(Note to reader: This essay is concise, as I am finding I have less to say. I hope it will still be of use to you despite its brevity.)

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

~William Shakespeare

Have you ever heard of the doorway effect?

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of walking into another room, and promptly forgetting the reason you’re there. If so, you’ve encountered the doorway effect.

This happens because the brain treats doorways as “event boundaries”. Entering a new room creates a distinct mental scene, which causes the brain to clear old, short-term information from the previous room to prepare for new input. This reboot is a feature of how the brain manages memory load.

As frustrating as this may be, particularly to those of us in midlife and beyond, I propose we look at this phenomenon as a natural reset, one we can learn to welcome.

It’s an invitation to return to the present moment.

It’s an opportunity to release thinking.

It’s a chance to re-centre and refocus on the here and now - the only moment that actually exists.

We all understand that our thoughts can be alternately useful and a hindrance (more often a hindrance, if we’re being honest).

Let’s try to envision what it might be like to be free from thinking.

Our thoughts are centred on the past (memories) or the future (imagination). Test this by noticing your own time-focused thoughts. Time is an illusion, or construct. If there is no thought, there is no time. There is only ever now. Verify for yourself that this is true.

Usually we encounter the world as “form” - or duality. There is me, there is you. There is you, there is the world. An awakened person sees the reality of non-duality - there are not two, only one. During meditation, we endeavour to enter the formless state, beyond the body, beyond matter - only spacious awareness. If there is no form, there is no duality.

If there is no time, and no form, then it follows that there is no ego mind. If there is no thought, and no ego mind, there is no problem. We are able to access this state any time we return to the present moment. More often than not, there are no problems in the present moment, because problems are something we conjure in our minds.

While it may be maddening to walk into another room and forget what you intended to do,* passing through a doorway presents a gift - the opportunity to renew your commitment to the now.

We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present.

~Alan Watts

*Here’s a tip for those who are not so interested in achieving non-dual awareness, and would like to know how to defeat the doorway effect. Get into the habit of repeating your mission to yourself aloud, or envisioning what you are about to do, and you’ll be more likely to accomplish it once you cross the threshold.

If this work enriched your life even a smidge, would you considering giving a modest tip?

This is a continuation of last week’s post. To get up to speed, please see: It's Not Just About Trains, Part I.

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If I were a small child today, I’d surely be diagnosed with autism.

Instead, I am a woman in mid-life, self-diagnosed with autism. I have never been assessed, and didn’t realize I may be on the spectrum until I had a child who was going through the autism assessment process.

In the 1980s, autism was not being widely identified, and certainly not in female children, who often present with different behaviours than boys. Stereotypical behaviour of boys on the spectrum tends to include a fascination with trains or dinosaurs - neither of these appealed much to me. Growing up as an unidentified autistic person meant some things came naturally to me, and other things (often things that neurotypical people found easy) were a struggle.

Autism manifests differently from person to person, and I’m still discovering my different abilities in mid-life.

Take everything here as the anecdotal evidence it is. This is only my experience, not a professional opinion. Although, my adult child (who has an autism diagnosis and many autistic friends) agrees that I fit the criteria.

What follows is a collection of some of the lesser-known traits that I’ve discovered in myself that may indicate I’m on the spectrum.

My hope is to heighten awareness and help other people who never felt like they fit society’s mold to gain a little more self-compassion.

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Some of you were drawn to this essay due to the sacrilegious title. Amongst readers, parting from one’s sacred book collection is akin to severing a limb.

Believe me, I get it. It’s not hyperbole to say that books have made me who I am.

Not long ago, as I perused my overflowing book collection, I noticed that each stage of my life was distinctly represented by my chosen reading material at the time.

Apart from a foray into campy sci-fi as a young teen, and a bit of an obsession with classic literature, my fiction phase was short lived (the Stephen King era notwithstanding). An enduring love of poetry stood out, and non-fiction densely populated my bookshelves.

My collection ran the gamut from investing to gardening, healthy living to minimalism, history to memoir. Books covering disciplines such as philosophy and psychology graced my shelves, alongside parenting and meditation tomes. Books on spirituality spilled over, crowded and blurred into the “self-help” section. An array of children’s books - all acquired and well-loved during my kids’ childhood - held a place of honour.

However, my unquenchable thirst for knowledge spars with my desire to pursue voluntary simplicity and minimalism.

Must I hold on to the physical object as evidence that I learned (or needed to learn) about something? Surely the knowledge won’t vanish from my brain if I let go of the book.

These thoughts led to an epiphany: my book collection had become a way to cling to the past.

Books symbolize what was important to me at certain junctures of my life. If I got rid of the books, would I remember those times? Would they still be important to me? If I don’t have a concrete object to jog those memories, will the memories just disappear?

When I examine my unconscious drive to hold on to certain books, this is what’s at the root - fear that letting go of a book equates to letting go of a little part of me.

It makes perfect sense, since books have made me, well, me. If it weren’t for certain pivotal reading choices, I would be a different person entirely. If I gave them away, who would I be?

The obvious answer is, I’d still be me. But with less clutter.

I got up the gumption to approach my collection with fresh eyes - the eyes of one who understands that retaining artifacts is a vain effort to hold on to a connection to the past. Confident that the books had already given me what I needed, I began my purge.

