There’s a common saying in Zen that says after Satori (Enlightenment, there sits the ordinary old man.

Something extraordinary happens through Enlightenment, but nothing at all. Vedanta — the philosophy Buddhism originates from — translates to “the end of knowledge.”

If Enlightenment is the end of knowledge, the end of struggles and the end of suffering, what is left in life? What is there left to do after the struggle is gone? After all, isn’t part of the beauty of life the struggle, the tears, the heartache and finding healing and peace through it all?

If there’s nothing left to do, if there’s nothing left to strive for, what’s the point of living? What’s the point of living when life itself has no point? What’s the point if the game of life isn’t worth playing?

There is a point though; the creation of your story. The only difference is after Enlightenment and the realization of One Taste, we no longer identify with the drama.

But detachment does not mean not participating. It’s not an escape from life; it’s simply creating your story with the awareness that you are not the story. It doesn’t bother you when your life takes a wrong turn or when something goes awry. In the same way you can celebrate when something wonderful in your life happens, but you don’t get attached because you realize that your story is not you.

Everything in life is a story. The evolution of the Universe, from unconscious matter to becoming conscious, is a story. The Eros of human consciousness, how we evolve from duality and separateness to Enlightenment and union, is a story.

The search for meaning and beauty outside ourselves, and realizing that happiness can only come from within, is yet another story. We turn even the most mundane things (like washing the dishes) into a story. We have all sorts of feelings about everything and we use those feelings and associations to mold our story. Life is a series of stories.

In The Voice of Knowledge, Don Miguel Ruiz makes the point that we are all artists. We are all constantly dreaming, constantly creating and molding our stories. Based on the investment of our beliefs, we shape our story. Since we’re always perceiving new things and events, we filter some out and accept other information and ideas based on how it aligns with the story we want to create.

Like Ruiz, I think it’s a much more powerful paradigm to see ourselves as artists and not “just people.” Even if you don’t think you’re the “creative type,” you are creating all the time. You can’t not create. Every time you breathe, move, or open your mouth, you are creating.

Not Living an Accidental Life

Have you ever taken a step back and just observed life, while thinking “How the hell am I here?” It’s in that stupefying moment you realize that you’re the architect of life, but there’s no blueprint. We have this mysterious internal compass, but beyond that we’re on our own. We have to fend for ourselves and make things up as we go along.

We have to take control and steer through life the best we can. What’s most is that we take the wheel and don’t live on accident. What matters is that we don’t give up our power and relinquish the ownership of our minds.

We have to realize the power of:

The Beautification of Your Mind

There is a lot of credit (and merit) given to creating a beautiful space. We spend inordinate amounts of time decorating our homes, buying new clothes and products in the effort to make our lives more desirable.

But not much credit is given to the beautification of our minds.

We adorn our homes and spaces with expensive things. We often associate the value of our lives with the value of our possessions. Once we buy or obtain the object of our desire, within a few days or hours we’re thinking about our next purchase. The illness of materialism has a stranglehold on us; we are always in need of our next fix.

The reality is that this search for the beautification of our bodies and our spaces will never satisfy us. We have more luxury and more convenience than a lot of Royalty had a few hundred years ago. In fact, royal servants now have more luxury than the same Kings they served a few hundred years ago. Obviously something is seriously wrong. Our value system is distorted. If internal wealth is the greatest asset you can have, why is it so overlooked? Because you can’t see a luxurious mind. You can’t brag to your friends about it. You can’t say “Hey Jim, look at the shiny mind I’ve got. Your internal space looks like a pile of shit.“

So if we can Feng Shui our external space, can we Feng Shui our minds?

I think so. It’s something I’ve been personally vying for.

As I said earlier, the problem with creating a luxurious inner space is that you can’t exactly see a beautiful mind. You can’t measure it, you can’t compare it. Paradoxically, I think this misconceived “flaw” is its most attractive quality. Our obsession with measurement quantification seems unhealthy at best, anyway.

Creating a beautiful mind is about placing permanent fixtures of beautiful ideas in the corners of your mind. It’s about cleaning the cobwebs of self-limiting beliefs. It’s about creating the auto-response to be impeccable with your word, and to not ever use your mind against yourself. It’s about coming to terms with your practical mind, and creating a relationship between your head and your heart. It’s about taking ownership of your mind, and realizing that that is the most powerful and precious gift that you have.

