Todd Perelmuter's Blog, page 4

How to Heal When Nostalgia Becomes Painful

I have a viewpoint and an attitude of loving this moment and wanting for nothing else. Because I noticed a while ago that when you want something that is not happening right now, you suffer. And I didn’t want to suffer, so I cultivated this mindset of making whatever happens in my life, in this moment, exactly what I want.

I used to want to be the richest guy in the world. But today, this couch I’m sitting on  while typing this is what I want the most. And we can all do that. We can all cultivate this practice of loving exactly what is happening, as if we had chosen it. And we naturally feel immense gratitude and joy, and it is effortless.

When I was younger, I went to a private school, and most of the kids had a lot more money than we did. And I wanted what they had, and I was ashamed of my family’s house. And of course, we were lucky to have a house, and it was a beautiful house. But we have that comparison. And I think that’s what planted the seeds in my mind, to realize that this longing, this chasing after things, is a sure way to misery.

And so, what I realized is: every moment can be the greatest moment of our lives. Even when we’re working towards our dreams, we don’t have to look back and think fondly of those times when we were scraping by or living in a small apartment. We can do it during the journey. And we can be so grateful for being on the journey.

It doesn’t matter where we are on the journey. It doesn’t matter what path we’ve taken. We can be so grateful that life is a journey; it is an adventure.

And no adventure is all easy. That would be a terrible movie where everything just goes well. So we need to look at our lives like this movie, because it is a movie. It is the movie that we are watching. It is the virtual reality we’re inside.

And nobody pays to go see a movie where a person’s just laying in a field, staring at the clouds, and having a peaceful, beautiful time for two hours. Something happens. We have to have that drama, that excitement. And life surely gives us plenty of opportunities to witness the greatest drama ever told.

Just like in a movie, the second we get lost in thoughts, we miss it. So we need to start paying attention to our life like it’s a movie, like it’s the most important, greatest movie, because it is. It’s 3D, hyper-realistic, surround sound, smell, vision, taste. The senses are exploding with life. And too often, we settle for that grainy, two-dimensional, low-resolution image in our mind of memory.

So simply start to practice just looking at your life like a movie, like the movie starring you. Embrace the drama. Embrace tragedy, like Shakespeare’s greatest plays that we’ve told for hundreds of years. And to miss that movie because we’re in our head, in our memories, in our imaginations of the future, is like going to a play and being on our phones the whole time.

Don’t try to stop the thoughts or stop the memories. Instead, start paying attention to the movie of life unfolding before your eyes.

I think a lot of us, through various times in our lives, will have those ups and downs. We will face breakups, job loss, financial insecurity, our health, and so it’s very easy to get caught in the trap of nostalgia, where we spend a great deal of time looking back on the “better” times, which typically ends up making us suffer in the present.

We long for those times of excitement or romance, and those wonderful times that we had in our lives, whether they were in young adulthood or in our childhood. I certainly have gone on that roller coaster — the ups and downs — that is inevitable in everyone’s life, where we find romance, we lose it. We have a great job, and we decide to strike out on our own and face that uncertainty.

And the way to cope with this is to discover that anything that happens in the present moment is so much better than anything that happened in the past, or that may happen in the future.

When we are fully present, this moment naturally becomes the greatest moment of our life. And truly, it is all there is. There is only this moment. Our memory of the past, our imagination of the future, only robs us of this perfect, pleasant, peaceful moment.

There are a lot of great moments from my past—  Disney World trips, trips to Europe, camping trips. These are all wonderful memories, and yet I never think about them unless it’s brought up, as in this case right here.

I have made a practice of leaving the past in the past. Sometimes I’ll plan for the future, but it’ll be a present-moment activity where I’m laying out goals or plans, and then I set them aside, and I focus on this moment and how to bring it about.

This moment is as joyful as we choose to make it. It is as exciting as we can be present for it. This is where all the magic happens.

Most of the time, when we want to escape the present moment, we’re not in it. We are in our head. We are in our thoughts about the present moment, which tends to be negative, if it’s something we’re trying to escape. We are consumed by the emotions those thoughts create.

But when we can be truly present, unless we’re being tortured, the present moment is peaceful, and pleasant, and it truly is perfect. Because the universe is perfect, even though we may wish for something to be different.

It had to be this way, in order for us to work to change it, or to learn that something we were doing wasn’t right, or to let go of our expectations and our demands on the universe, and to let the universe show us what it wants to show us.

A lot of times, when we are feeling nostalgic, longing for a past, longing for a person who used to be in our lives, we are thinking about good times, positive memories. And it is creating this disconnect in our lives because we are longing for it, and we can’t get it. So that creates a great deal of suffering.

But what we have to ask ourselves is: Who is listening to these thoughts?

Because there is the mind, there are those thoughts that pop up into our mind, that then create an emotion in our body. But the thoughts come from the mind. But where is that awareness coming from, that pays attention, that believes those thoughts, and that allows our focus to become absorbed by those memories and thoughts?

Life is too short to miss a single moment. The more present we are, the more we fully live. One year can be like a hundred years, if we are fully present for every single moment.

And this is how we live a truly great and full life. It’s not about the cars and the houses. It’s about the presence.

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The post How to Heal When Nostalgia Becomes Painful appeared first on EastWesticism.

When the Feeling of Worthlessness Creeps in, What Do You Do?

All human beings have these egos, this mind-made conception of who we are. And it only survives when it feels important.

And when this ego feels threatened, because it is comparing itself to the wealth or success or looks of someone else, it suffers, and it makes us suffer immensely.

To really get to the root of this suffering, we need to recognize that we are not this ego, and that we are, in fact, these perfect beings of infinite potential, not limited in any way, not defined by our bank accounts or this temporary physical body.

