I suspect that you’ll find these two questions extremely helpful to you.

Sent : Tuesday, February 9th 2010

By : Nicolas D.

 Hi Bill,
Thank you for the course. And for Holosync (I just started Awakening Level 2).
I am an outwardly very successful young man (29).  I graduated from an Ivy League law school and landed a high-paying job in a prestigious law firm in Manhattan a year ago.  I am fit and good-looking (I am told) and I have a gorgeous and very supportive girlfriend.  I credit these achievements in part to Holosync and the work I have done with the Sedona Method over the past 3 years. With these two things I have experienced sometimes extended glimpses into the Oneness, the perfection that exists every moment.
Yet I still spend a lot of time being miserable (that’s why I am in the course).  I function much more easily now than I did a year ago, but I am still miserable overall.  I have tried to make internal representations of being happy or having a more meaningful job, and it works some, but it also triggers brutal surges of anger and sadness.  Writing out my beliefs, I noticed that at some level I like my misery (that was an interesting realization but guess what it did to the anger). I am furious that everything seems to be going so well, I have so many people who love me, and yet I am miserable. My girlfriend does not understand it; my parents don’t understand it; I don’t understand it. I don’t know what internal representations would make me happy or what I need to create because I hate even the word “happy.” I feel like my whole castle is built on clay.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
–Nicolas

Nicolas,

You’re asking a very intelligent and interesting question. Believe me, you aren’t the only one who feels this way.

First, if you aren’t a reader of my blog, there are many articles there that address some of your questions in more detail than I can go into here (as do future lessons in these online courses, for that matter). In particular, read the posts, The Five Stages of Enlightenment and So, There You Are, Enlightened. Also,  What If There’s Nothing You Can Do to Change, and News Flash: There’s No Escape.

What I say in this course is absolutely true: what YOU DO in your Internal Map of Reality creates your experience of life. The basic vocabulary of that Map consists of the internal representations you make (internal pictures, internal dialog, etc.), moment by moment. All the other things we’ll cover in this course (beliefs, values, strategies, etc.) are made up of internal representations. In a simplified sense, when the internal representations you make are of what you want or what you think is possible, you feel generally good, and when they are of what you don’t want, what you’re afraid of, what you’re worried about, or what you want to avoid, you generally feel some sort of unpleasant feeling (as you describe feeling about your life).

Each person has his or her own method, you might say, of automatically and unconsciously deciding what internal representations to make in response to various sensory triggers (what you see, hear, feel, touch, etc). Though learning how to do this continues throughout life, most of how we do this is learned during childhood, and traumatic experiences–which don’t have to be huge earth-shattering events, and which we all have many of–teach us that certain things in life pose a danger, or a potential danger. When something happens that reminds us of that danger, we automatically and unconsciously make internal representations of what we don’t want, and then we feel bad in some way (and, if we do this often enough, we give the mind what we don’t want as a goal, which causes us to attract or create more of it).

All bad feelings are created by making internal representations of what we don’t want.

Trying not to make internal representations of what you don’t want (the will power approach) is only marginally successful. First of all, we’re unaware of nearly all our internal representations, and they go by very quickly. And, more important, as long as the underlying belief that this or that danger exists, trying to change the internal representations you make is really just treating the symptom.

Let’s say that there’s something you see as a danger–say, social situations, just to make up an example. Because they’re difficult for you, when you’re in a social situation you’ve decided that you’re going to make internal representations of everyone liking you, you being charming and interesting, and so forth. But here’s what happens: when you make these internal representations of what you want, they actually remind you of the danger you want to avoid. Focusing on what you want just reminds you of what you don’t want, which instantly shifts your focus to avoiding it (which involves making internal representations of the danger)–as long as your belief in the underlying danger continues to exist.

So the way out of this isn’t to use will power to change your internal representations. I suppose that if you did this long enough you might create a new habit, but personally, in helping nearly a million people with this sort of thing over 30 years, I haven’t seen that approach be successful to any great extent.

Here’s what does work, though: doing whatever you’re already doing, making whatever internal representations you’re already making, but doing it with awareness.

If you’re going into a social situation and focusing on what you’re afraid of, watch yourself do it. Observe what triggers you, observe what internal representations you make in response to the trigger, and observe the feelings and behaviors that directly result from those internal representations.

When you do this you clearly see that 1) the internal representations (not the situation) create the feelings and behaviors, which means that 2) the feelings and behaviors come from YOU, from something you DO, not from the situation, and 3) you see that IF YOU ARE AWARE ENOUGH TO WATCH IN THIS WAY you have a choice as to what internal representations you make. This ultimately involves a realization that what you thought was a danger isn’t really a danger (it doesn’t cause the problem you’re having–it triggers you to unconsciously create the FEELING of danger in your mind).

Most people think it works this way:

trigger–>resulting feeling, behavior, or other result.
It actually works this way:

trigger–>internal representations–>result.
The choice point is in that second step–which happens, for 99.99% of people, outside their awareness. Anything you do outside your awareness happens WITHOUT CHOICE.

Watching yourself do something that doesn’t serve you (and by watching I mean seeing HOW what you do creates it–in this case, your making certain internal representations of what you don’t want, are worried about, are afraid of, or otherwise want to avoid) makes it very difficult to keep doing it. Your enthusiasm for doing it, if you watch yourself do it with awareness, just fades away. As a result, you stop.

Another way to go at this, from another angle, is to look at the underlying belief that social situations are a potential danger (I’m just making up this example–I’m not saying that you have this particular problem). If you knew that you believed that social situations were a danger to you, and you were going to use enhanced awareness to drop that non-resourceful belief, you’d go into a social situation saying to yourself, “I know exactly what’s going to happen here. Because I believe that I’m going to look like an idiot and cause people not to like me, I’ll do certain things that will help me prove that this belief is true.”

Then you would watch, with great curiosity, to see HOW you do this. You’d watch the internal representations you make. You’d watch which people you interact with and how you choose them. You’d watch what you’re saying, what gestures you make, what facial expressions you make, and so on. You’d watch how you respond (internal and externally, especially watching the internal pictures you make and your internal dialog) to what other people do or say. You’d watch what interpretations you place on what people do or say. Knowing that you are going to prove that you are right about your belief, you’d watch to see how you do it.

As in the other example, if you watch with enough awareness and curiosity to really see how you “prove” that you’re right about your belief, you’ll see that YOU are creating that proof, and that there are other choices. You will, then, automatically stop choosing to sabotage yourself and choose something more resourceful. You won’t have to will yourself to do it–the basic belief will fall away all by itself and you will choose something that does work. In lesson 2 or 3 I tell the story of how I did this with a very negative belief I had about women and relationships.

Being aware of how you create your feelings, behaviors, which people and situations you attract or become attracted to, and what the events of your life mean is NOT the same as “knowing” that you do these things. Most people know what things are going sideways in their life. I’m talking about actually watching the internal processes you use to create these things, as you do them. This is the meaning of awareness.

