Category: The Nature of Thought

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

When in Doubt, Feel

When in doubt, feel.Feeling what’s arising is the ironic way to suffer less. Yes, leaning into discomfort makes it not feel so much like discomfort. The resistance is gone. The hiding and fear are gone. Leaning into safe, perfect energy is all there is.When you feel, what wants to happen is happening. It’s a relief,

Things can Never be Different From how They are

This may sound like some overshared zen saying.But seriously.Things can never, and will never, be different from how they are. Not now, not in the past, and not even in the future.Life will only and always be exactly as it is. No different, no better, no worse. It’s a literal fantasy land to think that

Other People Don’t Have Opinions

I know someone who experiences some low energy, depression-type feelings fairly often and has for a long time.His experience of this has changed for the better over time. He resists it less than he used to. He believes his mind’s stories and judgments about “him and his depression” far less than he used to. He

Birds Don’t Know How and Neither Do You

Birds don’t know how to build nests. They just build nests. Nests are built as this thing we label ‘bird’ instinctually does some stuff.When it’s migration time, they don’t know how or when or where to fly. Wings are flapped and flying happens. Birds’ knowledge, their decisions, their ability, or their clarity have nothing to

Another Place to Look

Everything about our psychological experience is temporary, in motion, and relatively superficial. We feel impacted by it, no question. But the impact we feel is the moving, changing energy taking form as thoughts and feelings. It’s our psychology, our human weather. Those weather patterns move through us, we feel them, and then they’re promptly replaced

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

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

Think of Who Created Thought

Rather than being drawn outward, toward thoughts, sensations, stories, and the world “out there”, stay as the awareness of it all.Rest as the screen rather than getting lost in the movie.Rest as the light that illuminates what’s constantly moving and changing, rather than identifying with the moving and changing things being illuminated.Rest in your heart

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;