And in order to get this ego to leave us alone and stop making us suffer, one thing we can do is remember that we are specks of dust in an infinite universe. These physical bodies and these specks of dust in this 15-billion-year-old universe. We are significantly insignificant.

When we let our ego know that no matter how big it wants to be, that it doesn’t matter, then that cannot weigh on our true sense of importance. So instead of fighting worthlessness, I say embrace worthlessness. And when we do that, a freedom emerges.

We aren’t dependent on some artificial, temporary feeling of importance. We aren’t dependent on some bank account or idea we have of the perfect life. We don’t need to take on any stress, any insecurity. And we can replace insecurity with humility and modesty.

The most powerful way to do this is to turn our attention from this ego-created sense of self, and turn our attention to those around us, and how we can make their lives better. Because this is the ultimate medicine for lacking the feeling of self-worth and for feeling worthless, because we find value in the value we give to others.

Not in the value of what our ego craves. Not in the value of filling up that scorecard of life that says: perfect spouse, perfect job, perfect car. And as we focus on helping others, as we recognize that we are more than these bodies, these bank accounts — then there is no place for a feeling of worthlessness to come in.

And that’s the key to having a life of value.

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You Are Already Enough: Releasing the Illusion of Success

Most of the time, when people think of spirituality and finances, they tend to focus on how to deal with money worries, how to make more, or how to manifest more. That’s a big theme in the spiritual landscape we see online these days. But today, I want to talk about the opposite issue that a lot of people face.

And that is our attachment to, and identification with, our success and accomplishments. Before we dive deeper, it’s important to recognize that while these may seem like opposite issues, they are both sides of the same double-edged sword. We fall into the identification trap, whether it’s with success or failure.

It’s essential to understand that joy and sorrow are two sides of the same coin. They may lie on different ends of the emotional spectrum, but ultimately, both are just fluctuations in sense perception, feelings of agitation or pleasure.

The same goes for attachments and clinging. If we are attaching to concepts, it doesn’t matter whether they are positive or negative; we fall into the same trap. And success is one of the easiest traps to fall into, because it’s so alluring. It’s intoxicating. It is, quite literally, a drug. Success, fame, money, power — these are all drugs.

We must not fool ourselves about this. We need to look at them soberly and mindfully if we want to free ourselves from the mental stories we attach to them. This “success drug,” like any other substance, whether it’s caffeine, gambling, or workaholism, becomes a way to escape the present moment. It becomes a way to avoid negative feelings, responsibilities, duties, or the parts of life that feel unsatisfying, monotonous, repetitive, boring, or mundane.

Whatever the reason, when we rely on substances or activities to cope, we lose our ability to self-heal. We become dependent, and our internal mechanisms for healing, our ability to return to peace or alter our mood, atrophy.

That’s the trap: once we lose our soothing mechanism, we get frustrated and anxious, because we’ve not only become addicted, but we’ve lost touch with our own capacity to regulate our state of mind.

But we all have that ability. We’ve all had moments when we’re in a bad mood and a memory or thought changes everything. That shift doesn’t have to be accidental; we can train it. And meditation is one of the most profound ways to develop it. Through meditation, we become fully aware of our physical body and mental state because we’ve removed the distractions.

So now, we become aware of any tension we’re holding, even the subtlest amounts. Then we learn how to release it. One way is by breathing into the physical pain. That simply means focusing on a specific spot in your body where there’s tension, maybe a little tightness, maybe a dull ache. It’s often in the back, but it can be anywhere: knees, hips, elbows, neck, shoulders, anywhere.

Wherever it is, you bring your full attention to that spot. You don’t analyze it, label it, or wish it away. You just stay fully present with it. As you breathe and maintain focus on that area, something begins to shift. Your body starts to respond. Your entire healing system channels its attention to that one area when you focus fully and consistently.

Through deep breathing, oxygenated blood flows into that region. And often, it is oxygen deprivation that underlies many forms of bodily pain. In this way, the breath becomes medicine.

Similarly, we can apply this to our feelings. We can breathe peace and loving energy into our emotional space, the non-physical realm where we feel, where we sense, where we are, instead of doing or thinking. As we begin to loosen our attachment to success, we shift into a deeper space: the space of joy for no reason. Joy that is not dependent on any external achievement or event. The joy of simply being alive. The love for life itself.

As long as there is life within you, there can be love and joy. That doesn’t mean you can’t feel pride in your accomplishments or celebrate success. And it doesn’t mean you won’t feel sad when you fail or make a mistake. What it means is: you stay mindful. You observe every emotion and thought as it arises. This is how you avoid falling into the success trap.

You notice that burst of delight when reflecting on achievements, but you also remain aware that sadness might arise if it ends, or if things go wrong. You start to recognize that making your happiness dependent on temporary things is fragile. This awareness helps you stay grounded; it helps you avoid getting swept away in pride or superiority.

You don’t have to force your emotions to change. Simply recognize them as temporary. Recognize what’s fleeting and conditional. Understand that the high will wear off, and when it does, you can rest in a deeper, more lasting peace.

It’s easier to do this when you’re feeling good, when you’re flying high. It’s much harder when you’re in the depths of stress or fear, when your thinking is clouded and your emotions feel overwhelming. That’s when the real practice begins.

This is the practice of being your own analyst, your own psychologist. You observe your internal state. You become alert to thoughts and emotions that could carry you away, whether it’s greed, ego, or craving. You don’t push them away; you observe them through your deeper intelligence and wisdom.