So what you need to do is to become an expert in observing each part of your Internal Map of Reality as we cover them in this course [for a preview lesson of these courses, go to www.centerpointe.com/life/preview]. Of course, there isn’t really enough time in just the 2 weeks between lesons to do this (though you can go slower if you wish). If I left enough time between lessons to master each lesson, there would be one lesson every six months, or one every year. This is rather something that you can become better and better at over years, and never completely master. I had to strike a balance between leaving enough time to get in some experience with observing each aspect of your Internal Map, and having the new lessons come soon enough to keep people engaged. Many people retake the lessons because they find the second time they get MUCH more from them and can go a lot deeper than they did the first time.

So in your case, one of the things you would pay attention to is HOW you create this feeling of misery–because, believe me, you are creating it by what you do inside. It’s just that you’re doing it outside your awareness, which makes it seem as if it’s “just happening”. When we do that (do it outside our awareness), whatever we’re doing we can just keep doing it for an entire lifetime–and most people do. It’s when we’re able to step back and observe HOW we do it, with awareness and curiosity, that whatever doesn’t work just falls away.

So all you have to do is watch with awareness, and everything adjusts itself, all by itself. No will power is required. (And, I’ll bet you’ve never heard anyone teach this before, but believe me, it works.) Perhaps I shouldn’t glibly say, “so, all you have to do is…” because it takes practice to learn how to watch in this way, and it take expanding your awareness, which is why Holosync is so valuable.

My suggestion is to practice watching your internal representations (mostly your internal pictures and internal dialog) for 5 minutes or so three times a day: when you first wake up, when you turn out the light to go to sleep, and perhaps one other time during the day. Just pick something that happened during the day and think about it. Notice what internal pictures you make, and notice what you say to yourself about it. And, notice how your internal state (which includes your feelings) changes as a result of the internal representations.

You can also think of something you really want, notice the internal representations you make (and the internal state that is created), then think of something you strongly want to avoid, notice the internal representations you make (which will be of something you don’t want), and notice how your state changes (it will probably change to a negative state). Seeing how you create your internal states begins the process of having choice over them. In doing this you’ll probably also notice (as I said above) that when you’re thinking about an area of life you associate with danger that trying to think about what you want will actually trigger you to think about what you don’t want–an example of why will power doesn’t work.

Let it be okay that this watching isn’t easy at first. Just play with it a little bit every day and you’ll start noticing what you’re doing inside and how it affects how you feel, how you behave, and so on. You’ll see ways that you’re sabotaging yourself by focusing on what you don’t want. As I said, as long as you do this outside your awareness, you can keep doing it, and keep creating bad feelings and negative outcomes, forever. Do it with awareness, though, and what doesn’t work falls away. When you become aware in the way I’m suggesting, many human problems are automatically solved. In fact, if you are aware enough, every human problem that can be solved IS solved.

However, there are certain aspects of being human that have no solution. The two main categories involved are:

1) The fact that everything is, ultimately, impermanent, which means that everything eventually ends, falls apart, goes away, etc. This causes pain for human beings, and there’s no escape from impermanence. You can “escape” from creating a lot of self-sabotaging internal representations about what you don’t want regarding impermanence, but the fact that everything ultimately ends has no solution (other than acknowledging it and surrendering to it).

2) The second thing we can’t escape from is the fact that we’re caught in a huge web of cause and effect, including cosmic and geological forces over which we have no control (the sun, earthquakes, weather, gravity, and so on), and the fact that there are 6.7 billion other people (and a hell of a lot of other living things) that have agendas that often conflict with ours. For that reason, we quite often get what we don’t want or fail to get what we do want. Again, by being more aware you can avoid some of that, but you can’t avoid all of it, and this, too, is a source of pain for humans.

So, to me, the goal is to become as aware as possible, so as to exercise as much choice as possible over the things we can do something about (which includes a lot: 1) how we feel, 2) how we behave, 3) which people and situations we attract or become attracted to, and 4) what we think the events of life “mean”). Awareness creates choice, while a lack of awareness allows things to happen on autopilot, making them seem to “just happen.”

Then, we work on acknowledging and accepting those things we can’t do anything about so as not to resist them (which we do by making internal representations of what we don’t want when we encounter them) because this resistance just causes unnecessary suffering, both for us and for others.

Hope this helps. As you go through these lessons [in the Life Principles Integration Process online courses], work on actually watching (rather than just intellectually “knowing about”) each aspect of your Internal Map, as I cover each of them.

Again, great question.

Be well.

Bill

***

Hi Bill,
I had written you a few months back about night terrors I was having, and how I felt holosync had contributed to it and how I felt I didn’t know if I could keep living with them. I did call the support line as you recommended, and found that the night terrors were the dark side of ME! I thought they were coming from outside of myself, such as mean people I had been around etc. But they were coming from the mean thoughts that I was having about the mean people. Imagine that. I haven’t had one since. YEAH, what a relief, to actually own that dark side (voice) and to truly realize and get through to my brain that everything is truly created from inside of me, not outside of me is huge.

Just started Awakening 2 about 5 weeks ago, and all the warm fuzzy feelings I had gotten to when I finished up Awakening 1 are gone, I know that I will come out on the otherside and be warmer and fuzzier, I can’t help wanting it to be now, rather than later.

Thanks for all you do
Buzz

FROM BILL: From time to time someone contacts us because they are having uncomfortable experiences while using Holosync. We tell them that those experiences are not “caused” by Holosync, but instead are coming from them. Often they are unwilling to acknowledge this, and accuse us of not wanting to take responsibility for what they see as Holosync harming them. I congratulate you on your willingness to look into this more deeply and to acknowledge that what you were experiencing was, indeed, coming from you.

What people often don’t get is that it’s GREAT that it’s coming from you. That means you can do something about it.

This also illustrates two things I’ve been saying non-stop for over 30 years: when you are doing something unconsciously, outside your awareness, it seems as if it is “just happening.” Once you’re able to watch yourself do it, with awareness, and see HOW you’re doing it, it falls away, just as it has with you. As you continue you may discover more things in your life that are like this, but each time you do it is an opportunity to let it dissolve.

This is also a great example of shadow material, and how we’re convinced that it’s coming from others, not from ourselves. You had disowned “meanness” and so you attracted mean people and even manifested them in your dreams. Owning that it was coming from you caused it to disappear. If you haven’t read the posts I’ve done about shadows, you might find them very interesting at this point. I’m sure they will give you further clarity about shadows and how they work in our lives.

***

Before you go, please check out these two recommendations:

The seats are going fast for the “Technologies of Awareness: Buddhism and the New Mind Sciences” conference I’m speaking at, at Smith College in April. In fact, this looks like the most popular event I’ve done since I first started doing workshops with Zen master Genpo Roshi. If you want to experience this, please act right away. And, we’ve made it REALLY inexpensive.

This is turning out to be so popular that we are having professors from Harvard, Yale, and several other universities calling and asking if they can attend. Also, a number of professors want to require entire classes of theirs to attend, but I’ve held them off, for now, to give Centerpointe people the first chance at these seats.

This is something you should strongly consider attending, but you need to act soon because it is filling up much faster than I anticipated, and I’m going to have to make it available to students very soon.