The Tyranny of Monotony

If you’re at all like me, it’s easy to see yourself as an artist for a little while. You might last a few hours or a few days. But then the routine and monotony of life sinks back in. Everything seems to be a repeat of the day before. Every day seems exactly the same.

I’ve found that the best way to combat slipping into the black-hole of monotony is by realizing each moment is brand new. Past and present are illusions. Even if you feel like you’ve been doing the same thing, you really haven’t. This moment is all there is and each time you do something, it’s for the first time. Actually, it isn’t even the first; that would imply that there’s a second and a third. Rather this is the only time you’ve done whatever you’re doing now, and it always will be.

Each moment, each day, we write another page in our story. It’s hard not to get caught up in the routine of life. Each day seems the same and we take for granted our artistic power. We put off the beautification of our minds. Another day, we think. Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes.

The truth is, if we don’t keep ourselves present and realize that with each day we are creating, we will never get to it. We’ll wake up 10 years later and wonder what the hell happened.

We can choose to make our stories a masterpiece, or mediocre. But the point is that we choose now. If we put off our choice, we give up our power. I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford to put it off anymore. I can’t betray myself any longer.

I admit I don’t have all the answers, and I haven’t quite figured out how to completely resist reverting into a routine. What can we do to make our lives more like a work of art, and less like a colorless repeat of yesterday? I would personally love to hear your thoughts on how you remember the artistry of your life and how you resist living uniformly.

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I admit it. I am Enlightened. (If I was going to take the Zen approach, I might say I am Enlightened because I know there is no such thing as Enlightenment.) I’m not afraid to admit that I have “reached” Enlightenment. I think far too many people shy away from talking openly about being Enlightened because it’s such a taboo subject. After all, isn’t Enlightenment something reserved for sages and mystics?

Enlightened people aren’t simply sages though; they’re people like you and me. We wear regular clothes, we work regular jobs, we eat, drink, sleep, and go to the grocery store just like everyone else. You don’t have to be a celibate monk living in a monastery to be Enlightened. Placing Enlightenment beyond yourself just perpetuates the idea that you will never reach it.

I think part of the allure (and taboo aspect) of Enlightenment is the fact that it is so mysterious. Ohh, he’s enlightened, he must be above everyone else, seems to be a commonly held superstition. People think that becoming Enlightened brings you further away from reality. You completely transcend it and dematerialize. Poof. He was enlightened. And then, he disappeared. (Sounds more like David Blaine to me.)

Part of the problem is Enlightenment can mean many things. Bringing light to dark places, bringing clarity, and perceiving the truth are a few different interpretations. But ultimately, Enlightenment is understanding your true nature. It’s the realization that you are not a separate ego, you are the eternal, unbounded energy of the universe.

That’s is a pretty powerful realization. And while I wholeheartedly believe in the value and merit of attaining Enlightenment, I think in some ways it is vastly overrated. That’s because people think Enlightenment means the end of their problems, the end of the struggles of living.

People want their mystics and masters to be free from the same struggles that make them want to escape life. They want Enlightenment to be a panacea for their problems. They don’t want their masters to have the same troubles they have, they want them to be beyond them. They see Enlightenment as some grandeur state where the struggles of life no longer exist.

The great Enlightened masters (Christ, Buddha, Moses, Lao Tzu, and many others), did not become Enlightened and retreat into a cave. They did not merely transcend their egos. They became great big egos. They engaged life completely and fearlessly and shook the earth from its very foundation. They did not seek Enlightenment as an escape from life, but as a means to live more completely.

Many people seek Enlightenment as an escape from life. And while Enlightenment can do many things, there are some things it cannot do:

• Your realization that everything is non-dual will not break all of the previous self-limiting and fear-based beliefs you have with yourself. Breaking those agreements will require hard work and perspiration to change.
• Wearing a Buddha necklace or getting a tattoo of the Yin and Yang will not stop you from having to solve real problems, like how to deal with the job you can’t stand.
• Enlightenment will not solve your relationship problems with others or with yourself. It won’t make your husband any less barbaric, and it won’t lessen the wrath of your wife’s PMS.
• It will not get you out of debt or free you from financial struggle. It won’t stop you from making stupid decisions, like buying an HDTV on credit, after you just missed your mortgage payment.
• Transcending your ego will not make your ego disappear. You will still have to deal with ego-based desire and suffering.