You begin to see clearly whether a thought or feeling is helping you or causing you suffering, whether it’s keeping you grounded or making you miserable and blind to reality. Because if you believe you are nothing without your accomplishments, then you’ve reduced the most advanced biological creation in the known universe, the human mind and body, to just one label: failure.

And even that isn’t accurate. Because you are not your body or your mind. You are universal consciousness itself. You are made of the same stardust as billions of stars. Before that, you were energy in an infinitely small point at the center of the universe. Just like everything else that exists, you are the universe. The universe is you.

There is no separation. There is no isolated “me.” We were all birthed from this universe, by this universe, for this universe — to experience itself.

Even if all your titles, money, achievements, and accolades were stripped away, you could still watch a sunset. You could still gaze at a flower, see the face of a puppy, hear a baby laugh, and feel the vibrant life force within you and around you. You can still connect to that oneness, be flooded with gratitude, and overflow with love, love that needs no recipient, love that simply is.

To sit in that space of pure love and bliss is more profound, more powerful, more transformative than any paycheck, bank balance, or title on a business card. When we lose touch with our true nature, our true self, we begin to look outside ourselves for fulfillment. We grasp at superficial things to fill our inner void or to dull the suffering that’s happening beneath the surface.

At this point in human history, denial has become more popular than courage. It’s the default defense mechanism. The human body has become remarkably adept at repressing emotions and thoughts. That’s why there has been such a dramatic rise in psychosomatic disorders, illnesses where the mind creates real physical symptoms in the body. And this isn’t pseudoscience. It has been cited in the Harvard Business Review and surveys by the American Academy of Family Physicians, as reported in U.S. News & World Report. The real numbers could be even higher because we still understand so little about the mind-body connection.

But according to top experts, stress and repressed emotions are at the root of many 20th- and 21st-century ailments. For example, ulcers once became widespread, almost like an epidemic. Then, when it was discovered they were largely caused by stress, they stopped being the subconscious mind’s go-to outlet.

Once the truth emerged, the subconscious found another outlet. We’ve seen this cycle throughout history, non-contagious illnesses rise in epidemic waves, then decline. Why? Because once a condition becomes socially “acceptable,” the subconscious uses it as a vehicle to shift attention away from the mind and onto the body.

That way, the ego doesn’t have to confront what’s really happening inside. It avoids feeling like a failure. And remember: it’s the ego orchestrating this. The ego wants to puff itself up, beat its chest like an ape, and scream, “I matter!”

After ulcers came carpal tunnel, the new “badge” of stressed-out desk workers. Yet, carpal tunnel wasn’t nearly as common among typists before computers. The pattern is clear.

We see these kinds of physical disorders that have no real cause. And we usually realize it only after we are already in the grip of this mass psychosis. Today, the epidemic-level proportion of physical symptoms is mostly back pain. Not completely — there may be elbow pain, knee pain, hip pain — but many of these, which have no clear cause like a major accident or surgery, are typically stress-related. They are often caused by suppressing and repressing feelings that we are not comfortable, subconsciously, experiencing consciously. They’re too scary. So our subconscious thinks it’s protecting us by hiding them from us. But it can’t really hide.

It manifests in many different physical ways. Whenever we are trying desperately to latch on to something externally for joy, there is an underlying unhappiness. It can feel safer to ignore that and just try to fill up our lives with drugs and alcohol and parties and all the fun stuff — or work and all the boring stuff — but equally effective at filling our life with external things to avoid the internal.

But one day, that catches up with us. Everybody retires. Everybody takes time off from time to time. And we all know those types of people who can’t enjoy vacations because they are too addicted to work. The only way we can tap into those emotions and thoughts that are just beneath the surface is by quieting the mind. We must get into such a relaxed state that we’re not quite awake, not quite dreaming or sleeping, but in this meditative state — deeply calm, deeply peaceful, and deeply relaxed.

We start to quiet the mind. We put our attention on our breath. When thoughts come in, we just watch them come, watch them go, and bring our attention back to our breath. It is in the thoughts that pop up that we can decipher what’s going on underneath. Sometimes, we need to address something. Sometimes, there’s a really critical inner voice that we discover when we set the distractions aside. Then we can deal with that. Then we can learn how to accept instead of resist. We can learn to embrace instead of always judging. We can start to transform our mindset and our perspective, away from unhappiness and separateness.

All feelings of pride or achievement stem from that feeling of separateness, because we are taking more joy in our own achievements than we would in someone else’s. Slowly, we can move into gratitude, acceptance, and pure love, which is the greatest feeling in the world. It is that healing energy that transforms us, and everyone around us, when we start to look back on our lives and focus more on how much love we gave to others, instead of how much money we gained.

The feeling of not being enough without your successes disappears. In fact, this whole attitude of looking at your life critically disappears because you are bathed in love, and your concern is for others. Your life is filled with so much meaning and purpose because of how much you cared for others. When we live shallow, superficial lives, when we live just for ourselves or our pleasure, it may seem like that’s the way to happiness but there are billions of stories throughout human history that prove the complete opposite.

We are already enough. Against all odds, this universe manifested us into existence, for a brief, fleeting, beautiful moment. And it was a gift. Not a test. Not torture. But a chance to reach our greatest potential. And to have that choice — to walk that path or not. It is up to us what we make of this time here.

We can hold on to things from the past that no longer exist. We can hang on to those good feelings from the past — those promotions, those raises — and try to squeeze as much joy as we can out of those non-existent figments of our imagination. Or we can connect with that source of life within us, bask in the love of this universe, and share that love with others. The choice is up to us. 

But one of those paths is infinite, multi-dimensional, mystical, and miraculous.