Here are the details:

If you’re interested in how cutting-edge science and spirituality intersect and affect each other, this is for you:

On April 10 I’ll be participating in a very special, one-time-only event at Smith College in Western Massachusetts, and I’d like to invite you to be there. Wait till you see who is involved.

Several months ago I discovered that famed Buddhist scholar Jamie Hubbard (the Yehan Numata Professor of Buddhist Studies at Smith College in Massachusetts) is an avid Holosync user. We met and spent some time together, and he suggested that we put on a workshop together and invite some of the other “consciousness luminaries” he knows (many of the scientists that have been studying the Tibetan monks around the Dalai Lama, for instance, are his friends, as are other well-known figures in Buddhism and transformational work, such as Dan Goleman of emotional intelligence fame).

So, on April 10th we’re holding a day-long seminar at Smith College in beautiful western Massachusetts, tentatively called “Technologies of Awareness: Buddhism and the New Mind Sciences”.

We’re particularly interested in looking at the newer and more innovative methods of changing consciousness (including Holosync) and discussing how valid (and effective) they actually are compared to the ancient and time-tested traditional approaches.

Smith College is in beautiful Northhampton, Massachusetts, a short hop from New York, Boston, and other parts of the eastern U.S. The area is home to innumerable universities, spiritual centers, and Buddhist groups, where the intelligentsia, scientists, and practitioners of the spirituality of consciousness have congregated, making it a hotbed of ideas.

Jamie will speak, and also moderate the day (you will not want to miss his talk–he is NOT a dry and boring academic), I will speak, Zen master Genpo Roshi (creator of the innovative Big Mind-Big Heart process that Ken Wilber has described as “the biggest breakthrough in Buddhism in the last 200 years”) will speak, and the final speaker will be Andrew Olendzki, PhD., a Pali scholar (the language of the original teachings of the Buddha) trained in Buddhist Studies at Lancaster University in England, as well as at Harvard and the University of Sri Lanka. He’s the former executive director of IMS (Insight Meditation Society), the executive director of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies (BCBS) in Barre, Massachusetts, and editor of the famous Insight Journal.

But, as they say when selling the ShamWow, “But that’s not all you get.”

And, this, to me, is the most exciting part of the whole thing…

To continue reading, go to www.centerpointe.com/smith-college

**

One more recommendation:

One of the most amazing things I’ve ever done is to attend Dr. James Hardt’s Biocybernaut Institute Alpha Brainwave Training. Dr. Hardt, who has become a good friend, is probably the world’s greatest expert on brainwaves and how they relate to various spiritual states (which I find extremely interesting). His trainings, among other things, teach you, using biofeedback, how to make the brainwaves of these states–something that can take decades of meditation to achieve–in just a week-long training.

For more information, go to his website, www.biocybernaut.com. This is NOT cheap, I’ll warn you, but if you can afford to do it, it will change your life. Either way, the website is fascinating, and well worth exploring. Many Centerpointe people have done his Alpha I training (and many have done some of his more advanced trainings) and every one of them I’ve spoken to has been absolutely blown away by what happened. This truly is life-changing.

And, by the way, Dr. Hardt has been blown away by the brain waves he sees in Holosync users. I was with him a few weeks ago when a skeptic asked him “So, does Holosync create meditation?” Dr. Hardt said, “Holosync is better than meditation.”

Finally, I want to make it clear that I’m recommending Dr. Hardt because I think you will benefit–I receive no money or other compensation for recommending this (or, for that matter anything else I recommend).

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Though we need to create these mental divisions in order to navigate our life, when we mistakenly assume that these divisions are intrinsic to reality, we create suffering for ourselves–especially in the sense that we begin to feel as if we are one of those separate things, and that we are separate and alone and at risk in a dangerous world. As the poet A.E Housman put it, we feel “separate and afraid, in a world I never made.”

In reality, everything is connected and flowing along like water in a river. We mentally chop it up in order to help ourselves navigate our way through life. There’s nothing wrong with doing this. The problem isn’t dividing things into this and that, but forgetting that things aren’t really divided. We’re just doing it, in our mind, as a convenience.

Seeing this aspect of reality “the way it really is” allows us to feel a connection to everything else that is quite real–it IS the way things really are. Experiencing our unity with the rest of existence at least mitigates the feeling of isolation and separation we feel as humans. Since this involves seeing the interconnected onenessness (to use the New-Agey term) of everything, you might say that this is the positive side of the coin–the aspect of existence that most people idealize and would like to see as it really is. Few people would say, “Ugh. I don’t want to experience my oneness with everything.”

On the other side of the coin we have what people generally don’t want to see as it really is, the side of the coin that they perceive to be a source of suffering and pain. What’s on the other side of the coin? That all things in this world are impermanent and ultimately fall apart or end, and that we exist in a huge matrix of cause and effect relationships over which we have little control and which sometimes causes things to turn out in ways we don’t like. 

We would love to escape from the fact that the things we love or want, even if we do get them, are impermanent. We naturally become attached to people and things, and inevitably those people or things go away, fall apart, or end. But there is no escape from impermanence. It’s build into the human condition. And, it’s painful.

We also often don’t like what we experience as a result of all the cause and effect relationships we’re caught in, because much of it we have no control over. As a result, we inevitably end up, at least part of the time, either failing to get what we want, or getting something we don’t want.  

So impermanence and cause and effect represent the side of the coin most people don’t want to look at or acknowledge. Many who seek spiritual awareness, for instance, mistakenly think that spiritual awakening is a way of eliminating this “negative” side of the coin. Most of the new Western spirituality is based on this “get rid of the negative” type of thinking. Isn’t there a contradiction in the idea that we should be negative about negativity? What a rude shock it is to find that as you become more aware you also become aware of the parts of the universe you don’t like! [See parts 1 &2 of this series for a more complete treatment of these "two sides of the coin."]

In this post I want to personalize the idea of seeing things the way they really are a bit more by looking at another aspect of this other side of the coin and asking you whether or not you can see yourself (and accept yourself ) as you really are.

Most people–especially those involved in personal growth–are avidly trying to get rid of or change certain aspects of who they really are. When I speak for groups and ask the audience members to give me a list of ways I can help, I always hear a list of aspects of  being human that they want to get rid of. Only occasionally does someone ask me how they can accept some aspect of being human. I’ve pointed out before that this game of trying to get rid of what you think of as “negative” is a suffering-inducing double bind. It creates an insoluable problem leading to a great deal of human suffering.

Resisting “what-is” in yourself is one of the greatest sources of suffering in your life. And, if you’re busy trying to get rid of the “bad half” of yourself, how will you ever experience this oneness you seek? You can’t experience your unity with everything while resisting or disowning half of existence.

So what can you do? Is there anything you can do? This is a fascinating question, so let’s take a look at it.

If we’re going to look at whether or not we can see (and accept) ourselves the way we really are, we’re first going to have to figure out who we really are. Part of that will be to look at ourselves in terms of both sides of the coin I mentioned above. We’re going to have to look at whether or not we can accept that we–and, in fact, all humans–have, and express, both sides. When we resist (or even try to ignore) either side, we cause suffering, both for ourselves and for others. Some people resist the transcendent side, some the relative side, and some resist both sides.