Reaching Enlightenment will not turn you into an invincible ball of energy high above the world and all its troubles. It will not make you immune to the sometimes callous and careless words of others. Perceiving the truth of the Yin and Yang, the Diamond Sutra or the Bhagavad Gita will not make all of your problems go away.

Despite all the things that Enlightenment can’t do, there are certainly many benefits to “achieving” it. Most importantly, it will help you understand your true nature and help you find peace in your heart.

While Enlightenment can’t solve all your problems it certainly can help you realize:

• Death and birth are an illusion. (But someone poking you in the eye still might hurt.)
• Life is a dream with the brain awake.
• Beliefs are subjective. Something is only true if you believe it is. (Except maybe gravity.)
• Life is essentially one, everything is consciousness.

With these realizations you can:

• Know that you are eternal and there is no reason to fear death, or anything for that matter. Essentially, if you are experiencing fear, there’s a bug in your consciousness.
• What you do to others, you are really doing to yourself.
• You know yourself through the difference of others, you perceive in others the reflection of yourself. Ie. if you think everyone else is an asshole, it just might be you.
  
• Because we are all one, compassion and love become the highest principles.

Reaching Enlightenment doesn’t mean your soul shoots out of the top of your heart and you become omniscient. Enlightenment can help solve some of the toughest problems of life. But it is not a means of escape from life.

In reality, enlightenment brings you into a deeper, more intimate relationship with life.

Rather, Enlightenment means dropping into your body more completely. It means living life more fully, passionately and fearlessly.

Enlightenment isn’t about becoming omniscient and escaping life. It’s about living with verve and passion. Am I the only one that’s noticed people put Enlightenment above themselves, out of reach? What do you think, do people have the wrong idea about Enlightenment?

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I’m sure you’ve heard the saying before, “talking to yourself is the first sign of madness.” But is thinking to yourself all the time madness too?

If you’re talking to someone and you never stop to listen, you’ll never hear anything they have to say. In the same way, if you’re talking to yourself all the time (or thinking) you’ll never have anything to think about except thoughts. You’re never in relationship with reality, because you’re living entirely in the world of symbols and concepts.

Reality has concepts and symbols in it, of course. But reality itself is not a concept. It is beyond concepts.

If we’re thinking all the time, we’re constantly comparing and judging everything. Reality definitely has judgment in it, but like concepts, it is beyond them. Most importantly, reality is beyond labels. In order to be in relationship with reality, we need to stop and listen. We need to go out of our mind.

In order to listen, we have to quiet our thoughts. If you’re like me or the other 99.9% of the world, this probably won’t be easy for you at first. We’re used to talking to ourselves constantly. We talk to ourselves in line at the grocery store, at our desks, while we eat. We even talk to ourselves while other people are talking to us.

When I first tried meditating, I tried to silence my thoughts, I tried to shove them out of my mental space. I did this with great effort and determination. Guess what happened? Nothing. Well not nothing, it just made me think even more (this is a common experience). So I tried even harder. I tried to push them out of the way and let no disturbance enter. But the harder I tried, the more disturbed my mind was.

It was like trying to smooth water with a flat iron. You just disturb it even more.

So if mandating your thoughts away doesn’t work, what will? The answer is just to let your thoughts go. Just watch them. Don’t try to stop yourself from thinking, that will just encourage it even more.

In meditation (the art of going out of your mind) there are various props we use to assist us:

• Music. I prefer listening to Japanese flute when I’m listening to music while meditating. Stan Richardson is highly recommended.
• Incense. Our sense of smell is our repressed sense. Focusing on the smell can help give your mind “single-pointedness” and relieve you from distraction.
• Breath. What would this guide be without mentioning our breath? Every meditation guide includes it, and for good reason. By focusing on your breath, you’re making a connection between your body and mind. Notice how your breath can be a both voluntary and involuntary action.
• Walking. I usually have the easiest time meditating while I’m walking. When I’m sitting in one place for a long time, my mind gets restless. When I’m walking, I can focus on the scenery around me and let my mind become quiet.
• Chanting. This isn’t a method I use a lot, but it can be a very powerful one. Chanting Om has been the most effective method for me. I concentrate on the fact that it represents the entire spectrum of sound and therefore the entire energy of the universe.

There are a lot of other methods, or props that can help you meditate and go out of your mind. Laughing is another very powerful one. Simply laugh hysterically. You don’t need a reason, although I recommend doing it when you’re alone, otherwise you might get some interesting looks. This is guaranteed to make you go out of your mind.