And the other is an ember from the past — a flame that’s gone out. To experience that deep state of being, we simply have to let go of that which we cling to so hard. We think we’re holding on for dear life, but that very grip is what’s disconnecting us from life. Once we let go, we realize we won’t fall. The universe will support us. And it was that holding on — that tight grip we were afraid to release — that was actually the source of our stress and tension.

To the layman, happiness is dependent on external situations, things, and people. But to the spiritual seeker, it is understood: no one is responsible for our happiness — our joys and sorrows — but us.

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The End of Inner Drama: How to Break Free from Compulsive Thinking

Most of thel problems in our lives are generated by our thinking mind. 

When we’re depressed, we are constantly thinking dark, negative thoughts. 

When we’re anxious, we’re constantly thinking insecure, anxious thoughts. 

When we’re caught in the drama of life, we are usually retelling that story of drama in our minds, again and again.

To be free from this compulsive thinking is to be free from much of the suffering we create for ourselves.

Usually, the narrative we repeat in our minds — the one about the most negative thing that happened to us, is running unconsciously. The mind is always scanning for something negative to blame everything on. But even a single moment of clarity and peace can interrupt that train of thought. And when we do that, we create a new track. The more we do this, the more we break out of these habitual patterns of thinking, these downward spirals we so often fall into, where one little thing going wrong ruins our entire day.

When we create moments of quiet in the mind, we stop fixating on what we don’t have, what we want, or what we feel we need. We come into the here and now. And when we give our full attention to this moment, all possibilities for how best to respond to the situation can emerge, free of fear or desire. In that clarity, we can see the full picture. We’re able to recognize the good and bad in each choice, and lean toward the path with the most good and the least harm.

But when we’re stuck in fear-based thinking, constantly bouncing between imagined futures and painful memories, we can’t truly respond to life, because we’re not fully in life. We’re not grounded in the present.

There’s been a great deal of research into the creative process, and one consistent insight is that true creativity comes in the gaps between thoughts. Those quiet spaces, those moments of no-thinking, are where breakthroughs and clarity arise. Einstein didn’t develop the theory of relativity while buried in books. He came up with it while playing the violin or going for a bike ride. Newton didn’t discover gravity while doing math, it came to him while sitting under an apple tree, simply being. We don’t access our deepest wisdom through constant thinking. We access it by creating room for new possibilities to come in.

When we identify with that which constantly changes — our roles, our careers, our achievements, our image — we live with the fear of change. Every identity built on something temporary will inevitably cause suffering as those things shift, evolve, or disappear.

Many people tie their identity completely to their job. So when they lose it, or even retire, they suffer immensely. Even the fear of losing our lives becomes a heavy burden when our identity is built on this impermanent self. That subtle, constant pressure can manifest as anger, addiction, chronic pain, or burnout.

But when we identify with that which is eternal and formless, with the one life that animates every being on this planet, with the consciousness that underlies all existence, then fear disappears. We no longer feel like victims of our circumstances. Instead, we feel a creative, courageous spirit flowing through us. We no longer believe the universe makes mistakes. We no longer feel like slaves to some unforgiving fate.

When we identify with the source of life that created everything and lives within everything, we begin to recognize the perfection of our own design. We realize there is nothing to fear, nothing that can be taken from us, because we are one with everything.

But when we identify only with our physical body, our name, our labels, that’s when we start to feel like we’re never good enough. That’s when we constantly compare ourselves to others.

When we recognize the miracle of life inside ourselves, our oneness with the universe, we begin to live in a state of awe and wonder. And from that place, every ordinary act becomes sacred. Every moment becomes enough.

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Do You Have Ego?

When asked if I have an ego myself, I’m reminded of the scene from Fight Club, where Edward Norton shoots himself in the head, trying to kill his alter ego, Brad Pitt. The fact of the matter is, we all have a thinking mind. And it’s important for surviving in this world. That thinking mind is where problem-solving, working through complex situations, finding solutions, and creativity come from — and all of these are essential for functioning in this world.

The question isn’t whether you have an ego or not. The real question is: do you identify with the ego? Is the ego in control, or are you, your higher wisdom and higher intentions in control?

 

When you resist and try to kill your ego, you’re actually giving it a lot of power. Sometimes, you may feel like you’ve succeeded. You may even feel proud of yourself. But that pride is simply a second ego taking form. There can be many subtle egos. And if you fully believe your ego, you end up giving all your energy to it again, allowing it to take complete control over you.

 

It’s like someone saying something mean to you on the street. You can choose to fight that person — which only makes them get 10 times louder — or you can keep walking. And that’s how we deal with the ego. We don’t give it energy. We don’t engage with it. We simply watch it. We use it as the tool that it is, but we don’t cave into its temper tantrums, and we don’t try to fight it either.

 

Instead, we watch it — like a child throwing a tantrum. When you just watch a child, they often calm down and start behaving better. That’s exactly what I try to do: maintain a state of awareness. Maintain a watchfulness over my thoughts and emotions. And in doing so, when we keep steady awareness of our inner world, it gets calmer. It becomes more positive, more useful, less chaotic — and sometimes, it even gets quiet. And that’s a beautiful experience.

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50 Days in the Wild: A Meditation Experiment That Transformed Me

I had dreams of people visiting me in the forest and feeling like, “Oh no, I broke the rules,” and they were trying to tempt me to come back to society. But it was one of the most beautiful, profound, enlightening experiences of my life that I would never trade for anything.

When I was a kid, I remember hearing that Jesus of Nazareth went into the desert for 40 days and came back Jesus Christ — transformed, ready to take on the Roman army and be a source of love in the world.