And, our resistance to seeing (and accepting) things the way they really are creates a great deal of suffering for us and for others.

Many people are experientially unaware of the transcendent side of the coin. This makes it difficult, of course, for someone to accept that they ARE the transcendent. (And, of course, if you believe in a dogma that contends that, yes, there is a transcendent (God, Higher Power, Great Spirit, Ground of Being, etc.) but you’re separate from it, that belief will also make it difficult to experience yourself as the transcendent.) So ignorance can keep you from seeing things the way they really are, and one form of ignorance is our mental constructs, our ideas, about reality (including the idea that we are separate from the whole).

Experiencing yourself as the transcendent (as opposed to just believing in it), then, is a huge breakthrough for a human being. Historically this realization, however, has been quite rare. There are certain practices that make it more likely, but no one knows for sure why some people experience it while others, despite years of dedicated spiritual practice, don’t.

One aspect, then, of seeing yourself the way you really are is experientially knowing that you are the One. Since all there is is the One, you have to be It, just as a wave is the ocean, manifesting for a while as a wave. This realization changes the way you see existence, at least in an ultimate sense. For instance, what happens to your physical body, whether this or that event does or doesn’t happen, whether your life is long or short, and other such things don’t, in an ultimate sense, matter. Billions of “you’s” will come and go, just as waves arise from the ocean and then sink back into it. In an ultimate sense you have nothing to worry about. The whole giant going-on-of-it-all will always be, in one form or another, and that’s who you really are. An experiential knowingness that you are the ocean, not just the wave, lets you relax about what happens.

This is the “being” side of what it means to be a human being. Let’s look, then, at the other side of the coin, the human side, the human who has to live in the relative world, the world of discrimination, impermanence, and cause and effect. Can you see THAT the way it really is? Can you really see and accept your humanness, without resistance, without denial?

Humans are descriminating creatures. We divide things into this and that, and especially into good and bad. Then we seek the good and resist the bad. If we are aware enough, we see that discrimination is both a valuable tool and a game–a game where the rules (what is good, what is bad, and which should win) are arbitrary, different for every person, and always changing. But still, to be a human being, you have to play. You WILL discriminate between made-up categories. And, this will lead to at least SOME resistance and SOME clinging. Because all things you cling to are impermanent, that will cause suffering. Can you see that this is so? Can you accept it?

And, because there are 6.7 billion other people on Earth, and innumerable geological and cosmic forces over which you have little or no control, you’ll often fail to get what you want, or get what you don’t want.

But here’s where it really gets interesting–and, for most people, difficult. As a human being, you contain, at least in potential (and very likely in action and reality), ALL the qualities human beings are capable of. You’re generous AND selfish. You’re kind AND mean. You’re selfless AND egotistical. You’re compassionate AND heartless. You’re smart AND stupid. And so on. You have every “good” quality you can think of, at least in potential. And, you also have every “bad” quality you can think of: lack of integrity, narcissism, selfishness, anger, hatred, cruelty, pride, greed, stupidity, aimlessness, confusion, etc., etc., etc.–you have it, at least in potential (and, as I said, quite likely, at least some of the time, in action and in reality).

This is one of the most difficult aspects of being a human being to accept. If you’re like most people you do your best to repress the “bad” qualities. After all, when you exhibit them other people don’t like you. We learned this from our parents when we were small–to be okay, we had to be a certain way, and this included “not being bad”.

Showing these bad qualities, according to society, means not being okay, that you aren’t a good person, that there’s something wrong with you. As I’ve said before (see for instance, my posts about shadows and the Game of Black and White) when you repress or disown these normal (”bad”) human qualities they express themselves anyway, in immature and dysfunctional ways that create suffering both for you and for others.

And, of course, many people have trouble accepting that they have certain “good” qualities. Instead, they idealize those they think have these qualities (often assuming, at the same time, that these people also don’t have the “bad” qualities). Then, when they discover that those they’ve idealized are human, too, they experience great disappointment.

When you deeply acknowledge that both the good and the bad are normal parts of being human, and admit to yourself that you have all of these qualities, at least potentially, something remarkable happens: these immature qualities mature into something beneficial, for you and for others. (Just to give one example of a “negative” quality: selfishness, when acknowledged and accepted, matures into self love and positive self-regard. This then leads to the ability to genuinely love and care for others. When resisted and disowned, however, selfishness expresses itself anyway (because as a normal part of being human it cannot be eliminated), in ways that create suffering for you and for others. See my posts on shadows for a much deeper discussion of how this works.)

The same goes for emotions. It’s normal for human beings to feel good AND to feel bad. The prevailing view of the new Western spirituality is that having a bad feeling means you’re doing something wrong, or that there’s something wrong with you. Thinking that there’s something wrong asks you to disown or resist half of being a normal human being. When you resist who you are in this way, you end up creating or attracting more of the very thing you’re trying to get rid of. On the other hand, when you acknowledge and accept your emotions, whatever they are, they mature. There is a seed of something wonderful in all your feelings, not just the “good” ones.

As always, awareness (in other words, seeing things the way they really are) is the key. When you become aware of something–by which I mean observing it carefully and seeing how it arises (quite likely as a result of something you are doing inside) as well as what consequences it creates–what doesn’t serve you falls away. So you don’t need to repress or resist or disown your feelings. You need to be more aware of them (not know about them, but be aware of them–one is experiential, the other is intellectual).

There is one grain of truth in the New Agers’ assertion that bad feelings are a problem. If something unpleasant happens, right now, it would be normal to feel aversion to it. However, if you feel bad every time something merely reminds you of a past unpleasantness, that is dysfunctional. For example, if you experienced trauma while growing up that led to a belief that you weren’t liked, and then felt afraid every time you were in a social situation, that is dysfunctional.

Such an automatic reaction are automatic, unconscious responses, the result of a lack of awareness. Such a person automatically and unconsciously makes certain internal representations (of what they fear) whenever they enter a social situation. Those internal representations automatically create fear or other bad feelings. The person is aware of the social situation (the trigger) and the feeling of fear (the result)–but is unaware of the middle step where they generate the bad feeling by making internal representations of what they are afraid of.

Awareness of how the fear is created, however, causes the whole automatic response to dissolve. Then, the person is able to evaluate each social situation on its own merits, rather than automatically concluding that every social group is a danger. There are, then, normal and natural “bad feelings” that serve a purpose–they alert us to real danger, or are normal human responses, such grief at the loss of a loved one). Then there are self-induced bad feelings where no present danger exists, but where danger is supposed based on the something that reminds one of a past danger.

When we are aware of both kinds of bad feelings, everything sorts itself out and those feelings that do not serve us fall away. This cannot happen, however, if we’re fighting to repress or disown emotional aspects of ourselves.

