What we do in society is that we compete for stupid, meaningless prizes. We compete for stupid, meaningless prizes and we can get quite nasty about it. We can get very nasty indeed, and we regularly do! Competing for meaningless prizes and knowing that this…
Normal everyday life is superficial, just as all games are superficial. In a game we go so far into things but no further and that’s what makes the game into a game. The way things are in themselves however is that we can go as…
Our basic sense of security in the world comes from the formula ‘If I do X then Y will happen’ and this – of course – equals control. If we control successfully then this gives rise to euphoria (which is the good feeling that I…
If we aren’t this brittle, insecure sense of self then who are we? This brittle and permanently insecure sense may not be much, but it all we’ve got, after all! It definitely isn’t all that much fun being tied as we are to the mind-produced…
In Chapter 71 of the Tao Te Ching we read the following: It is by being alive to difficulty that one can avoid it. The sage meets with no difficulty. It is because he is alive to it that he meets with no difficulty. When…
The default situation is one in which consciousness is held prisoner by the thinking mind on a full time basis. We don’t ‘think’ that this is the default situation but it is. There are – we might say – two elements here: on the one…
I can’t make myself be in the present moment. I can’t push or coax or cajole myself to be ‘in the now’ – that’s just not the way it happens. I can’t achieve this by following any method or developing a skill in using any…
In each of us there is something that might be called the engine of automatic reacting. Another way to explain this ‘engine’ would be to say that it is ‘force of habit’. This would be the more usual way to talk about automatic reacting, but…