wants, appetites). Again, we sometimes just seem to find ourselves engaged in the unwanted behavior without having chosen it.

Still, sometimes, we do notice it. Suppose, for example, you notice a lack of something or other – and you suddenly remember that there’s one more piece of pie left in the refrigerator. What should you do?

The answer is always the same: pay attention. Forget about doing or not doing. Pay attention to that desire, that peculiar energy field.

Now, and this is the key, keep paying attention. Keep staying with it without distraction.

What you are doing is separating yourself from that desire. You are deliberately creating a space (a gap, a separation). Freedom comes from that space.

This is why Sengcan, the Third Patriarch of Chan [Zen] in ancient China, says, referring to the great Way of living well: “The Way is perfect like vast space, / where there’s no lack and no excess.”

There’s nothing missing in freedom, which is our birthright. Our task is being mindful enough to claim it.

The more you practice this internal strategy for self-improvement, the more free you will become. The idea is to bring “space” into your life as often as possible.  (This really means, the way I sometimes talk, bringing Being into Becoming.)

It may be that, after noticing that desire for twenty seconds or three minutes, you decide to eat that piece of pie anyway. No problem. Don’t freak out: the behavior is less important than the awareness!

Sometimes, however, by simply paying attention to a desire, it will actually vanish! Just stay with it for a few minutes as a kind of investigation. Obviously, if it vanishes, then there is no problem about any subsequent behavior.

This explains why many authorities on eating recommend keeping a food diary, literally writing down everything you put in your mouth. You may not even be aware of what you are doing. They want you to improve your attention, your focus, your mindfulness.

That, really, is the critical step. It breaks the otherwise automatic identification  between you and your desire. Your desire is, after all, only a thought, and you are infinitely more than your thoughts.

The more “space” you repeatedly bring to each moment, the better you’ll live.

Here’s an extremely important tip: forget the future. Never think something like “I must give up pie for the rest of my life.” Why? The future is nothing but a set of thoughts! It’s only real in imagination. Living always happens now.

Because it’s always impossible ever to do or fail to do anything in the future, your task is, therefore, not to give up sweets for the rest of your life. Desires are only ever now, in the present moment.

Is important, lasting self-improvement possible?

Yes, particularly if you will use the internal strategy for self-improvement.

The underlying difficulty is misusing the mind. There is no greater power than the power of focus. If you will train yourself to focus your mind, always to pay full attention to the present moment, you will regularly begin noticing miracles happening.

Miracles are what happen when life is lived well.

Additional Resources: A Course in Miracles, Eckhart Tolle’s “The Art of Presence” (a 6 CD set), and my The 7 Steps to Mastery.

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