One of the characteristics of spiritually mature people (Genpo Roshi being one good example of this) is that they accept their humanness, positive and negative. If they rarely express their “negative” qualities, or feel the kind of self-induced bad feelings described above, it is because they acknowledge and accept all their emotions and all their human qualities. As a result, these feelings and qualities are more likely to be felt or expressed in their more mature version.

Being human, however, they may, from time to time, express (or feel) the immature version. What’s more, the spiritually mature don’t recoil when they see these “bad” qualities in others. Instead, they see them with compassion. In some cases, this can be a yang, or “tough love”, compassion. Though they aren’t triggered by people with such immature qualities, they are often moved to do something about the suffering caused by them.

Genpo just sent me an email with this poem, which expresses this acceptance in another way:

This ‘being human’ is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an
unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

–Rumi

To see things the way they really are, you’ll need to see and accept all of the humanness in yourself, and in others. You’re going to have to let it be okay that you have ALL human qualities. Doing this requires tremendous awareness.

When you accept your humanness, you can relax. Fighting against your own humaness is exhausting, as many of you know. What a relief it is to surrender to yourself (a process, I might add, that is never fully complete).

Always remember this key principle: awareness creates choice. If you’re aware of your selfishness, for instance, you can choose whether or not to act in selfish ways. If you’re unaware, you will act automatically. You will see, to the degree that you are aware, that there are times when it is good to be selfish–that is, to care for yourself and put yourself first. If a mother doesn’t take good care of herself, she can’t adequately care for her children.

There are, of course, times when being selfish has negative consequences. The more aware you become, the more you’ll see the difference, and you’ll know just what to do. When you’re aware enough to see the consequences in any situation, whether positive or negative, you’ll naturally choose those that are most resourceful, those that are most beneficial for you and for others: those that either alleviate suffering or create less suffering.

Awareness creates choice. To the extent that you see yourself the way you really are, in all your humanness, and in all your Oneness, you’ll have choice about what kind of human being you’ll be. This is what Genpo Roshi calls “the one who consciously chooses to be a human being.” You can only make this choice, however, when you are able to see things the way they really are, in all three ways:

1) When you see who you really are in an ultimate sense, that there is just one thing, and you’re It.

2) When you see that as a human organism you’re subject to impermanence and cause and effect, which has certain inherent pain.

3) When you accept your own human qualities and emotions, both the ”positive” and the ”negative”.

This is your challenge as a human being. There are many ways to work on this. I’ve found meditation, in general, and Holosync, in particular, to be incredibly useful. I’ve also found Genpo Roshi’s Big Mind process to be incredibly powerful. My Life Principles Integration Process courses are also very powerful. All three of these dramatically increase awareness, and the more aware you become, the more you see things the way they really are. And, of course, there are many other effective methods and paths.

Whatever tools you use, I hope this series has been helpful to you, and I appreciate that you are a part of Centerpointe.

As always, be well.

 Bill

But wait, there’s more. I have 4 interesting recommendations for you.

***Make SURE you look at #4.***

1) Socially Engaged Buddhism newsletter: Genpo Roshi’s dharma brother, Bernie Glassman Roshi (they were both students of the Zen master Maizumi Roshi), practices what he calls “socially engaged Buddhism”. His mission is the alleviation of suffering in the world by promoting actualized spiritual practice, including meditation, study, direct social service and multi-faith cooperation. His group, Zen Peacemakers, manages holistic social service projects for disadvantaged people and communities, and works in prisons, hospice care, workforce development, job creation, HIV/AIDS supportive services and in several other areas.

If you would like a free subscription to their newsletter, Bearing Witness, just go to www.zenpeacemakers.org/subscribe

2) Boulder Integral–The Integral Incubator, with Jeff Salzman and Ken Wilber:

3) Genpo Roshi workshop in Seattle, March 6-7:

Would you like to work directly with a real Zen master on the important issues of who you really are, how you can experience yourself as the transcendent, and how you can end self-imposed suffering? Would you like to learn practical and effective ways to tap into the infinite power and love you were born with?

If you live anywhere near Seattle, this is your opportunity to spend two full days with Genpo Roshi, March 6-7–and I highly recommend that you do so.

Genpo’s Big Mind process is one of the most powerful tools I’ve ever used, and spending time with a true Zen master (who’s also a totally “normal”, accessible, and approachable person) is a rare opportunity that will dramatically accelerate your growth. Over 100,000 people have experienced the Big Mind process and have used it to create a richer and more deeply relational life.

Spending two days with Genpo Roshi will quite likely change your life. It certainly has changed mine. For more details, just go to: http://www.bigmind.org/Seattle.html

Just as I was about to post this, I received this from Genpo’s office about a huge discount for this workshop:

“Thanks to a generous donation from our Big Heart Circle members, who are helping us to bring Genpo Roshi’s work to a wider audience, we are happy to offer a Discount Coupon that takes $200 off your registration price for the Genpo Roshi Seattle Weekend Workshop, March 6 & 7.

“If you are one person signing up please use the following coupon code (Seattle1) when you register. Click the “apply” button and it will calculate your discount. If you want to sign up for two people, click on Bring a Friend, and enter Seattle2 in the coupon code box and you’ll get a discount for both people at once.”

Again, the link is: www.bigmind.org/Seattle.html

4) This last recommendation is one of the most exciting things I’ve ever participated in:

If you’re interested in how cutting-edge science and spirituality intersect and affect each other, this is for you:

On April 10 I’ll be participating in a very special, one-time-only event at Smith College in Western Massachusetts, and I’d like to invite you to be there. Wait till you see who is involved.

Here are the details:

Several months ago I discovered that famed Buddhist scholar Jamie Hubbard (the Yehan Numata Professor of Buddhist Studies at Smith College in Massachucetts) is an avid Holosync user. We met and spent some time together, and he suggested that we put on a workshop together and invite some of the other “consciousness luminaries” he knows (many of the scientists that have been studying the Tibertan monks around the Dalai Lama, for instance, are his friends, as are other well-known figures in Buddhism and transformational work, such as Dan Goleman of emotional intelligence fame).

So, on April 10th we’re holding a day-long seminar at Smith College in beautiful western Massachusetts, tentatively called “Technologies of Awareness: Buddhism and the New Mind Sciences”.

We’re particularly interested in looking at the newer and more innovative methods of changing consciousness (including Holosync) and discussing how valid (and effective) they actually are compared to the ancient and time-tested traditional approaches.

Smith College is in beautiful Northhampton, Massachusetts, a short hop from New York, Boston, and other parts of the eastern U.S. The area is home to innumerable universities, spiritual centers, and Buddhist groups, where the intelligentsia, scientists, and practitioners of the spirituality of consciousness have congregated, making it a hotbed of ideas.

Jamie will speak, and also moderate the day (you will not want to miss his talk–he is NOT a dry and boring academic), I will speak, Zen master Genpo Roshi (creator of the innovative Big Mind-Big Heart process that Ken Wilber has described as “the biggest breakthrough in Buddhism in the last 200 years”) will speak, and the final speaker will be Andrew Olendzki, PhD., a Pali scholar (the language of the original teachings of the Buddha) trained in Buddhist Studies at Lancaster University in England, as well as at Harvard and the University of Sri Lanka. He’s the former executive director of IMS (Insight Meditation Society), the executive director of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies (BCBS) in Barre, Massachusetts, and editor of the famous Insight Journal.