I combed through my book stash in an effort to consciously loosen my attachment to the past. Books have shaped me, and no longer owning a particular title won’t change that. I’m capable of gleaning what I need from a book without keeping it indefinitely.

Besides, if I kept every book I ever owned, my house would be packed to the rafters.

In this stage of my journey toward non-attachment, I felt inspired to let go of objects that once played an integral role in my life. I placed too much importance on books as being symbolic of a certain phase of my life and a connection to who I used to be.

It’s time to loosen those ties to past identities, or to any identity, come to think of it. An aspect of the spiritual path is to let go of all notions of who I think I am, in order to discover who I really am.

As I loaded boxes with books to release from my life, I realized what a gift they would be to other seekers, and how pointless it was to hoard them. I rarely reread them, since the stack of new books waiting to be read kept growing.

Letting go of all those relics from my personal history gave me a sense of freedom to move more lightly into whatever the future holds for me. I’m free to forge ahead, no longer weighed down by the past.

The idea of a massive book purge would have seemed appalling to a former version of me. Now I see that reaction as an indicator of attachment, maybe even an unhealthy level of clinging.

Instead of feeling like I lost a limb, I feel like I let go of that which was holding me back, simultaneously freeing up room in my house and space in my heart for whatever the next stage of life brings.

If this work enriched your life even a smidge, would you considering giving a modest tip?

Let’s imagine a day in the life of a typical North American worker.

A hectic whirlwind of a morning. A long commute. A stressful day working long hours. Another commute. The dinner time rush. Shuttling kids or doing housework. Collapsing on the couch for mindless scrolling or television, until succumbing to exhaustion.

Maybe you don’t have to imagine, because this is you. A snapshot of your average day in this soul-grinding modern society.

Something is missing. We feel it, whether we can put our finger on it or not.

Recently, my partner shared with me a heartfelt post one of his friends made on social media. His friend talked about how he felt left behind by the people he thought would always be around. Loved ones justified their lack of contact with him due to obligations around family, work, and needing time to themselves. As he watched his friends and family dwindle away over the years, he described feeling tired, lonely, disappointed, and heartbroken.

What he shared hit a nerve - it’s an experience many of us can relate to.

Over time, family and friends scatter far and wide in pursuit of various opportunities. Sometimes we lose sight of where we came from, and the people who played an important role in our journey.

My elderly dad makes a point of calling his long-distance friends every Christmas. None of them make the effort to pick up the phone to call him throughout the rest of the year.

Since I exited the corporate world, I rarely hear from the people I used to spend hours of every day with, people I was once close to. I get it, they are still caught up in the rat race. The experience of feeling forgotten is jarring, almost surreal.

Is this just what happens? Nobody reaches out anymore?

As a whole, we are stressed and busy. Working parents of young kids in particular don’t feel like they have even two seconds to themselves.

Even so, we might ask what’s taken the place of the time we used to spend reaching out to our circle. No doubt, we are busy, but maybe we have to ask ourselves what exactly we’re busy doing, and if it’s the best use of our precious time.

If we’re honest, most of us spend hours every day staring at one screen or another. To cope with the stress of living in a society where we are driven to constantly pursue more, we spend our downtime anaesthetizing ourselves. We numb out with endless hours of scrolling or TV to avoid reality. The stress of the job we hate, the never-ending demands of our family. Whatever we are trying to escape, we turn to technology. We’ve become so tied to the digital world that we’ve disconnected from the important people in our lives. Artificial connection has taken the place of human connection.

Perhaps we all feel like we are the only ones checking in with our friends; that it’s always a one way street. When we’re feeling forgotten, we can ask ourselves who we’ve neglected in our life. Falling out of touch with our circle may be a common experience but that doesn’t mean we have to accept the status quo.

The loneliness epidemic has been declared a public health crisis. If we’re all in the same boat, then we all have a role to play.

It only takes a few seconds to shoot a text telling someone we’re thinking about them, and a few minutes to give someone a call. We can use our found time to touch base - during the commute, on lunch break, before settling in to watch that series.

Try committing one evening per week to checking in with family and friends. Even one hour per week. Experiment and see how it makes you feel, how your loved ones receive it.

For a while, you may continue to feel like it’s a one way street; after all, you’re the one acting intentionally to take the initiative. Meet people where they’re at. Persevere, and see if your efforts pay off.

The next time you find yourself checking out, try checking in instead. Reach out to someone who would love to hear from you. Call your aunt, write your grandpa an email. Text your brother or your college buddy. We don’t always have the space in our schedule to arrange a lunch date or girls’ night; however, we can always take a moment to say, hey, just thinking of you, how are things?

People on their deathbed don’t reminisce about rush-hour traffic, wish they spent more hours poring over spreadsheets, or despair about not finishing their favourite series. They often express regrets about how they neglected the people closest to them.

They don’t get a do-over, but yours starts now.

If this work enriched your life even a smidge, would you considering giving a modest tip?

Working with Tao entails taking advantage of natural forces - accepting the way things work and borrowing their power.

Your attention is one such natural force.

What you focus on, grows. Focus on problems, you get more problems. Focus on activities that improve health, you get better health (all things being equal). And so on.

In a society flooded with distraction (most of which we carry around in our pocket), if we’re going to achieve our aims, we need to figure out how to focus on what we want.

In the management world, there’s a slogan for measuring achievements - inspect what you expect. This applies to personal growth as well.