Then, a little later, maybe when I was in high school or college, I heard that the Buddha sat under a tree for 49 days and obtained supreme enlightenment. And when I heard such a similar story the second time, it struck me that maybe there’s something to this. Maybe it’s not just a story of these gentlemen, but it is a prescription for becoming our strongest, healthiest, and happiest selves.

So this little voice in my head got in there, and it never left. And it was like this curiosity and this drive to discover if 40 or 49 days would bring about some kind of lasting, permanent, dramatic change in my mind and how I think and relate with the world around me.

I decided I am going to save up enough, I am going to quit my job, get rid of my apartment and all my stuff, and learn all of the different meditation techniques and other spiritual practices that I could learn to spend 50 days by myself in the middle of a forest — and see what kind of change could take place.

So I looked around the world and I decided that New Zealand has no bears, no tigers, no wolves, no poisonous spiders or snakes. And it seemed like the perfect place to do this, where I would be in the least danger. So that if something bad happened on day 10, I wouldn’t have to wait 40 days for someone to come rescue me. Also, it’s a very safe country. They have forests and national parks pretty much everywhere.

I headed to New Zealand after spending a lot of time living with monks and gurus, and shamans, learning all of the wisdom and practices that I could take with me. And when I got to New Zealand, I found a place. I headed to the nearest camping store from that place, a couple of hours away, which I later found out was a very sacred forest to the Indigenous people of New Zealand.

I hiked for about 4 days into the forest, stayed there meditating all day, doing some yoga and a few other practices, chopping wood, and cooking some basic food. It was very difficult. I had dreams of people visiting me in the forest and feeling like, “Oh no, I broke the rules,” and they were trying to tempt me to come back to society. It was like the Jesus-Buddha story of the devil tempting Jesus. And the Buddha had demons tempting him to leave his tree with promises of women and gold.

It was very tough, and many times I thought I was crazy — this is definitely the craziest thing anybody’s ever done. This is probably pointless. What am I even doing? But the more I stayed out there, the more that voice in my head got quieter and quieter, until I was in a totally new state of being that was very strange, very unfamiliar, very disturbing at first, because I couldn’t hear my thoughts anymore. I wasn’t even sure if they were quiet or gone.

As that feeling went away and I was able to peacefully sit in that space, I reached a place where I never even wanted to leave the forest. It was such a deep peace. But I was running out of food. So I made it 50 days, and I really was craving at that point some cooked, fresh food.

That feeling of gratitude, when you have become accustomed to nothing, everything is a blessing, everything is a gift.

When you have sat for 50 days, one of the biggest shifts for me, especially from being a New Yorker where everything is in a New York minute and everyone is always rushing around, I had a patience that was completely transforming for me.

When we become calm and have some clarity, what we will find is that we don’t become the bigger person to appease someone who wronged us. We simply realize that being the bigger person is how we take back our peace. That is the greatest gift we give to ourselves.

In Buddhism, they don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t lie, and practice nonviolence — not because it’s disadvantageous for them, but better for someone else. They do it because this is how we can get the most peace in our lives. This is how we can have the least inner conflict. And this is how we can be totally free from stress, worry, doubt, the ups and downs of all that drama.

Simply forgiving from a distance and accepting what has happened and making peace with that is the most selfish thing we can do. And what is beautiful is that in this world, the most selfless thing we can do is the most selfish.

By getting out of our own pain and our own shame and our own trauma, we become free from it. And we can finally start a life that is peaceful, and where we can focus on those loving, kind people instead of those people who don’t share our values.

As I learned at a Buddhist monastery, they always have a saying that is: continuity is the key to success. And it doesn’t matter if you do 10 days, 50 days, or 3 years — if you don’t continue a daily practice, if you go back to your old habits and your old lifestyle, it’s very easy for all of that great work to slip away.

And we still can have some benefits, because every great experience lives with us in some way.

Truly, spirituality is about what we can do in our lives, not by leaving our lives. For me, this was a journey of curiosity and discovery, which I wanted to share with everybody so that they don’t have to go do it.

The deep realizations and the deep insights have still never left, and I don’t think they ever will. Because when we have a genuine awakening, an insight gained from our own introspection — instead of being told or reading about it — that’s permanent change.

At the time, sometimes in the forest, I was feeling like I was banging my head against the wall. And coming out was like the peace from stopping banging our head against the wall, I don’t know if it was the relief or if it was the immense peace that was developed in that space. But when we go through something like that, it does change us.

We don’t all have to do that. And we won’t all do that. And we all shouldn’t do that. We have roles and responsibilities. I was very lucky at the time because that was available to me.

We can all transform our lives. We can all shift from consuming mental junk food to more enlightening things. We can shift from constant consumption and filling our mind with information — we can slowly start to shift to that life we want to create, which is one of spaciousness, one where we feel at home wherever we are, because we are restful within.

And we can be very active and engaged in the world, but we can do so with peace, because we have created an environment for peace. That is what I learned by going deep into the forest and into that space of peace. And we all have that space within us.

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The post 50 Days in the Wild: A Meditation Experiment That Transformed Me appeared first on EastWesticism.

Holding Grudges is Self-Sabotage

Most of us take life too seriously. We put so much pressure on ourselves that it hurts our ability to do our best. Because we know that when we are relaxed, we are confident, we’re not second-guessing ourselves, and we are thinking in the clearest way possible. When fear and pressure cloud our judgment, we are not going to be our best.

“Holding grudges” is such a great phrase, because we are holding on, with every cell and organ of our body, with our fists and our face and our muscles all tense, when we think of those grudges. When something reminds us of an argument or some kind of failing in ourselves or someone else, we are crushed by the weight of these burdens.

And the key is to recognize that tension, to unclench our hands, and to take some deep breaths because we’re almost certainly not breathing in a calm and deep way.