But, as they say when selling the ShamWow, “But that’s not all you get.”

And, this, to me, is the most exciting part of the whole thing.

In the evening, we’re going to have a private seminar/symposium where as many of these science and consciousness luminaries as we can get into a single room will, in a round-table setting, explore (and ask some hard, skeptical questions about) the latest thinking and research about consciousness, the brain/mind, and look at what methods, old and new, work best to expand consciousness and improve the mental, emotional, and spiritual lives of human beings.

Doesn’t this sound exciting to you? I know it does to me.

So, as I said, there are two parts to this. One is the all-day event I’ve just described. The other is the evening round-table, where we’ve invited a long list of luminaries in this field.

1. Daniel Goleman is a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee famous for developing the argument that non-cognitive (ie, emotional) skills can be just as important as IQ, as described in his book Emotional Intelligence. He has written many other books, including The Varieties of Meditative Experience and is part of the Mind and Life group of scientists and thinkers who periodically meet with the Dalai Lama. To give all his credentials would take WAY too much room.
2. Jon Kabat-Zinn, Founder and former Executive Director, The Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and a scientist who is often part of the Mind and Life meetings with the Dalai Lama and in the forefront of research regarding meditation and other consciousness expanding methods.
3. Katherine Anraku Hondorp, a senior Zen student in the Soto School, and Director of Zen on Main Street.
4. Tara Bennet-Goleman, therapist, author (Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart).
5. Mirabai Bush, Co-founder, Associate Director and Senior Fellow, Contemplative Mind in Society, and co-author (with Ram Dass) of Compassion in Action.
6. Georges Dreyfus, Professor of Buddhist Studies, Williams College. A monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for many years, he has studied at some of the most important Tibetan monastic institutions in India and became the first Westerner to obtain the degree of Geshey Lharampa, the highest rank offered in the Geluk academies.
7. Jay Garfield, Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Tibetan Studies in India Program
8. Zen master Genki Roshi
9. Zen master Bernie Glassman Roshi, Peacemakers, Maezumi Institute, etc.
10. Bill Harris (President, Centerpointe Research Institute)
11. Jamie Hubbard, Yehan Numata Professor of Buddhist Studies, Smith College
12. James Hughes, Trinity University and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (the Cyborg Buddha project)
13. Carolyn Jacobs, Dean and Elizabeth Marting Treuhaft Professor, Smith College School for Social Work
14. Ryan Joo, Buddhist Studies, Hampshire College
15. David K. Scott, Former Chancellor, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Professor of Physics 
16. Julie Mazo, emeritus, Monroe Institute
17. Zen master Genpo Roshi
18. Andrew Olendzki, Director, Barre Center for Buddhist Studies
19. Philip Peake, Psychology Department, Smith College
20. Catherine Rule (private local practice working with EEG and biofeedback tech)
21. William Waldron, Middlebury College (Buddhist studies, Buddhist psychology)
22. Arthur Zajonc, Professor of Physics, Amherst College, Director, Contemplative Mind in Society, Mind and Life Institute, Co-director of the Five College Faculty Seminar on New Epistemologies and Contemplation

Now, these are the people we’re INVITING to the evening event. I can’t promise that all of them will be there. Jamie and I hope (and anticipate) that most of them will want to be a part of this. I suspect that this is as exciting for them as it is for me.

Here’s one little twist you need to know about, though. Because of the way the academic world works, we couldn’t figure out a practical way to have a live audience for the evening symposium event. If we have a room large enough for the kind of audience we think this will attract, we’d have to charge enough to pay for it. If we do that, we have to pay the luminaries on the above list an honorarium and cover their other expenses. 

In that case, we’d have to charge much more than the tiny amount I want to charge (you won’t believe how inexpensive we’ve made this), and that would prevent many people from attending.

Here’s my solution: We’re going to videotape the entire evening conversation (in high definition, to boot). Then, as an attendee of the all-day event…

…you can view the video of the entire conversation between these amazing scientists, scholars, and visionary thinkers (you’ll have to give us a week or two to do some minor editing) online, at absolutely no charge. In fact, you can watch it as many times as you want. And, if you want to own a DVD copy of it, you can have one for our cost (a few dollars) plus minor shipping and handling costs.

I know you’re wondering what this extravaganza will cost you. Well, not very much at all–in fact, considerably less than what you’re probably anticipating. An all day event like this, with world-renowned people of this caliber, would generally cost at least $500 to $700, perhaps more. That’s out of reach for a lot people these days, though.

So this event doesn’t cost $700. Or $500. In fact, it doesn’t even cost half of that. To make sure that anyone who wants to come can afford it, even in this admittedly lousy economic environment, we’re charging just enough to cover our expenses.

How much is that? Just $197. For that you get the all-day event, with four speakers, Jamie Hubbard, PhD, Andrew Olendzki, PhD, Genpo Roshi, and me. And, as an attendee of the daytime event, you’ll also be allowed to eavesdrop, by video, on the evening symposium where one of the most impressive and star-studded arrays of thinkers, scientists, and visionaries in the world will discuss ancient and modern methods of expanding consciousness–and anything else they want to discuss.

I don’t know exactly what will happen in this evening event, but Jamie and I are hoping that we will skeptically and honestly confront both traditional and modern approaches (including Big Mind and Holosync). This will be a no-holds-barred, frank discussion of a number of fascinating questions by some of the world’s smartest people–questions such as:

• “Can you really meditate like a Zen monk at the push of a button?”
• “Are Buddhism and other traditional Eastern approaches forever to be an exotic practices, imported from Asia, or are there other, newer ‘technologies’ that can be used for the same benefits?”
• “What, if anything, does Western Psychology bring to the table?”
• And, I’m sure, many more such questions.

If I wasn’t going to actually be a part of it (something for which I am both humbled and grateful) I would definitely want to see and hear it.

The venue we’ve reserved has a limited number of seats (400). Some have been set aside for the luminaries listed above who want to attend the day event, and another even larger block of seats has been set aside, at the insistence of Smith College, for students from Smith and several of the many other nearby colleges (there are at least a dozen, I’m told, within spitting distance).

This event is being advertised by a lot of other people, and at quite a few colleges and universities in the area, so if you want to be a part of it…

…get a seat NOW by going to www.centerpointe.com/Smith-College

As always, I plan to make myself super-available to meet you and speak to you during the breaks. DO come up to me and introduce yourself. I want to meet you.

So, that’s it. To reserve your spot (which, again, I would do NOW, not later, to make sure you get a seat), just go to www.centerpointe.com/Smith-College. But hurry. Before I even sent this to you, many of the seats are already taken.

Be well.

Bill

www.centerpointe.com/Smith-College  

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I so appreciate the opportunity to play some small role in your life, and to hear your feedback.  I hope that what I’ve shared this year (along with your use of Holosync) has made you more aware, helped you think about life and yourself in a new way, and has in some way make your life better.