Let’s assume there’s something about your life you’re not entirely happy with right now. Maybe you want to quit smoking or lose weight, become more financially stable, or earn a higher income. No matter what you want to change or improve, reaching your goals will take more than just action. You’ve got to track it.

We have a tendency to deceive ourselves - maybe it’s denial or outright lying. Either way, having a visual record helps us to be radically honest. You might think you worked out five times this week, then look at your tracker and see in black and white that it was actually only three times. Bringing awareness to our human nature leads us to implement a method in order to overcome it.

Whether you’re trying to break or build a habit, change and improve something about your life, or set out on a new trajectory, finding a way to measure your progress is essential to the journey.

What are some areas of change that tracking will impact? Depending on what you want to create in your life, the possibilities are endless.

Health

• quitting a detrimental habit like smoking or drinking

• mileage/step count

• workout frequency/length/reps

• vegetable or protein servings per day

• water consumed

• weight loss

• sleep duration and quality

• training stats for a marathon or other sport

Financial

• net worth growth

• income growth

• debt repayment

• investment performance

• spending

Other

• screen time

• clutter clearing efforts

• dream record

• books read

• time spent on a skill you want to master (writing, karate, baking…)

• time spent meditating

• hiking or camping trips

• travel experiences

Before we get into the specifics of how to measure, first a note on breaking undesirable habits. Results are usually better when we track our preferred alternatives rather than the behaviour we don’t want. For instance, instead of recording how many cigarettes you smoke in a day, note how many times you choose a different behaviour in response to a craving. Measuring what you do want is more motivating - praise over punishment.

It’s also helpful to track your output rather than the outcome. If you’re trying to lose weight, by all means weigh yourself periodically to see if you’re moving in the right direction. However, the scale can be fickle. Measure your workouts, your steps, or anything else that you are in control of. You can control how many servings of vegetables you eat in a day, but you can’t control what the scale reads compared to yesterday.

You may use the Don’t Break the Chain Method, popularized by Jerry Seinfeld, where you mark a physical calendar with an X for every day your goal is achieved. The idea is to create a long unbroken visual chain, making it psychologically painful to break it by stopping.

Apps will help you keep a streak this way too - for example, meditation apps track how many days in a row you meditate. If technology is your thing, you can set up reminders and other ways to record progress toward your goals on your phone.

If you like a visual or handwritten method, you could keep a notebook dedicated specifically to your goal.

To record your travel goals, you might keep a map in a prominent place and add a sticker each time you tick a destination off your bucket list.

If you’re not visually motivated, perhaps an external cue like an accountability buddy will keep you on track. Have a friend check in with you about your stated goal to give you a little bit of peer pressure, maybe even in the form of a competition or bet. However, once you’ve achieved your goal, staying the course may be an issue. Many of the changes we’re talking about are life-long habit changes. You can’t get fit, then stop working out and expect it to stick.

Ultimately, you only have yourself to answer to.

In my experience, once a habit is firmly established by consistent recording, I no longer have to track and it takes on a life of its own. When I first took up running I would note the frequency, distance, and time of my runs. Now I just lace up and run five times a week and don’t track anything.

Know that whatever you place your attention on will grow, and tracking will make change a little bit easier. That’s the magic of measuring - the Tao of tracking.

If this work enriched your life even a smidge, would you considering giving a modest tip?

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

~Carl Jung

Most of us believe we’re independent thinkers, but let’s challenge that idea.

Our lives operate on a compilation of our personal philosophies. The question is whether we’re aware of them or not.

Philosophers think deeply on certain topics, play out scenarios using thought experiments and arguments, and come to conclusions about the preferred course of action based on their worldview. Philosophers also need to be flexible in their thinking, and not form rigid opinions, in case they discover a reason to revise their ideas down the road.

This is essentially what we do every day, with every choice we make, usually minus the deep thinking part.

Many of us bob along through life, floating on the currents of popular opinion and herd mentality. We go where the tide takes us, trying to fit in and do what’s expected. This is not meant to be derogatory, just an observation. Life is difficult enough as it is, and if we can “go along to get along,” it makes things a little easier.

For the most part, this doesn’t pose a problem. Until it does. That is, until what everyone else is doing, or what’s expected of us, or what’s easy, rubs us the wrong way or holds us back from living the life we want to lead.

You probably don’t think of yourself as a philosopher. Once you realize how your unconscious philosophy impacts all areas of life, it becomes paramount to bring greater consciousness to your thinking and decision making - your philosophy on life.

Everything you do has a philosophy behind it.

• How you vote

• How you raise your kids

• How you treat other people

• How you treat animals and the planet

• What food you buy

• How you use money

• What media you consume

• What you read

Here are a few questions to ask yourself, to get your thoughts flowing:

• Do you laugh at jokes intended to tear down certain groups of people? Is this behaviour consistent with how you want to move through the world?

• Do you choose fast food regularly? It’s convenient, cheap, and tasty, but at what cost to the environment, factory farmed animals, and your body?

• Do you physically reprimand your kids because your parents spanked you and you turned out just fine?

• If you are witness to an injustice, do you stand up for what’s right? Do you use your voice to defend the powerless or keep quiet for fear of rocking the boat?

Observing and thinking about our own behaviour is not about getting bogged down analyzing minutiae. It’s about looking at the broad strokes of how we behave on the daily, and whether that aligns with what we want from ourselves.

The factors influencing our actions are legion, including our shadow self, intergenerational trauma, epigenetics, and more.