There are plenty of resources online that will tell you about the benefits of meditation. Better focus, a more peaceful mind, and the ability to handle negative emotions more easily. I won’t belabor you with all the benefits of going out of your mind, they’re thoroughly covered elsewhere. There is, however, one benefit that I think doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

The Inescapable Feeling of Total Contentment

There’s two different kinds of contentment, little contentment and big contentment. Little contentment is the type of satisfaction you get when you buy that new computer you’ve been saving for. It’s the feeling you get when you accomplish a goal, finish college and get your drivers license for the first time. While this type of contentment is certainly important, there’s a bigger contentment you simply can’t get through any accomplishment.

Total contentment is the feeling you get when your mind is completely empty. You’ve released all thoughts, labels and judgment and you simply are. When you do this, there’s a subtle feeling that there’s no longer a difference between you and everyone else, between what in here and what’s out there.

When you realize this, you realize that everything is already accomplished. Everything that’s strived for has been won, everything that’s been longed for has been attained and everything that’s been desired has been satisfied.

Beyond Your Mind

You feel complete peace, because you don’t identify with anything, you’re simply witnessing without passing judgment (it takes a lot of energy to pass judgment all the time, sometimes you just need a break)

When we silence our minds, we are able to just be; without judgment, without identification, without pining over the past and worrying about the future. We can completely shed our ego and re-center ourselves.

Most importantly, going out of your mind is about finding peace and perspective. Creating a story, with all the drama, the heartache and struggle is a beautiful thing. But if all we identify with is our story, we forget the complete perfection that exists in the present moment. We’re living somewhere else. Instead of living in relationship (and harmony) with reality, we’re identifying with some small portion of it.

Going out of your mind is about reconnecting to the source, remembering where you came from and why you’re here. It’s about finding perspective and solace in the insanity of day to day life.

Going out of your mind might seem insane. It seems like that because you’re not finding an answer within your mind. You’re going beyond it, you’re going to the source.

My recommendation: go out of your mind at least once a day (if it helps you bring it into your routine, you can do it while you brush your teeth).

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For a long time, I debated as to whether or not I should write about my path to personal growth. After much reflection, I decided that if there’s at least one person that can be inspired or learn something from my story, it’s worth sharing. This is a story about how one day changed my life; the day of my overdose.

A Curious Boy

Since I was a young boy, I’ve always had a desire to figure out how things worked, taking them apart and putting them back together. Although the putting it back together part didn’t always work so well. My curiosity for how things work led to me explore how my inner world operated. I questioned the religion I was born with; I questioned the government; I questioned life; I questioned society, education, love, humanity, purpose, and beliefs. You name it, I questioned it.

My interest led me to Eastern philosophy and I began to question my beliefs about reality and how they affected my life. The first book that led me to taking an active role in responsibility for my life was The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I first picked up his book in November 2006. I finished it a few days later.

Reading the Four Agreements changed my perspective on life completely. The Four Agreements essentially says that your life is determined by the beliefs or agreements that you have. You agree that things are a certain way and because you put your faith in them, it becomes true for you. I made a promise to keep these agreements with myself. I wasn’t always successful, but I kept the promise to do my best.

On The Edge

Despite my best intentions to improve my life, I had a highly addictive personality. I would often drink 5-6 times a week and smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. I smoked pot almost daily, as well. For me, having fun and using were synonymous. If there was no alcohol, pot or some other drug, our sole mission was to find some. While this definitely wasn’t harmless, it was beginning of something much worse.

On Halloween night of 2006, a friend at the bar in the bathroom offered me a line of coke. I felt elusive; I could think faster, it boosted my creativity. It felt like nothing I had ever felt before. It felt like heaven. Coke liked me and I definitely liked coke.

Despite how it made me feel that night, I knew the dangers of the drug. Pot, beer, and cigarettes were fine, I thought. But coke? That’s not something I ever want to get involved with. I stood true to myself and didn’t touch it, that was until I moved into a new neighborhood.

4 Liquor Stores in a 2 Block Radius

It wasn’t exactly skid row, but it was definitely wasn’t the nicest neighborhood I’ve lived in. Anytime there are 4 liquor stores within a 2 block radius, chances are it’s not exactly gentrified. One of my roommates was an English major and the other a Vietnamese exchange student who would often warn me about seeing “suspicious behavior” around the neighborhood. I don’t think he knew the full extent of things.

The state of the neighborhood never really bothered me. I saw it as temporary until I could move in with my girlfriend (who is now my wife) in a better neighborhood.