The world, as you’ve probably noticed, is in a mess, and social mood is moving toward a more negative place–something that happens in periodic cycles over the years and centuries. When negative social mood increases, people feel more isolated and at odds with each other (rather than feeling more accommodating toward each other, as happens in times of positive social mood). This is one reason why you see more conflict in the world lately, socially, politically, economically, and in many other ways.

It’s easy to get swept up in negative social mood–which is expressed in every sphere of life–even if you are aware that it’s happening and have decided not to participate. My forecast is that this negative social mood is going to get a lot worse, and that it will last many years (with intervening times where mood improves temporarily before heading down again). I hope I’m wrong about this, but as an avid student of history and of cycles of human social mood, I don’t think I am.

My wish for you, then, is that you move toward your dreams regardless of the prevailing social mood; that you look for ways to be helpful and compassionate to others; that you learn to love yourself, as you are, with all your human failings and quirks; and that you extend that compassion to others (who also have human failings, just as you do).

I’ll have more (hopefully interesting) articles for you in 2010. In fact, I have another one in my head right now that I just need to sit down and write, which I hope to do soon.

Please know that even though we may never meet in person (though I hope we do), knowing that you are out there (and hearing from you) means a lot to me. Thanks for reading (or listening).

Always remember, you are worthwhile.

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This is a fascinating topic, so let’s dig into it a little more.

Seeing things the way they really are includes dealing with some key existential problems, which I’ve written about before. You could call these problems the Problem of Cause and Effect, and the Problem of Impermanence. The Problem of Cause and Effect results from the fact that there are many forces in the world–other people, the weather, earthquakes, the sun, your spouse, that rocks are hard, and so on–that we have little or no control over.  As a result, sometimes we don’t get what we want, or we get what we don’t want, both of which create frustration and suffering.

The Problem of Impermanence results from the fact that even if we do get what we want–either by accident or because we skillfully exercised what influence and control we do have–it eventually falls apart, is used up or, in some way, ends. And, of course, the most disturbing example of impermanence is that we eventually end, too. Everything in this world is impermanent–including us.

A thoughtful person, then, in addition to dealing with the problems of food, shelter, friends, and something meaningful and fulfilling to do, eventually asks certain questions: What’s going on here? Why is there so much suffering? Is there something I can do about it? What does all this mean? What should I do with my life? Can I do something about the fact that my body doesn’t always work right? Am I really going to die? Is there anything I can do about it? And, so on.

Our answers to these questions develop. As we become more aware, our answers change. Hopefully in each new stage our way of dealing with these problems of being human involves an increasing ability to see things the way they really are.

Because cause and effect and impermanence are so fundamental to life, we spend a great deal of our time and effort figuring out how to deal with them (even if we’re unaware that that’s what we’re doing). Most people, of course, don’t want to admit that we’re bound by these fundamental ground rules of life. In other words, most people aren’t seeing things the way they really are, and don’t want to. Instead, we want to get what we want all the time. We don’t want the people and things to which we’re attached to fall apart or end. And, we particularly don’t want our own existence to end.

A lot of what we do, then, is directed toward 1) reducing the consequences of cause and effect and impermance, or 2) denying the reality of it. Much of what we do is about getting more of what we want, less of what we don’t want, or trying to hold off the forces of impermanence. We seek money and power. We try to eat right and exercise more. We learn “people skills,” hoping that they’ll help us get what we want. We educate ourselves or learn new skills in the hope that it will help us get more of what we want. Some people think being dishonest will help them get what they want.

There are other methods. We hope that technology and medical breakthroughs will help us avoid what we don’t want. If we discover that our thoughts have effect on what happens to us, we try to develop more mental control. We go to therapy, study with Zen masters, practice positive thinking, meditate, use Holosync, take “mind-control” courses, and so forth.

And though these things can be helpful, there is a limit to what we can do. Whatever we do, whatever steps we take, there’s much about life we just can’t control. Many physical events are beyond our control. So are most of the actions of the other 6.7 billion people we live with on this planet. And though we do our best to make things last longer, or figure out ways to replace them when they end or fall apart, and we do our best to make our bodies last longer through medical and technological means, impermanence ultimately wins.

So, once we’ve done everything we can to to control the world and keep what we love–and ourselves–from ultimately falling apart, then what? I can see three possibilities.

The first is to hide your head in the sand and pretend that the problem doesn’t exist. This works, in a way, until cause and effect and impermanence ultimately bites you on the ass, as it eventually will. The second is to delude yourself into thinking that you can overcome cause and effect and impermanence–which is what most people do. The third is to embrace the fact that though you can sometimes forestall these forces, ultimately they will win–in other words, to see things the way they really are, and live from that perspective.

Let’s take a look at these last two choices.

Because cause and effect and impermanence are the source of most, if not all, of the problems of life, we cling to the hope that somehow we’ll find a way to overcome or escape from them. Let’s look at cause and effect first.

The fact that we do have a small amount of control over cause and effect causes us to more easily delude ourselves into thinking that perhaps we can control it. We see that those with lots of money or power seem to have much more control than we have. We often assume that perhaps they really have solved the problem of cause and effect, and that if we can somehow become rich or powerful that we, too, can be a master of cause and effect.  A mentor of mine used to say, “If you have a problem, and you have money, then you don’t have a problem.”

Relative to someone with fewer resources this is at least partially true, but money doesn’t solve all problems. If you’re stranded on a desert island, your money is worthless unless you want to use it to start a fire. If you have a terminal illness, it may be that no amount of money will help. If you want people to like you (not just suck up to you to get something from you), money isn’t going to help. People with great wealth or power, though, get used to having what they want when they want it. They, or those who envy them, can easily assume that there is a way to defeat cause and effect. 

Some people delude themselves into thinking that they could have some sort of magical mental power over cause and effect or impermanence. The DVD movie, The Secret, for instance, claims that you can control cause and effect with your mind–that the universe will give you what you want, or help you avoid what you don’t want, if you just tell it what your needs and wants are.

While it’s true that thoughts and desires motivate us to act, give us ideas about what action to take, and cause us to notice resources we could use when we act, our control over cause and effect is still limited. The “magic” assumed in The Secret–that “sending your intention out to the universe” will somehow get you anything you want, regardless of the laws of nature, the actions of other people with contrary desires, or other aspects of the laws of cause and effect–is nothing more than a hopeful delusion. The “successes” of this method are either the cause-and-effect results of the actions you take (or some other way of exerting influence), or, they’re coincidental.

Some people study how to control the minds of others, or practice exotic martial arts or spiritual disciplines that supposedly convey super-normal powers. The fact that such things even exist and enjoy a certain amount of popularity with certain people is more a symptom of the lack of control we feel over cause and effect than anything else. Most of these approaches are, at worst, total bullshit or, at best, confer a small amount of control over the forces of cause and effect.

Even greater delusions exist regarding imperanence because we see it as a bigger and more ultimate problem. Humans have created many ways of denying that our personal existence will eventually end: after-lives, reincarnation, spirit-realms, astral planes, and many other explanations that provide hope that, despite the evidence, there’s a possibility that you will go on after your death.