The world can be chaotic.
The world can be violent, angry, and hostile.
But we all, whether we are in a prison cell, or living alone, or in a big family full of drama, we all can close our eyes, take a deep breath, and release that tension. Release that grip.

We so often put so much pressure on ourselves, and in turn, we put pressure on others. We expect everyone to put as much pressure on themselves as we put on ourselves. But why would we want everyone else to be as miserable as we are?

Our thoughts and emotions are cultivated. They are constantly changing. They are shaped by our past and brain chemistry, as well as our genes and environment. They are largely created by the media we consume, and so they are a summation of our lives, mostly unconsciously, mostly out of our control.

And we believe that the thoughts and emotions are who we are, because we have the closest direct experience of those thoughts and emotions. We don’t see someone else’s thoughts and emotions, but we have access to the physical body’s thoughts and emotions that we shine forth from. And that voice is very convincing. Its whole purpose is to try to control us, to have power over us.

This is because it was necessary to explore beyond our habitat, to go forth and seek out food and resources. If we didn’t have this mind driving us, we may never have had that thought of “I need food. I’m hungry. Let’s get food.” But over time, the mind got too smart. And it tricked us into believing that it is the voice of God in our head, the voice of our true identity, the most important words on the planet, instead of just this body’s present-moment impulses.

Then we are able to see beyond them, and they don’t take up our whole field of view. Because they are just words. They are just physical sensations in the body. They don’t control us.

So we make forgiveness a practice. We make love without expectations a practice. We may still need to cut people out of our lives who don’t respect boundaries, who don’t respect us. But we can do so without anger, without grudges. And that’s the only way to do it. Because even if it’s just internal revenge, we create an endless cycle of hate and violence, even if it’s within ourselves.

The only way to break that cycle of hate and violence and anger and resentment is through love and forgiveness. That’s why they say that living a good life is the best form of revenge. 

And someone else who is on the other end of that grudge, it’ll probably drive them crazy. While that’s not the goal, they certainly want to make sure you are thinking about them constantly, that you are living in anger. So the best medicine is not to take that poison.

We are already perfect beings. We’ve just accumulated some of the world’s problems, and we’ve internalized them. But they are not a part of us. They have not reached the depth and the core of who we are. And they never will.

To recognize that perfection is to let go of all that chaos from the world. Beyond our brain chemistry, beyond our brain size, beyond our physical body, we are all consciousness peering through a body, witnessing thoughts and emotions, witnessing this life story, the interactions we have.

And underneath every single one of us is pure awareness. Pure life-force energy. Life is a fundamental aspect of consciousness. Consciousness created this universe to experience the universe through life, throughout the universe.

It is a gift to witness the infinite universe we live in, with its infinite potential for joy, for peace, for bliss. Except for very brief moments, every animal and plant experiences this pure bliss and peace. Only humans can’t seem to leave the past in the past. And we worry so much about the future.

It is a gift and a curse, these big brains of ours. But we are still evolving. And we still have potential. We are all born with that potential: to evolve our consciousness, to expand our awareness. And the more that awareness shines through us, the easier it is to see that we are all exactly the same.

Some people don’t have as much awareness yet. Some people still act out the impulses of their ego. Some people still believe in their man-made identity, their society-told identity, and it has led to every problem society has ever faced. But many are waking up. Many are discovering that there is an inner wisdom that we didn’t create, that we are not responsible for, that we didn’t learn in school or at university. And we all have this inner guiding light from the universe. We just have to get quiet and still to be able to hear it.

It is the intelligence of this physical body that knows how to beat the heart right on time, never miss one. There is a great intelligence and a great wisdom beyond our egoic understanding. And that is the ultimate potential in every single one of us, no matter where we’ve been, what we’ve done, what has happened to us.

Sometimes the worse the life we have, the easier it is to let go of it and move beyond.

 

We all just want to be in a state of love. Pure love. That is beyond a recipient, beyond an object or material possession. And it is that greatest of feelings, that can be simply for life itself. The everlasting life that has taken on the multitude of forms and will go on forever.That is who we truly are. 

 

We think because we’re so smart that we should take some credit for who we are. But a tree just grows. It’s designed to grow. It did not have any say in the matter. And it doesn’t worry about not growing, it just grows. When the conditions are right, growth inevitably happens.

 

We have to get out of our own way. To see through that persona, that name, label, all of those limiting adjectives that describe ourselves, until we get to:

I am.

 Not good.
Bad.
Great.
Terrible.
Stupid.
Smart.
Funny.
Boring.

Just: I am.

The trees figured this out.
And so can we.

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Why You Always Need to Be Around People: Understanding Emotional Dependency

Q: I need to be accompanied by friends all the time. I am so desperate and needy and unhappy. Help!

Human beings are social. We’re social creatures; we thrive with close connections. And it is because we needed each other to survive. So, we are naturally drawn to those close bonds that make us feel safe. Sometimes, when we have felt unsafe, we may use friends and pets and other devices for feeling that sense of safety again. And there is nothing wrong with using these incredible tools of love and connection to lift us.

The fact that I was recently reached out to and asked about whether or not that’s okay, there is an underlying insecurity, unhappiness, and loneliness going on that is causing this behavior. 

And if we have a service pet, there is nothing that I’m saying here to indicate that you need to wean off, or that you need to go cold turkey, or make any changes whatsoever. This is only if you feel like you’re using companionship as a crutch, and that you are noticing that neediness within you, and that it is causing suffering. 