My best friend at the time and I ended up going to my neighbor’s apartment to hang out often (my apartment was not the most ideal place; my roommate stayed in the living room). Apparently, my best friend and my neighbor went way back. I immediately thought his roommate was shady, but my friend assured me he was alright.

Just This Once

The first time I went over to his apartment, his roommate offered me a line. I thought, What the hell, one line couldn’t hurt. A few days later, I bought two grams from him. Being the business man that I am, I figured if I’m going to buy it, I don’t want to waste my money, right? I’ll do half a gram and have him sell the other one and a half. I would make my money back and that would be the end of it. Naively, I trusted him. That was my first mistake.

The next day, I went over to see if he had sold the coke and had my money. He told me that they had stayed up all night doing the coke and would pay me back soon. This guy was a professional hustler and I got beat. It was taking him forever to pay me back and I was getting restless, but since I was his neighbor, he couldn’t avoid me. I knew that he was always broke, but he somehow always had drugs. I told him instead of paying me back in cash, he could hook me up with a line here or half a gram there. If he’s not going to pay me, I thought, I might as well get something. That was my second mistake.

Basically, him paying me back in coke over a period of a week or two made me end up wanting more when he couldn’t come through. I cut out the middle man and started going directly to his dealer. Coke was fun at first, but after a few weeks, the come down was unpleasant. Not to mention, sitting in paranoia half the night, wondering if my roommates could hear me snorting coke. The enjoyment had worn off. It was now an addiction.

Attempting to Start Over

In the midst of all this, my girlfriend and I were moving into a new apartment in a better neighborhood. She had no idea I had even done coke and I made a promise to myself that now that we were moving in together, my affair with cocaine was over. The day my girlfriend moved in, I told her that I wasn’t feeling well, in an attempt to explain my strange behavior (I was really high). She was naive – she had very little experience with drugs – and assumed “my sickness” would pass in a day or two. After she went to bed, I spent most of the night in the bathroom snorting coke into my now obliterated nose or outside smoking. I spent every minute sniffing, not wanting to waste any of the intoxicating drug. My paranoia was getting worse; I became increasingly on edge.

It was somewhere around 3am when my paranoia reached its peak. I couldn’t handle wondering if my girlfriend or the neighbors could hear me anymore. I had bought two grams earlier that day and had about one and a half left. I decided I was going to swallow it. That was my final mistake.

I swallowed everything I had left; I was pretty much out of my mind at this point. I felt a strange mix of paranoia and euphoria. It was as if there was a master control switch to the universe, and it had just been turned from three to two hundred and ten. Sounds I never would have noticed seemed like they were having a live concert inside my head. Endorphins rushed like lightning through my bloodstream. My heart was racing, my body was shaking and I was having heart palpitations. The intensity had become too much. I decided I was going to go upstairs to our loft to lay down and try to relax. The last thing I remember was telling my girlfriend that I loved her.

Disoriented

I didn’t know whether I had been sleeping or had gone unconscious. When I woke up, my girlfriend was on the phone with the paramedics. I was trying to make sense of everything, but every logical faculty within me had been shut down. An ambulance was pulling up to our house and she was directing me to go downstairs. I had a seizure due to overdose. My girlfriend had no idea what happened.

I was rushed to the hospital, hooked up to IVs and given two shots of Ativan, a sedative that is common in the treatment of anxiety and acute seizures. My heart rate was well over 200 and my blood pressure was in the 180’s before I received the medication. My blood pressure finally stabilized after the medication, but my heart rate would not go down. The doctor told my girlfriend it was probably due to anxiety and the emotional stress of what happened and advised her to leave until I calmed down. It was very obvious that I felt like I had completely betrayed my girlfriend; I couldn’t stop thinking about her or what I had done. I was kept in the hospital for 12 hours before my girlfriend picked me up to take me home.

When I got home, the Ativan was still heavily in my system. According to my now-wife, I slept for a few hours, woke up and used the bathroom, where I peed out some of the coke, which was excruciatingly painful. Later that afternoon, my sister arrived from Santa Barbara to give my wife some much needed moral support. My wife was 19 at the time and had just moved out for the first time in her life. Needless to say, she was traumatized. I don’t know how she handled the situation as well as she did.

New Beginning

The next morning I sat down with my girlfriend and sister to discuss what I was going to do to get help. Without them, I don’t know what I would have done. They had a list for me of all the things I needed to do, otherwise my girlfriend couldn’t be with me anymore.