The inner work required to bring consciousness to our unconscious behaviour might include journaling, dream analysis, active imagination, and shadow work. The effort it takes is intensive, and might require the guidance of a skilled therapist.

Holocaust survivor, neurologist, and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s work has been summarized this way: Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In that response lies our growth and our freedom.

As we learn to pause and become less reactive, we give ourselves a chance to act from our wise mind - the higher part of our psyche that we actually want to be in control of our actions.

We must be careful not to apply our own standards to other people. As Marcus Aurelius said, “be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.” It’s not on us to climb on our soapbox and evangelize to other people, only to decide on our own policies and live by them. In this way, we might be a beacon for others, showing them an example they may prefer to follow.

When we turn the spotlight of awareness on our every thought, word, and deed, what we find may be shocking. This process is not about berating ourselves, but simply becoming aware. We can’t make better choices if we aren’t even conscious of the choices we’re currently making (and every action begins with a choice).

Over time, with effort, we come to a place where honouring our own integrity takes priority over doing what’s easy or expected.

An independent thinker questions what they’re doing and the why behind it. They take the time to observe their own behaviour, think through their personal philosophies, and decide whether they’re living in alignment.

An independent thinker leads a life of applied philosophy.

Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.

~Epictetus

If this work enriched your life even a smidge, would you considering giving a modest tip?

You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.

~Alan Watts

Let’s explore an esoteric topic that isn’t well known or understood, let alone discussed in our culture, yet it’s the very ground of our being.

If you have settled on a faith tradition, rather than label this topic “new age” and dismiss it, know that it isn’t incompatible with religion. This is at the root of every faith, it’s the aim of every seeker, it is the common thread woven throughout the universe. It’s not something you have to believe, simply a Truth you come to understand. It is not at odds with religious traditions - it just pushes a little bit further. (I recommend Jed McKenna books for those who want to dive into what it means to go further.)

Spiral Dynamics, along with the work of Ken Wilber, gives us a map for the evolution of human consciousness, with the pinnacle being the realization of the non-dual nature of reality. It’s important to note that every step along the way, one enfolds the stage they transcend into the next one - including as well as transcending.

Non-dual awareness, sometimes called unity consciousness, is the realization that there are not two, only one. The world of duality (us vs. them, wrong vs. right, etc.) is an illusion. If this is your first introduction to the concept, you may wish to read Livin' the Dream first.

As Alan Watts said, “We do not ‘come into’ this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean ‘waves’, the universe ‘peoples’. Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature.” Watts also said, “You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”

Everything we perceive arises from the same fabric of awareness. In the words of the philosopher Rupert Spira, “our essential nature is pure awareness - ever present, unchanging, and unlimited.”

The goal of the seeker is to know Truth, and ultimately this is what the practice of meditation guides us toward. Through meditation, the evolution of the mind advances in stages. First, we learn to tame our monkey mind. Then conditioning starts to drop away, and insights arise. Eventually, we may encounter non-dual awareness.

Many of us easily grasp this idea intellectually, but experiencing it is another story. What follows are some methods for touching non-duality.

Many guided meditations designed to access non-dual awareness are available, and you may want to start by experimenting with those.

Here are some ideas for self-guided meditation:

• Dropping: Drop your name, identity, roles. Drop your possessions, achievements, appearance, body. Drop everything you can think of, and drop all thoughts. What is left? Pure awareness - be that. Stay here as long as you can.

• Timeless: Come to your practice as a being with no past and no future. Without a past to define you, who are you? Without a future to prepare for, who are you? This is pure awareness, stay here.

• Spaciousness: We think of our sense of self as a small area behind our eyes. This is akin to a muscle contraction - expand your awareness throughout your body. Now expand your awareness outside of your body. Ask, where am I? Can you project awareness 50% within your body and 50% beyond it? Feel the space within your body and then feel the space outside your body, recognizing it as one continuous, undivided, open space. Realize you are this spacious awareness - feel any edges blurring, melting, dissolving, merging. Be one with pure awareness.

• Sounds: Awareness of sounds may be a portal to accessing non-duality. Focus on hearing and then drop awareness lower to your jaw or behind your head. Sound arises, you sense it in your body. Drop interpretation of the sound and fully sense it. Blend awareness, become the sound. Let go of telling a story about it and be it.

• Rest your bare awareness on the is-ness of the present moment. Sounds, sensations, breathing - happening simultaneously. Stay with this.

Many poets and philosophers have used metaphors to try to bring understanding to non-duality. The poet Rumi wrote prolifically about our true nature. Pure awareness may be compared to the sky, the ocean, a field - something our human minds can grasp.

Non-dual awareness is about releasing our identification with and clinging to our finite body and life, and recognizing the illusion of duality. It is all one thing - the fabric uniting us is the eternal, infinite field of awareness from which you arose and to which you will recede, like a wave on the ocean.

Our understanding of life may be enhanced by looking at it through the lens of death. Though it appears in our world of illusion that we are born and die, this isn’t so.

In the words of Mary Elizabeth Frye:

Do not stand at my grave and weep

I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry;

I am not there. I did not die.

Tap into the open, empty, vast, ineffable, spacious, boundless, eternal, infinite field of awareness that you are and recognize Truth.

Humans complicate things by muddying what should be clear. The nature of reality is simple, it’s a matter of uncovering who we are, which has been hiding in plain sight all along. We need only open our eyes and see.