So, in these instances, we can start to develop again that sense of safety within. We can heal whatever trauma we experienced. And we may find, naturally, that we no longer need companionship all the time. And that is the goal really: not to not have companionship, not to push our friends and loved ones away, but simply to be okay with and without. To accept those incredible social gatherings, and to accept when they’re over, and to feel comfortable in our skin, whether we’re surrounded by people, whether we’re surrounded by strangers, or whether we’re alone.

The way we do that is by first noticing what arises, those nervous, anxious feelings and sensations within, and being present with them, experiencing them. In doing so, they become familiar, and that discomfort becomes comfortable. And that is super important.

Because anxiety is a certain heightened state, elevated blood pressure, a faster heart rate, that vibrating, almost shaking sensation in the body, maybe even a higher body temperature, and it’s accompanied by anxious thoughts.

So, when we recognize that all it is is a set of physical changes in the body, that it’s not unbearable, not immense pain, just subtle, uncomfortable sensations, we begin to see it differently. As we notice that, the thoughts no longer control us. They don’t dictate our lives. They don’t dictate our feelings. We become witnesses to these emotions.

Then we become intimately familiar with the sensation, with the trigger, with the past trauma it brings up. And the more we get comfortable with it, the safer and more secure we begin to feel, because it’s the discomfort that we’re resisting.

But when we allow that discomfort to exist, when we become intimately familiar with it, it’s no longer some scary, foreign enemy. It becomes, quite simply, a part, a small part, of our field of consciousness.

And that field of consciousness includes our thoughts, our emotions, our bodily sensations, and everything happening around us. Everything that is happening is equally important. It’s only when we put our entire focus on those thoughts that we lose touch with reality. And when we lose ourselves, we feel ungrounded, uncentered, out of balance, and that’s often when we turn to some sort of crutch.

In this case, it might be companionship. But it could also be drugs or alcohol, comfort food, or any other bad habit we normally rely on to relieve uncomfortable emotions.

Instead, we can choose to sit with those emotions. And over time, they become more comfortable simply by becoming more familiar. This is a healthy way to build inner strength, because we’re cultivating the ability to sit with our fears and discomforts, rather than escape them.

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Path to Peace Why Bad Things Happen to Good People — The Key to a Good Life

Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good things happen to bad people? And more importantly, why can we have everything in life and still feel empty inside?

Is karma why some people seem to have all the luck? Is there cosmic justice in the afterlife? Some kind of Heaven or Hell? Is life totally random? Or is there some other explanation?

In today's podcast, I explore these timeless topics. I talk about why life can seem unfair. And I share how we can all have the good life no matter who we are or what our circumstances are.

Please enjoy other episodes where I share meditation techniques, tips and spiritual lessons from around the world for peaceful and stress-free living. Remember to subscribe to stay up-to-date.

*****
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How to Emotionally Recover from a Negative Experience

Changing our mindset changes our reality because our reality is created by our perception. The way we see the world, the way we see our life unfolding, determines how we feel about our lives and shapes how we think about the situations happening around us, those we often call “happening to me.”

If we are peaceful, life appears peaceful to us because we stay at peace in our mind. We don’t let anything disturb that peace. We don’t let conflict with reality arise within us, which is one of the root causes of negative experiences.

Truly negative experiences come from a negative outlook. Sometimes, what happens in our lives is undeniably tragic, and we will naturally feel broken. But we do have this one bit of control, this ability that humans still possess in their darkest times: the ability to always accept and make peace with reality.

We can stop creating resistance and inner conflict with reality, which is really what all stress is. It’s that tension in our body that we create. It always comes from this inner battle. Essentially, that fight-or-flight mode gets activated, the stress response kicks in, and all of our muscles tense up. We get very focused on this danger, this threat.

However, the choice of the quality of our presence, the direction of our focus, is always with us.  We can make peace with even the most unbearable, unthinkable, and tragic events. I don’t mean that we jump for joy and look like a fool at a funeral, or anything like that. It won’t feel like joy. But it will feel like facing terrible emotions with courage, with confidence, with peacefulness, because that is the choice we made: to face this pain and not to resist it.

We don’t have to create that stress and tension in our body. As hard as it seems, our outlook truly does create our reality. When we are truly happy, we don’t even care if someone was rude to us on the street. We just feel sympathy and compassion.

We can be walking down the sidewalk, smiling and waving to everyone, not caring that only one out of ten people even looks us in the eye. True happiness comes with zero craving or expectations. As soon as there is a craving for someone to smile or wave back, to say hello, then we are subjecting ourselves to inevitable future unhappiness when we don’t get it, when we long for it, or when we cling for too long to the one who did not say hello back. Because now, we’re missing all the others we could have shared our love with, a smile, a hello, a wave.

When we are truly happy, we don’t get angry, jealous, or bitter. We don’t blame or self-blame. Because the moment we let those feelings in, we are no longer happy. Even when negative experiences happen, we take them on with a smile. We don’t have to worry about whether we’ll have the confidence or courage to take on this moment; we just know that we can. Just like we always do. Because we’ve made a practice of accepting each moment as it comes, without resisting any of it. Without letting any of it put that toxin of stress into our body, unless we really need to fight or run away from something.

We’ll be so much happier when we can give up these cravings and expectations and let them go. They bring nothing but misery. We will still, in present moments, sense what is right for us, sometimes it’s pampering ourselves, sometimes it’s challenging ourselves.

Not craving and not expecting things out of life doesn’t mean we become hermits or live in a cave. It doesn’t mean we give up on anything that feels closest to the life we know we should be living. Giving up craving outcomes and expectations simply means we stop resisting when things change, when good things end or when bad things begin.