• Break ties with all of my old friends.
• Change my phone number.
• No alcohol, no smoking, nothing.
• Talk to my family and admit my mistakes (as well as with my wife’s dad).
• Go to Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings.

Within days, I did all of these things diligently. Eventually I stopped going to NA meetings, because I didn’t feel they were helping me. While some people really need the help of meetings, I felt they perpetuated my problem. Calling myself an addict just seemed to reinforce my identity with being an addict. I wanted to move past that and identify with something else. I wanted to identify with sobriety. The hardest part of this was when someone asked me “What are you doing to get help?” and my answer wasn’t very concrete. I couldn’t show them a slip my sponsor signed off every week or that I was in a rehab program. “I’m working on it within myself,” was my response.

A few things helped me overcome – my therapist prefers the word “integrate” – my overdose and addiction. I began taking my personal development seriously. I quit drinking and smoking pot immediately after my overdose. I broke all ties with my old friends, including my best friend. This was one of the hardest things for me, but I knew that if I wanted to change, I had to change the people I affiliated with. I also didn’t touch alcohol for a year. I quit smoking cigarettes a few weeks later, after being a smoker for 5 years. I began walking to work everyday, four and a half miles each way. I started journaling and meditating. I began reading Steve Pavlina’s personal development blog. A few weeks later, I had read every article on his site (over 700 articles). I was committed.

Anniversary

May 27th was the anniversary of my overdose and the day that changed my life. I still struggle with how to integrate this experience with my life now, it’s hard to think about how careless I was. Somehow I feel sharing this experience with others will help me though, and hopefully help someone else. I felt a lot of guilt within me and dealt with feelings of betrayal from my wife. I still don’t know how she had the courage to love me through everything, through my deception and dishonesty. She is an amazing woman.

I’ve learned that when something knocks you down in life, you have two choices. You can either lay there and wonder why bad things happen to you, or you can get back up on your feet and make the choice to learn from your mistakes. In my case, I didn’t have the option of letting my pride get in the way. I knew that I had made the biggest mistake of my life. If I didn’t change then, I’m not sure if I would have ever had the opportunity again. I couldn’t take that risk.

I made the choice to learn from my experience and take control of my life. If my life was going to turn around, it was going to be up to me. I don’t know where I got the courage to face my mistakes and move forward the way I did. I think there was an angel watching over me that day. I know there was a chance I could have not made it out of that seizure, but I did. It’s funny, I’ve always told my wife she’s my angel since we first started dating. I think she was my angel that day.

A Light in the Dark

I always wonder if I could go back and change it, would I want it to happen again? I’m really not so sure. Sometimes it takes the most difficult experiences to smooth out the rough edges in your life. In my case, it wasn’t just the edges, but the very core of my being.

I wanted to share my story with you, to let you know no matter what situation you’re in right now, you have a choice. You can always choose a new path. Your path might be littered with obstacles, but it’s those challenges that define your character. Those challenges are opportunities in disguise. They are there to test your strength and your faith. It’s in those moments that we see our light truly shine. We only need to remember, that it’s through the darkness, we can see the light.

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photo by youngdoo

note: This is a summary of much of what can be found in Don Miguel Ruiz’s book The Voice of Knowledge. If you would like to read more about it, I highly recommend checking out his book (any of them for that matter).

We’re born completely authentic. But something happens as we grow up; our authenticity is broken. Growing up we naturally want to please our parents. When we do something “good” we are told we are a “good boy” or a “good girl.” But when we do something “bad” we are told we are a “bad boy” or a “bad girl.” Our parents love us and are just trying to do what’s best for us. But behind their praise and chastising we hear a hidden message: it’s not okay to be who I am.

We are told this in school as well “You had better work hard and get good grades if you want to make something of your life.” Our teachers have the best intentions, but we still hear the hidden message: who I am right now is not good enough.

Our parents, siblings, friends and teachers all have an opinion of us. They think we would be best if we were this way or that way. We should be a certain way, but we are not. This is the beginning of our image of perfection.

The Image of Perfection

Before long we don’t need our teachers and parents to give us this image of perfection, we now have our own judge and our own victim inside our minds. We judge ourselves according to this image. We’re not good enough, we’re not smart enough, we don’t do enough, accomplish enough. We see what we should be, but we are not. In this the drama begins to unfold and the judge and the victim inside our head begin to rule our life.