If this work enriched your life even a smidge, would you considering giving a modest tip?

All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.

~Edgar Allan Poe

In Australian aboriginal culture, a philosophy arose based on the inter-relation of all people and all things, known as the Dreaming. We abide here in the Dreamtime - an eternal, “everywhen” reality where the past, present, and future are intertwined.

Philosophers from ancient times, and even today, consider the dream hypothesis, in its varied forms, to be a plausible theory.

A modern twist on this theory of consciousness regards what we experience as the real world to be a simulated reality, possibly a computer simulation. This hypothesis is based on the assumption that consciousness is not tied to biological brains, but can arise from a system that implements the right computational structures and processes. In the age of Artificial Intelligence, this no longer seems far-fetched.

Underpinning these concepts is non-dual awareness. The objective of many mystical paths involves attaining such awareness, which leads to the practitioner achieving enlightenment.

If all of this sounds like philosophical mumbo-jumbo, let me walk you through my own thought process toward accepting the truth of non-duality.

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

~Anais Nin

Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable, though not because anyone is purposely trying to tell a falsehood. Two people can see the same event unfold, yet interpret it differently, and they may describe widely diverging narratives.

Humans are sensory machines - we take what our senses feed into our mind through sight, sound, touch, etc. and use our minds to filter the experience and turn it into a story.

Few people interpret the sensations they receive without filtering it through judgment and opinion. The very act of interpreting means we are running the raw data through layers of filters.

Therefore, objective “reality” doesn’t truly exist. Facts are not necessarily objectively factual. If I’m colour-blind and you’re not, we can see the same object in two different colours, and an animal would see it another way entirely.

Our experience of life is created in our minds. We hear a sound - that is the action of our ears - but we interpret the meaning of the sound in our minds. We are continually constructing a narrative of what’s happening around us based on the internal translation of the input we receive.

There is no way to separate the observer from that which is observed. Subject and object are one - you are your world, for you created it.

Everything we perceive is an output of our mind. For instance, when we read, we’re seeing what’s coming out of our mind, not words on a page.

Think of your mind and everything around you as an act of collaboration. You are the co-creator of your experience. Your surroundings are simply a mirror reflecting back to you who you are. Without the perceiver, there’s nothing to perceive. It takes both perceiver and perceived for the perception of “reality” to exist. One can’t exist without the other - they are one and the same.

This is the essence of non-dual awareness.

Whether your worldview is that everyone is out to get you or that people are fundamentally good, your paradigm colours your interactions and experiences, and brings about the results you expect.

We are all living in our own individual dreamworlds, concocted by our minds.

Could this explain how two people can watch the same event unfold and have two different stories about what happened? Could this be the reason places like the United States are experiencing such such deep division?

The allegory of Plato’s Cave is a symbol of the human ability to progress from ignorance (believing the projections are real) to enlightenment (freeing ourselves from the prison of our minds).

We believe that the projections of our mind are real. We are living in self-delusion, in denial of the non-dual nature of reality.

Instead of relying on direct experience, we are chained to our mind’s fabrications.

We have more power to create our experience than we might think. Reality changes based on how we interpret and think about it. We get back what we put out - perhaps this could be thought of in the karmic sense, but I think of it as a giant mirror being held up to the mind. We see what we want to see.

When we realize how deeply entrenched we are in delusion and denial and understand that we’re living in our own dreamworlds, we see that everything we perceive is something we made up in our mind. It’s all merely a dream.

Accepting this allows us to detach from our ideas of good and bad. It all just is.

The mystic poets, writers, and artists accessed and eloquently expressed this knowledge - there are not two, only one.

Whether we dwell in a computer simulation, or a dream within a dream, or something else beyond human comprehension, we are prisoners in a cave of our own design. Achieving true non-dual awareness shows us the way out of the cave for good.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

~Rumi

If this work enriched your life even a smidge, would you considering giving a modest tip?

There’s one skill to master if your overarching goal in life is to become a better version of yourself.

It’s not a sophisticated communication technique or an in-depth journaling practice.

This is something that transcends any specific habit you can develop.

It’s metacognition.

Metacognition is thinking about thinking. It’s the awareness of and control over cognitive processes, and an understanding of the patterns behind them. It is the highest form of intelligence and the key skill you need in order to improve yourself from the very foundation. Without the ability to think about your thinking, you’re just spinning your wheels.

Those who develop metacognition find their personal growth supercharged. It’s observing your mind in real time, noticing your thoughts, questioning your reactions, and interrupting emotional reflexes. Instead of running your pre-programmed mental software, metacognition is like a computer that can rewrite its programming while running. Mastering this ability allows you to update your beliefs instead of blindly defending them. Every time you notice your thoughts instead of obeying them, your brain upgrades itself. Self-aware people evolve faster than almost anyone.

Like anything else in life, the more awareness we can bring to an issue, the more likely we are to effect change. Metacognition affects every other aspect of life. If we get a handle on our ability to observe our own thinking, it will influence everything we take on, whether it’s improving our fitness, marriage, financial picture, career prospects, or parenting.

All of us land in adulthood with a set of scripts running in our brains. We received messaging from our family, school, sports teams, and all authority figures we came in contact with. Whether the messages were direct, inferred, or a result of experience, their cumulative programming became the tools with which we were expected to build a successful life as an adult.

