Category: Being Human

Time is Thought

A habit or ongoing problem, by definition, requires memory. It requires a brain that pulls ideas, concepts, and memories through time and draws sweeping conclusions about them. A brain that says, “This thing happened in the past, so I assume it’ll happen again in the future.” Without a past and future conversation, there’s just Now. Anything that’s

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Life Is Change

It can look like we’re responsible for making things happen. Life looks like our responsibility. Our outcomes, including our own peace of mind, happiness, and anything we want to change, appear to be up to us to figure out. But what if change is not up to us? What if human minds love to take credit for things,

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Attachment to Ideas is Supposed to Hurt

Suffering is feedback, showing us that we’re attached to ideas and thoughts that appear true, but aren’t. For example, when you believe you’re not good enough or life should be other than how it is, you suffer. That suffering is alerting you to your identification with a fleeting, false idea. Like suffering, habits and anxiety are

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A Watched Pot Boils (it Just Feels Like it Doesn’t)

We’ve been led to believe that our thoughts and feelings are ours to manage and control. At the very least, most people believe there are things we can do to help our mind relax or to help ourselves feel better. But what if thoughts and feelings change completely on their own, all the time? You couldn’t stop

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There is No Reason

What if there is no actual reason for anything? I mean, there is and there isn’t. In the linear, cause and effect, mentally created story of life, there are oodles of reasons. Everything has a reason in that world. In a way, that world is completely made up of reasons, causes, explanations, and if-this-then-that’s. In that world, you’re

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Marching Orders

I was talking with someone the other day who was telling me that she has some decisions to make about her kids’ school. I asked what she needs to decide. She didn’t answer my question. Instead, she explained that every time she pulls through the drop-off line, her mind starts spinning. Are we in the right

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You Don’t Have to be OK With Anything

It’s fine if you’re not okay with what you’re experiencing. Really. Being okay with what’s arising is not a requirement. It’s not the ticket to freedom or the key to satisfaction or anything that dramatic. Experience doesn’t care how okay with it you are. Experience is just experience; it is thought, rising and falling. No biggie. And “okay with”

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Hand-Me-Downs

I’m the oldest child in my family and the oldest of my 9 cousins, so I never wore hand-me-down clothes. I’ve definitely worn some hand-me-down thoughts, though. I carried around hand-me-down opinions and preferences for decades. I’ve adopted boatloads of hand-me-down worries, and lots of hand-me-down identities.Many of them felt familiar, like they fit. Like they had been

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Gazeless Gaze

“Establish a drishti, a gazeless gaze toward something in the room that’s not moving,” the teacher tells the class. My eyes settle on a grain of white wood molding where the floor and wall meet, about seven feet in front of me. The instant my gaze settles into that spot, my body is steadier. When we have

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The Game of Life is No Different from The Game of Life

Life is already living you, making your decisions, steering you along the way. It always has been.Life doesn’t care if you see that it works this way or not. It’s still living you. There is nothing you must see or know in order for this to be the case.I’m not talking about things being predestined;

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