This voice in our heads (otherwise known as the Voice of Knowledge) is constantly judging us and judging everyone else. But it is based on an image of perfection that we will never achieve! We are born perfect, nothing we do can ever make us perfect. We’re searching for a false image.

Imagine you’re building a house and you need a certain amount of wood to put up the frame. You know you need a certain amount of two by fours, four by fours and plywood. If you run out of wood for a certain part of the frame, you don’t blame the two by fours for being too short. You also don’t blame the plywood for being too flat.

We don’t judge the different pieces of wood for not being anything other then they are. But we do this with ourselves all the time.

A Beautiful Mind

Let’s look at the example of the movie “A Beautiful Mind.” The main character in this movie is a schizophrenic, but he’s also a genius. The problem is he sees people who don’t exist. The people he sees are controlling his life because he listens to them and does whatever they want him to do. After his wife discovers his condition, she puts him in an insane asylum. It’s not until he is given medication that he is able to see his hallucinations aren’t real.

The drug, however, gives him side effects so he stops taking the medication. Now he is faced with a choice, he can either go back to the hospital, lose his wife and accept his mental illness, or he can face the visions and overcome them.

He makes the choice to stay off the medication and battle his hallucinations. He decides “Whenever I see these people, I won’t listen to them. I won’t believe what they tell me.” The more he persists, the less power the visions have over him and he regains his personal freedom.

The beauty of this story is that it shows that if you don’t believe the voice in your head, it loses the power it has over you. So how can we conque the voice in our own head? How can we conquer the tyrant that is ruling our life?

Taming the Voice; Two Rules

Don Miguel Ruiz offers two simple rules for conquering the voice in your head:

1. Don’t believe yourself. But listen to the voice of knowledge because sometimes it might have a brilliant idea. Don’t believe yourself mainly when you are using the voice against yourself. How many times have you said “yes” when you really wanted to say “no”? In the same way, how many times have you said “no” when you really wanted to say “yes”? You didn’t listen to your integrity because the voice in your head wouldn’t let you. The voice in your head is the ability to judge. Because of that, it will always say two different, conflicting things. Listen to the voice, but don’t believe it.

2. Don’t believe anybody else. Just because someone else is telling your their opinion, doesn’t make it true. Realize that they are speaking from the perspective of their own story. When people are talking to you, don’t judge what they have to say, don’t believe what they say. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to them. Listen to their story and follow your own integrity. When someone is speaking from their integrity, our own integrity will be able to recognize it.

As I’ve said earlier, knowledge is the ability to judge. The voice in our head is the voice of knowledge. But that voice is like a wild horse, taking us wherever it wants to go. Once you tame the horse, you can ride the horse. With it, you can take yourself whever you want to go.

Using these two rules has helped me find inner peace. Searching for answers, I knew my image of perfection was unrealistic. I knew that striving for that would never bring me freedom. Knowledge is a valuable tool, but like all great tools, they have their disadvantages. And the principle disadvantage of knowledge is that we confuse it with reality. In reality, everything is perfect. Judgment is a part of reality, but reality itself is beyond judgment.

Points to ponder:

• The truth survives our skepticism, but we can’t say the same about lies. Lies only exist if we believe in them. The truth is the truth whether we believe in it or not. That’s the beauty of the truth.

• The voice of knowledge is a tyrant and it is ruling your life. If you refuse to believe what it says, it will become quieter and quieter. You can now use the voice of knowledge as a tool and reclaim your authenticitiy.

• Everything in creation is perfect, but we don’t see that because our attention is focused on the lies. With awareness, we can recover our authenticity and live in truth.

In the next series on Truth I’ll be talking about the Four Agreements and how you can use them to recover your personal freedom.

What are your thoughts on the Voice of Knowledge? Has the voice inside your head been ruining your life?

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photo by Mrs. Maze

It seems everyone is looking for a secret. Everyone wants the mysterious answer to their problems that somehow eludes them day after day. If only they knew the secret to success, the secret to loving relationships, the secret to losing weight, the secret to being more productive.

It’s easy to see this when so many books on personal development, self help, money, wealth, fitness, and relationships claim to have some secret. “The Secret to a Flatter Stomach in 30 days,” “The Secret to Unlimited Wealth,” or “The Secret to Happiness.”

Is there really a secret though? Or do marketers simply thrive off the allure of proclaiming a so-called secret, something they’ve figured out that no one else has yet grasped? The real secret is..