Often, our programming was less than ideal. We may have developed anger issues which result in an inability to hold a job. Or we may have alienated our kids because our parenting skills look just like our parents’ parents’ parents’ “skills”. There’s no shame in admitting that we’ve been reenacting intergenerational stories. For some of us, those stories include trauma. Acting out of a trauma response won’t move us toward evolving into who we want to become.

If we cringe when we notice words coming out of our mouth that sound exactly like our father’s, the good news is that we noticed it. Many of us go through life mirroring behaviour that hurt us in our formative years, without ever realizing.

We all operate on auto-pilot sometimes, particularly when we are tired or stressed. Aim to start questioning the automatic responses, noticing knee-jerk reactions, and getting curious about what’s behind it.

So…how do we gain the ability to notice our thinking process?

An effective way to clear mental space is through practicing mindfulness and meditation. Mindfulness is exactly what it sounds like - going through our day being aware of what we’re doing and saying, noticing sensory information we’re receiving and how we’re reacting to it. With time, we start to develop the ability to be aware of our thoughts, specifically how thoughts precede actions. It is the practice of being present.

A meditation practice allows us to widen the space between thought and action, and enables us to observe our thoughts and let them go. We start to understand that we are not our thoughts, and we don’t have to act on them, let alone believe them. As we sit for longer periods, not grasping on to our thoughts, we start to assign them their proper place - merely a function of our brain. We don’t have to take their commands.

Something else starts to happen as we deepen our meditation practice. Our understanding of consciousness starts to shift, and we realize that we’re not the thinker at all. We are simply the Watcher. Dis-identifying with our thoughts is integral to the process of letting go, just being. This is what meditation teaches - that we’re here to simply be. Let that be enough.

With time, these practices allow us to see our thoughts more clearly, and take the time to choose what to do with them. Our so-called triggers become less triggering. Now we can choose to not be offended in response to a perceived insult. We can choose to control what’s within our control and let go of the rest.

Once the programming has been updated, the mind runs on a whole new system.

If you have long-standing patterns you want to reset, don’t get lost in the weeds trying to change habits on a granular level. Look at the bigger picture and start thinking about your thinking. Metacognition may be the key skill to level up in order to level up.

If this work enriched your life even a smidge, would you considering giving a modest tip?

Some of you may know of my border collie mix, George, from photos I post on Substack Notes.

I haven’t shared about his background, but suffice it to say, he suffered a traumatic first year of life prior to coming to live with me.

Anyone familiar with early-life trauma knows that its imprint shapes who you become, regardless of species.

George came on the scene with all sorts of quirks, some we have been able to coax out of him with simple love and encouragement. Others are more hard-wired.

For instance, George sequesters himself in the living room, despite having free reign of the house. Why? Because he fears a potentially slippery floor. We have tried everything to help him move beyond the perceived safety of the living room rug - all kinds of runners and mats, along with a plethora of treats, yet he continues to choose to stay in his safe zone.

George is trapped in a prison of his own making; caged by his own mind.

But you know this isn’t just about George, don’t you?

Every one of us exists in self-imposed prisons, whether we are aware of it or not (and most of us are unconscious). Call it self-limiting beliefs, call it fear, no matter; the fact remains that our lives are constrained by it.

This is what makes up the walls of our cages:

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Have you ever seen an ad for carrots? How about lettuce, broccoli, rutabagas? Cantaloupe?

Me neither.

Advertising isn’t produced for things people need. There’s a steady market for those products, so “marketing” isn’t required.

Therefore, we can deduce that marketing is specifically reserved for things we don’t need. Advertising is about pushing products that aren’t necessary - except for manufactured reasons like fitting in, cultivating an image, acquiring status, and other false objectives. The sole purpose of highly paid ad executives is to convince us to consume by duping us into thinking we’ll be left out if we don’t buy their wares.

We’ve agreed, in our western society, to be slaves. We’re indentured not only to the almighty dollar, but to our consumer desires, our urge to keep up with the Joneses, and our yearning to impress our peers.

We sell our souls for convenience. Despite loathing billionaires for what they do to the planet and workers in order to greedily line their pockets, we continue to hit the one-click buy now. Without leaving the couch, we can satisfy our urges with a stream of packages conveniently delivered to our door.

We sell our authenticity to fit in. We’ve simply got to keep up with the latest styles in hair, makeup, clothing, shoes, and more. So we pitch our wardrobe every season and clamour to buy what’s deemed to be on trend by the influencer of the day. We put on our masks and torture our feet with uncomfortable heels in order to project the desired image.

We sell our integrity to create a beautiful lie. Drowning in debt, we continue to level up our houses and cars so we aren’t left behind. We chase that promotion even though we don’t know who we are anymore, never mind our family. We put that annual tropical vacation on credit, slather the proof on social media, and fail to question if it’s even a destination we wanted to experience, or if it was only what was expected.

We sell our peace of mind to be in the know. By patronizing the rage-bating machine formerly known as Twitter, we line another maligned billionaire's pockets. We stay glued to our news outlet of choice, allowing them to stoke fear and outrage in our hearts. There’s no impartial reporting - only talking heads telling us what to think and how to feel.

If we have to endure ads, whatever media we’re consuming, then we are the product. Social media is free - because we are what the companies are vying for. It’s called the attention economy for a reason - whatever addictive media can harness our eyeballs longest is the winner. They prey on our loneliness and desire to belong - ironically by isolating us and keeping us staring at a screen. Even harmless entertainment, like watching funny reels, is an addictive loop designed to anesthetize and keep us scrolling (ads inserted, of course).

