The Gift of Anxiety

Anxiety is a very misunderstood kind of a thing. We see it as being a problem, when really it is a teacher! Anxiety is a teacher and it teaches us something very important – it teaches us who we really are!   Straightaway when we…

The Dream Environment

Our default situation in dreaming is that we are 100% helpless with regard to the script, the drama, the narrative that we are being presented with. The way it usually works is that dreaming – for us – means going along with the script, going…

In the Flow

To say that ‘everything just is what it is’ tends to sound rather vague, rather wishy-washy. It tends to sound emptily portentious. It doesn’t sound like we’re saying anything really. Of course everything is what it is! So what, we might ask. Where does that…

Stepping Outside the Mind

The question is, are we interested in stepping outside of the mind, or are we not interested? This isn’t a loaded question. There’s no right or wrong answer – it’s not a question of what we ought to do – but it is a crucial…

Enmeshed

Our basic situation is that we are solidly, very solidly, enmeshed in the ongoing concrete drama of our lives. We’re caught up in it to the exclusion of anything else. It’s all we know or care about. This sounds like a stupid thing to say…

Noticing Yourself Crack Up

A good way to understand what is happening when we are anxious or panicking is to look at the difference between ‘noticing’ and ‘evaluating’ (noticing being where we are simply aware and present, and ‘evaluating’ being where we are trying to stay in control). Naturally…

Vexations

The idea of vexation, and the state of ‘being vexed’, relies on there being two essential ingredients: [1] – That I want things being a certain way, and [2] – That things aren’t that way. This is so simple and so obvious that we don’t…

Weak Strength

It sounds very peculiar to say that there is such a thing as ‘weak strength’ since it sounds like a contradiction in terms but in actual fact this turns out to be a very handy way of thinking about things. Normally we confuse the two….