That inner peace, this practice of constant acceptance of what is in the moment, restores our energy. It preserves it, instead of wasting it on needless worry and tension in the body that clouds our judgment. And with this energy, with this peace that comes from presence, we can tackle any challenge. We can overcome any obstacle. Because there is no longer such a thing as hard work, or struggle, or bad fortune. There is just stuff happening in the present moment that we will deal with as it comes, not beforehand in anticipation, not afterwards for years and decades.

We will realize that we don’t accumulate time. We don’t accumulate moments. And when we let go of the burden of the past and the future, and just look at this moment – honestly, deeply – and respond to it with what needs to be done, life becomes so much lighter.

We don’t have to fear negative experiences, because we know we’re not going to keep them with us. We’ll let them go when they’re over. And this becomes easy when we embrace hard work. Because if we don’t embrace the hard work, which is a fact of every person’s life, then life will be hard.

But when we embrace the work, when we don’t mind the unexpected time-sucks, those wasted hours we didn’t anticipate fixing a problem, crisis, or emergency, then we can actually handle any crisis and emergency.

No matter what kind of life we have, it is guaranteed to have hard work. And the reason I know this is because even if you are very rich, so rich that you have no responsibilities, no work, nothing to do that is challenging in any way, you may still go through immense depression, feeling like you have no purpose, no direction, and that life is meaningless. I’ve seen the bodies waste away, the minds become bitter and angry, and their lives become truly hard.

In every aspect of our lives, we lose the stress that is worrying about an outcome, afraid of failing, and we simply love and live in this moment for itself, to give it the sacred attention it deserves, no matter how bad it seems. No matter how quick our mind jumps to a negative conclusion, no matter how much we want to escape it, we go deeper, until we see past that story, past that cloudy lens of our perception that colors a situation as good or negative. And we wash those glasses by simply accepting what is happening and stopping fighting it.

This doesn’t mean we don’t act. We still lift a car off of our child if that is the emergency. There is no stopping this gut response, this instinct, this higher intelligence that we feel we need to constantly worry and think about, even though it’s there for us without thinking. Without thinking, the mother lifts the car off the child. It’s pre-thought. The thought is secondary.

The thought is simply the mental story we tell about a situation to determine how we feel, in hopes that it protects us from danger in the future. Therefore, we may learn from that thinking and analyzing of the situation I just shared. And we will realize that the mother will also keep a much closer eye on her child anywhere near cars. 

But there doesn’t need to be a constant state of fear, because these bodies and the wisdom they contain are so much greater than what our minds can even conceive. We do not understand our own bodies. We don’t understand how they work. We can’t build another one.

And yet, the intelligence of every single cell in our body to communicate with every other cell and to work together to keep us alive is always within us. That’s why we need to get the mind out of the way, because it clouds our vision, our judgment, our understanding, and our wisdom.

Thoughts try to take infinitely vast and complex experiences and interpret them into a sentence or two. This is great for when we are consciously trying to solve a problem and we need our intellect. It’s very convenient when we are trying to make future plans, because we take all of our experience and come down to a single decision.

But beyond the conscious use of our mind for intellectual analysis, what we are doing is always taking an experience of infinite complexity, based on infinite factors that came before it and will come after it, and we are putting it into symbols and sounds that make up words and sentences.

We are taking five pieces of data and tossing out a trillion. And it colors and shapes how we see the world. Therefore, it limits our understanding, our connections and relationships, and that sense of Oneness. 

It is that survival instinct from when we were cavemen, designed to tell us fearful thoughts so that we would stay away from tigers and cliff sides, and so we would survive. But it is not reality, not in our modern world. It wants to possess positive, safe things that it experiences forever. And when it’s not happening, when we’re not in that great, safe, positive experience, we long for it. We crave it. And the mind creates suffering.

When undesirable things happen, it resists, becomes angry and agitated, and we let it color our thinking and our mood for days, months, or years. And if these negative experiences keep accumulating, that mind, that thought stream, becomes darker and darker and darker, because we are accumulating our time. But the moment our thinking becomes brighter is the moment the sun starts to appear.

Good things happening will not make us happier. Becoming happy will make good things happen.

When a barista at a coffee shop makes someone’s order wrong, who is a very happy person, they do not care. They do not yell at the barista. They do not get angry or stressed, or lose their temper in any way. But someone who is already angry, who already almost got into a fight in a road rage incident, that person could lose it on the barista. Even that person who we would say has a great life, who has everything, is wealthy, had a family, that person may also totally lose it when a barista gets their order wrong.

Often, it is when we are so accustomed to great things happening, we begin to become so demanding, critical, and impatient.

During my 9-year spiritual journey, I met so many monks who, surprisingly, had the worst lives imaginable. They lost so much. They may have been diagnosed with something terminal themselves. And they chose to live a monastic life. They changed their perspective, and their life changed. And these were some of the happiest people, and most generous, most gracious, grateful, and kind I’d ever met.

Now, we don’t have to go live in a monastery if something bad happens in our life, but we can learn the lesson from them, which is that: Our perception is everything. The way we see the world is the way the world is to us.

We have to realize the incredible power we all have within us, which is to become present and to direct our focus and awareness. And we can always look at the bright side of the dark side. That is the yin-yang symbol, with the black side having a tiny dot of white in it, and the white side having a tiny black dot within it.

Where we put our focus is always up to us. There is always light in the darkness. There is always the sky beyond the clouds. We just have to clean those foggy glasses clouded with craving, expectations, fear, and resistance to what is.

When we do that, and we embrace the hard work of life, we can deal with any negative experience we face. We can do it standing tall, because we are not carrying the weight of eternity on our shoulders. We can do it with peace, presence, and intention, with more energy, with more wisdom to succeed and overcome.

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The post How to Emotionally Recover from a Negative Experience appeared first on EastWesticism.