If we don’t agree with the way social media giants run their companies, perhaps we should not hand over so much information about our life. The world has become a surveillance state. They tell us to be afraid of China, but a thinking person should fear what the United States could do with our freely-given personal details.

If we worry that AI is going to bring about mass job loss, maybe we should not run to ChatGPT with every passing thought. By voluntarily using this product (and others like it), we are voting for Artificial Intelligence to eventually crowd out humanity’s ability to think critically. Perhaps even to crowd out humanity, full stop.

Like the stock market, society runs on both fear and greed, but predominantly fear. Skincare brands generate fear by telling us we’ll never find love unless we purchase their outrageously expensive skin cream. The same goes for the fitness industry, supplements, and packaged health foods touted for doing the impossible - turning back the clock.

Celebrity worship: why is this even a thing? They exist to hawk brands and an appearance that we can’t afford or attain. What if we just (gasp!) didn’t care?

CEOs, marketers, many politicians - they have a vested interest in us staying asleep, comfortable, consuming, chasing illusions.

All of these factors work in concert to keep us dumbed down. The message from consumer culture is to keep buying, and don’t question what’s going on around you (and within you).

Hopefully now you see the need to emancipate yourself from this acquiescent slavery.

With everything you buy and everything you do, you are casting a vote for the kind of world you want to live in. Realize that you wield the power of an activist with every decision you make. Use your power wisely by bringing consciousness to every choice.

Some practices for breaking out of the consumerism-induced slumber:

• Boost your literacy. Read, read, read. This doesn’t require you to buy anything - go to your library. Read non-fiction, read classics. Start with whatever grabs your attention, and move on from there. Read more; scroll, watch, and submit to the algorithm less.

• Shore up your critical thinking skills. Reduce your reliance on AI tools. Yes, you probably need to be literate in them, but don’t overuse them or hand your autonomy over to them.

• Practice a minimalist philosophy. Realize you don’t have to buy things in order to enjoy life. Friends, fitness, and fun don’t require purchases, despite the message from the dominant culture. Minimalism is the opposite of consumerism.

• Cut back on screens of all kinds. Spend less time watching TV, less time on your phone, way less time on social media. Participate in the real world - you’ll feel better on every level, and reclaim your brain from the powers that be.

• Reduce your reliance on technology. Go analogue when possible. Write by hand instead of typing or texting - this skill will be lost in a mere generation or two. Technology makes many things easier, but don’t lose the abilities that prior generations took for granted. Can you cook, sew, garden, build and repair things, fix your car? Try to do more things for yourself. All of these skills and more make life in the real world more interesting and affordable.

• Pick a topic that interests you and learn about it without asking AI. Do a deep dive by reading whatever you can get your hands on. When you become a specialist, you won’t be easily swayed when someone presents themselves as an expert on the topic. It makes you less gullible and harder to dupe.

• When it comes time to exercise your civic duty to vote, educate yourself. Don’t just swallow what the pundits are feeding you. Figure out what issues matter to you and where the candidates stand. If you want to enjoy the privileges of living in a democracy, this is a duty to be taken seriously.

• Be aware of who or what is influencing your thinking. Is it TikTok? Facebook? Is it your friend group, your family? Maybe it’s a politician or religious leader you look up to. No matter what the source of influence, you need to analyze it critically and seek more than one source of information. Ask yourself what possible motivation this person may have which skews their message (monetary gain perhaps). Mere knowledge is a far cry from wisdom. If the influences are negative or misleading, it’s up to you to take back your ability to think for yourself.

• Realize that every time you spend money, someone else is on the other side of that transaction. Would you rather support a local business owner, or a billionaire? As always, it’s up to you.

Much of this could be considered sacrilegious; after all, our capitalist economy would grind to a halt if everybody thought and operated this way. Take a moment to imagine a world where we didn’t mindlessly consume (media, products, food, whatever) 24/7. I don’t think we could face ourselves - it’s the consumption that keeps us comfortably numb.

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

~Blaise Pascal

If you decide you’re not okay with who’s making money off you, remember that you write their paycheques every time you tap your card. Choose who and what you wish to support wisely.

As for me, I’m content with being an outlier, buying my carrots and cantaloupe, blissfully unaware of the existence of A-list celebrities or what products they’re hawking. I can’t absorb the message that I’m not good enough as I am, if I don’t pay it any attention.

If this work enriched your life even a smidge, would you considering giving a modest tip?

I walk a lot. In my small community, that means I walk past the same landmarks time and time again.

Despite my attempts at mindfulness, I’m often paying more attention to my inner world than noticing which building I’m walking past. One day I looked up, saw the high school, and instantly cast back eight years in my mind.

…

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In the spirit of “we don’t know what we don’t know”, I’m spotlighting a term that I recently encountered in my reading, so we can learn alongside each other. I’m no scholar, but I believe in insight through education.

Right out of the gate, let it be known that I’m not offering any solutions, merely shedding light on a c…

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Something about this just doesn’t add up:

The person who’s achieved every possible modern metric that should result in happiness - marriage and family, career, wealth, house and car, etc. Despite this abundance, they still feel miserable.

The person who lives a simple life, who barely ekes out an existence, yet spends most days smiling and laughing, happy with their lot and the people they get to share it with.

