Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Is it Time for Another Mainstream No You Book?





Intro:

What would it mean to you to access more peace in any situation? 

What would it mean to you to end disagreements with your spouse or friends? 

What would it mean to you to put that nasty coworker in her place? Or to handle negotiations with ease? 

And what would it mean if you could stop believing you need to fix your flaws before you can really start living?

If I could give you one single takeaway from this book, it would be this:

You don’t need to fix anything because you are not who or what you think. There is no psychological method to fix what's broken in you. There is no higher self to become, no spiritual path to follow, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with you right now, as you are.

Instead, just take a look at who you think you are and you'll discover that it's not at all what you've been taught. Not only that, but you are right now and have always been free to be whomever you wish and who you really want to be. You have the freedom to dream up and be a new self any time you like. Want to change  the patterns in your life? There is absolutely nothing truly holding you back.

Intuitively, you already know this. I’m just here to remind you, and to show you that there's a door. And don't worry, this book is here to hand you the key so you can unlock it for yourself.


Outro:
This is the opening to a "Hey Look! There's No You!" book idea I've been throwing around since 2011. Because I believe that even if you're not a seeker, there are positive effects from understanding a basic truth about the self. That's because it's the very foundation for human behavior and seeing it for what it truly is, and experiencing that truth on a gut level. But even an intellectual understanding can sometimes work wonders to draw attention to the fact that reality is not as it seems. Once that bridge is crossed, (and some would still call that a gateless gate rather than a bridge), options for experiencing the world differently are endless.

There's just one little problem with my "dream".

I've tried to bring this to non-seekers, and most don't like the idea. Some think it's a New Age idea (and it's been appropriated by New Agers), and others think it's just some sort of method of escaping reality. And some believe they understand it and so dismiss it, but have not realized the implications.

How ironic.

The very thing that exposes reality for what it is, is seen as a fantasy and escape.

Of course I'm not the first to try to write about this. A few great reads come to mind The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger. The Self Illusion by Bruce Hood. Self Comes to Mind by Antonio DaMasio. They are all excellent books that take a scientific approach and explain the concepts thoroughly and extremely well. Maybe too well in that they allow the reader to repeatedly "think the concepts through" when what's really helpful is to give them a tool to separate reality from thought, and to then investigate the problem for themselves. 

The discovery that there is no you isn't life-altering or paradigm-shifting until it's experienced first hand! And then it's like dropping.. well... everything you've carried. It's an unparalleled sense of freedom and equanimity. Sure, it may come and go after the first taste, but if you've got the tool to continue to investigate, the door is always just a step away.

Sometimes it hurts to see humans interact while blinded by their selves. And pointing out that, "hey, there's another way to view this scenario" is dismissed. Emotion and ego rules.

But I'll keep plugging away. Chapter 1 is just about complete. The book most certainly won't be on the bestseller list. But it'll be there just in case someone's looking for that particular message.

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

At The Drop of This Leaf

Well hello there.

It's been quite a few years, I guess. I've come back to this blog time and again but never really found much to talk about. It seems that whatever needed to be said has already been written.

Until now.

No longer involved in Liberation Unleashed, Truth Strike, Ruthless Truth, or even No-self.com, I can say that I miss those early days and feeling as though the biggest secret in the history of mankind had been discovered. When this was fresh and new, it was heady.

It's still heady, but not quite in the same way. Now, it's about flashes of realizing the implications of that discovery, and also realizing that it's endless, sort of like taking a long walk on an infinite pier.

It's also about navigating the world with this realization.

It's about trying to explain what is now understood about human dynamics.

It's about trying to not talk in Yoda riddles all the time.

Sometimes it seems that there are only two paths left. One is to forget moving in the world of seekers and instead just assimilate back into the everyday. And the other is to stay within the small worlds of seekers because at least they know what you're talking about when this weird and contradictory stuff comes out of your mouth.

I dunno.

One way I tried to work it out was to start a Facebook group about life after realizing that it's not your life and yet there's freedom to imagine any old self at all. But that's absolutely contradictory if you think about it. And yet, here it is, happening. It's an awfully hard concept to work with because it doesn't fit any other paradigm that can be referenced. Not a one.

Whew. What a non-place to find.

Life is a free-float with imagined moorings. Sometimes I get a bit sad about that, especially when noticing emotional pain all around. The understanding that it's illusory was supposed to bring freedom, and it does. But it also brings so much compassion for the human condition that it can move my emotions to and fro. They whip around as though caught in gust of wind causing the final drop of a leaf.

Wouldn't trade it for anything.