There is no secret.

That’s right, there is no secret. But everyone’s looking for one, right?

The allure of a secret is so powerful because it implies some hidden knowledge that someone has kept from others because it’s so powerful. The people that know these so-called secrets don’t want others to know about it, because in knowing it, they might be able to compete with them on the same level.

The generous authors of numerous books, seminars and workshops want to give you the secret. How selfless of them. =)

But most of the time when their secrets are revealed they turn out to be nothing more than a quick fix gimmick. A new weight loss pill that will allow you to eat whatever you want and still lose weight! Or the secret to starting a business that will make you rich within months!

The other less common probability when a secret is revealed is that it turns out it wasn’t a secret at all, it was simply common sense.

After all, what’s the biggest secret that’s hit self-help stands across the nation? The Law of Attraction. The makers of the film about this “law” were so bold to call this The Secret.

I think there is a lot of benefit to focusing your thoughts and intentions on what you want to manifest in your life. Don’t get me wrong, I think moving from focusing on what you want, rather than what you don’t want is a big step for many people. As well as the idea that your thoughts manifest reality. But is this really a secret? I don’t think so.

The problem with secrets is they get people so excited over some new realization that’s going to change their lives instantly. Now that they’ve solved the mystery, everything is going to suddenly transform right? Not exactly.

Discovering a new realization, something that is more in alignment (hence the reason they call it the law of attraction) with reality is a big step. It has the power to change lives. The hype of a secret, some new idea that’s going to completely transform your existence is the issue. Discovering a new, more accurate paradigm for reality is huge, but actually implementing that new paradigm into your life is something else entirely.

When people are so focused on the excitement of learning some new secret, they don’t realize what they learned was really…

Common Sense

The Law of Attraction is really common sense. A lot of people might argue with this, because it seems that thoughts creating reality isn’t so obvious. That may be true. It’s easy to see your physical existence as a product of your environment. After all, you are you, and everything else is “out there.” Your thoughts are a product of your environment, right?

Common sense would tell us, yes, our thoughts are a product of our environment. But that’s only looking at half of the picture. That’s implying that physical reality is bigger than us, we are merely perceiving it. We don’t just perceive though, we interpret and respond. We respond not only with actions, but with thoughts as well. And of course we all know thoughts create actions.
So how do thoughts create reality? We must also recognize that just as we respond to the physical world, the physical world responds to us. That’s the part they don’t teach you in school.

Common sense can take us a step further to better explain the law of attraction. Everyone knows that thoughts determine actions. But what about our thoughts manifesting things that aren’t a direct result of our action? Explaining that requires a whole new paradigm. Maybe a secret paradigm? Or can we explain it with common sense? Let’s give it a try.

We all know that we have a physical body, and that we interact in an environment. How do you describe a person though? You describe them by their behavior, what they do. But you can’t describe what a person does without describing their environment. You can’t describe the environment without describing the city, the state, country, continent, planet, solar system, galaxy and eventually the universe. In the same way for us to describe the universe, we describe the stars in the universe. We describe the matter of the stars, their relationship to galaxies, solar systems and planets. We describe the planet in its relation to life, to the water, atmosphere, and land. We describe the water and the land based on the life that inhabits it. Can you see where I’m going with this?

When we really take common sense as far as we can take it, we realize that everything is relational. We realize that every part relies on the other parts. The parts make a whole and the whole makes the parts. This is what’s not as easy to see; in the whole you see the parts, but in the parts there is also the whole.

When we see that each part is the whole it’s easy to understand how the law of attraction works. When you create an intention that intention is not just your individual consciousness’ intention, it is also the intention of the entire universe as well.

So what does this all have to do with secrets?

The reason I wanted to illustrate this point is to show you that there really are no secrets. But there is a lot of common sense.

The reason secrets are so touchy is because they imply a lot of hype. They imply a quick fix to solving your problems. And while a secret may show you some new insight that will help you, there is still the hard work of implementing that new realization. Changing our beliefs and changing our habits requires hard work. This is a rude awakening for secret seekers.

If we are able to realize that underlying secrets (that are actually based on truth) are really common sense, we can approach things from a new level. We can accept that common sense took us there and that common sense will tell us it may not be easy implementing these new habits.

There is no magic pill. Real magic happens when people apply these secrets in their lives.

True transformation involves no quick fixes and real growth can be very challenging. It may not be as glamorous and alluring. But it will be genuine.

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