Why do we in the West, who are drowning in abundance, often suffer with intense unhappiness, while those in countries that are less wealthy, often live with the type of care-free lightness that we can only dream of?

It’s because the conditions of life are only half of the equation. For true happiness to take hold, we need to solve for the missing variable.

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Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

~Mahatma Gandhi

Recently, I heard about a local courier who cuddles his client’s pets as he makes his rounds. He was caught on a door cam loving up someone’s kitty, the owner made a public social media post to thank him, and many others pipe…

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Perhaps due to the unfortunate circumstance of having been born on a Wednesday, feeling happy doesn’t come easily to me.

Contentment, yes. Gratitude, sure. Even moments of joy. But I wouldn’t describe my emotion…

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Any random tidbit of inspiration might spark curiosity, like the meme I saw captioned: walk like you have 3000 ancestors behind you.

It helps to look at the world with a perpetual sense of awe and wonder. When I started to dig into the ancestor question, that awareness of the magic of life blossomed.

Genetically speaking, we have …

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You wouldn’t have ended up here unless you were intrigued, so I’m asking you to conduct an experiment with me.

I know you’re busy and you want to rush through this so you can get to the next thing on your to-do list. Even so, please take a deep breath, and relax. Treat this as a sort of guided meditation.

Once you’re in the right headspace, repeat this affirmation: I forgive myself. Say it again.

Close your eyes and say it. Say, I forgive myself. Repeat it as many times as feels right for you.

What thoughts and feelings arose?

If you’re like me, when you settled into this exercise, your mind immediately flooded with images from a dozen or more of your most glaring mistakes. This probably led you to arrive at the same conclusion I did - you haven’t forgiven yourself yet, even if you thought you had.

The types of things you wish you could forgive yourself for will be different from mine. In my case, I feel remorse over failings in relationships; parenting mistakes are the ones that hurt the most.

With one simple affirmation as a prompt, my mind conjured up a multitude of perceived missteps. It’s solid information that I can use to propel myself beyond my past.

What I know about forgiveness is that it requires grace. Grace is knowing that everyone is doing the best they can, even me.

Do the best you can, until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better. ~Maya Angelou

If I’m able to forgive others, then why the stumbling block to extending the same kindness to myself?

It comes down to unconditional love - something we may struggle to give, particularly if it wasn’t modelled for us in our formative years.

Unconditional love is learning to love others without trying to fix them.

Some of us grew up feeling like we were a problem that needed solving. Or we felt like we were someone else’s project. We felt the weight of expectations, an ever-growing wish list hanging over our heads, meant to spur us on to performing and racking up a collection of achievements.

Experiencing conditional love leads to a type of dissatisfaction that can never be soothed. We cannot do enough, be enough, or have enough to fill the gaping soul-wound that conditional love leaves in its wake.

Without having reveled in the gift of unconditional love, we struggle to find reason to love ourselves. If we can’t truly love ourselves, how can we extend love to others?

These ideas can be found, intertwined, at the root of happiness. Unless and until we learn to love ourselves unconditionally, we will continue to struggle to be able to forgive ourselves. As a result, we will find it difficult to forgive and love others without demanding that they meet our expectations. As long as all of this eludes us, happiness is just a dream.

Here’s the harsh truth I came to realize.

If I can’t love myself exactly as I am right now, with all my imperfections and shortcomings, I will never love myself. This translates to the need to forgive myself for whatever mistakes from the past that I’m holding on to.

Just as if I can’t be happy in this moment, with all its hardships and messiness, I will never be happy.

Forgiving, loving, being happy - these are choices that are available at this moment.

This affirmation experiment was a wake up call. All the goodness in life begins with allowing myself to be the willing recipient, which includes deciding that I am worthy of love despite my plethora of imperfections.

I can learn to be gentle with myself, loosen up my expectations, stop focussing on my problems, and get off the self-improvement treadmill. There’s no such thing as perfection, not in this lifetime. Loving myself exactly as I am, warts and all, is kind of the point.

I’ll practice extending the grace to myself that I want to extend to others - it starts with forgiving myself and letting go of what happened in the past. Maybe I won’t ever forget my blunders, but I can absolutely forgive. And when they come to mind, I can remind myself that I know (and do) better now.

I forgive myself. Say it with me. This time, when you say it, I hope you believe it. Like I do.

Buy Me A Coffee? :)

The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.

~Albert Einstein

In our culture, when we think about the mythical fountain of youth, we imagine something that will miraculously keep us strong in body, full of vitality, and free from wrinkles, despite the march of time.

What if the real secret of staying youthful has more to do with the mind than the body? A sign of youth is a supple, flexible body - but what if those qualities apply just as much to our thinking, and might be easier to attain as we mature?

Many of us have had the experience of spending time with an elderly relative who is stubborn, argumentative, and set in their ways. Being in their presence isn’t exactly a treat, and having a conversation may be nothing short of painful. Nobody knows everything, and talking to someone who acts like they do is the quickest way to shut down communication.

If we’re lucky, we’ve also experienced the opposite - an older person who’s a joy to be around, because they are open to new ideas, they’re always willing to learn and discuss a variety of topics, and maybe even try something they’ve never done before.

I think we all know which type of person we’d rather spend time with, and subsequently, which type of elder we’d like to become.

With the aid of the following concepts and skills, we can get there.

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