I’ve said many times in this blog that the idea of a separate self is an illusion. What seem to be separate things and separate events are actually ideas about reality, divisions we add mentally, but which don’t exist in the real world [see other posts for a more complete explanation of this seemingly wild and crazy idea]. Everything is really one huge interconnected “thing-event.” What’s more, you are that one thing-event looking out through a certain pair of eyeballs and listening through a certain pair of ears.

When the organism you think of as that separate ”you” dies, and the brain that generated those ideas about being a separate self stops working, that separate self, being nothing more than an idea, ends. The whole going on of it all, the huge “thing-event” I spoke of, does go on, of course. What you thought of as “you” was similar to a wave on the ocean. It went up, became a wave, and then went back down into the ocean–except that when the “you-wave” went up, it was aware of being a wave and had the ability to have ideas about being a separate self.

At least that’s the way I see it. Maybe there is an afterlife, or a next life, or something else. Personally, I think these things are just fervent hopes. Maybe I’ll be surprised when I die. On the other hand, maybe there won’t be anyone there to be surprised. Maybe the atoms that make up “Bill” will keep going just like the water in the wave keeps being water after the wave is gone. The whole keeps going, changing into this and then that and then something else, but what seem to be selves come and go.

Human beings (including me) don’t like this idea that the self will end. It gives us a weird feeling (or worse). It’s bad enough when something or someone you love comes to an end, but your own end is the real boogie man for human beings, which is why we’ve created so many explanations for what we hope will happen next.

So we have the suffering involved in being human (getting what we don’t want or not getting what we do want) and we have death (impermanence). These two things really bother us, and we spend a lot of time and energy trying to escape from them. But if it’s true that we can’t escape, resisting isn’t going to help. You can do something to mitigate cause and effect and or put off your inevitable end, but ultimately, cause and effect and impermanence always win.

I’d like to suggest that the real problem isn’t cause and effect or impermancence, though. The real problem is our attempt to escape from or deny these things. A life spent hoping for an escape, a life of struggling to escape, a life pretending that you can escape–a life spent resisting what can’t be successfully resisted–is a life of chronic frustration and suffering.

Why? Because by living in this way you’ve put yourself in a double bind, where you must solve an insoluble problem. Because it is an insoluble problem, all your efforts ultimately fail.

So let’s be realistic. Because there’s no escape from cause and effect and impermanence, life contains a certain amount of built-in suffering, which you can mitigate to some degree but never entirely avoid. But here’s what you can do something about: the additional (and quite substantial) level of pain and suffering you create by trying to solve an insoluable problem, by not seeing (and accepting) things the way they really are.

Thinking that you can escape from cause and effect and impermanence is sometimes referred to as the illusion of control. The truth is that most of what goes on is beyond your control. Yes, you have some control, and if you become aware enough to exercise it you definitely can live an easier and more fulfilling life. Most of what happens in life, however, is outside your control.

This shows up in other ways, too. Because of modern medicine, technology, and communications, most of Western society now believes that all problems can be solved (if only the leaders would just get their shit together), and that they should be solved. This assumption actually causes the whole of society to suffer more–because of the disappointment when these problems aren’t solved (and, in fact, are usually made worse). In fact, whatever you can do about these problems is better done by YOU, not by the government or someone else).

There’s an underlying assumption in the West that the government can–and should–solve every human problem, no matter what it is. Behind this is the illusion that controlling life is possible, that someone knows the answer, even if you don’t–whether it’s a doctor, a scientist, a therapist, a Zen master, the President, or some other “expert.” We believe that if only we had free healthcare, our physical problems would be solved (they won’t), that if we could just create energy that doesn’t leave waste products the world be would be pristinely clean (we can’t, and it won’t be)–or, whatever the problem du jour is, it can and should be solved, and that doing so will save us from our suffering. The technical accomplishments of the last 150 years have given humans the illusion that eventually we’ll figure everything out. We won’t.

I used to believe that the leaders and experts knew something I didn’t know. I felt a certain sense of security in thinking that someone who knew what’s going on was in charge. As I’ve grown older, become more successful and respected, and have been able to know and hang out with many of these leaders and experts, I’ve changed my mind: my previous assumption (which I think most people share) that someone has life figured out, or mostly figured out, and that they know what to do, how things work, and how to solve the problems we face as humans, just isn’t true.

Doctors, therapists, scientists, professors, news anchors, politicians (particularly politicians), religious leaders, Wall Street big-wigs, Federal Reserve Governors, personal growth teachers, Zen masters, and other experts don’t know much more than you know, and are in fact much more in the dark than they let on. Sure, they know certain things, and in some ways the extent of human knowledge is incredible and extensive.

But a great deal of the time the experts, despite their promises and big talk are bungling their way through life just like the rest of us, doing the same thing everyone else is doing: trying to somehow escape from (or, in some cases, ignore) cause and effect and impermanence. Worse, most of them are telling everyone else that they have the answer, and you just need to pay them or elect them (often both), and all your problems will be solved.

Rant, rant, etc.

What would happen, though, if you acknowledged that you don’t have control over cause and effect, and that there’s nothing you can do about impermanence, and that many of the problems of being human are an inescapable part of the human condition? You’d still be able to choose to eat right, exercise, focus your mind on what you want, do your best to make more money, use the latest technology, and whatever else you do now to try to make your life better. In many ways, life would go on in the same ordinary way.

The difference would be that you’d get rid of your attempt to wrestle life to the ground in an attempt to get rid of what you can’t get rid of. You AREN’T going to get rid of cause and effect, impermanence, and suffering. You can get rid of the part of it you’re causing through your own resistance (also acknowledging, of course, that you’ll never totally stop resisting, either), but a lot of it you’ll never do anything about.

I’m not saying this, by the way, from some sort of hopeless or despondent perspective, in case that’s what you’re thinking. In fact, something quite remarkable happens when you step out of the normal human double-bind.

When you drop your end of the rope in the tug-of-war of life–when you decide to see things the way they really are–you’ll finally be at peace. You’ll be free. Not free of cause and effect, and not free of suffering, but free of YOURSELF, free of a huge load of self-imposed suffering caused by the deluded idea that you have control.

Alan Watts used to say that from the moment we’re born, we’re in free-fall (ain’t it the truth). Clutching at the other things falling along side of you isn’t going to help. When you stop fighting against the fact that life is the way it is something remarkable happens. You suddenly come alive! Everything–even the most ordinary things, or things you thought were “bad”–sparkle with aliveness. The world, in every way, becomes awe-inspiring, remarkable. Everything becomes ordinary, and yet absolutely amazing.

Letting go of the illusion of control and seeing things the way they really are throws you into the now moment in a way that would make Ekhart Tolle blush. When you allow being human to be what it is, without resisting the parts that can’t be resisted or trying to wish away the parts of life that can’t be wished away, all that’s left is now. That doesn’t mean you can’t plan for tomorrow, but you won’t do it as part of a desperate plan to somehow escape from the inescapable.

Since you won’t be fighting against life, your stress level will go way down. You’ll feel more connected to others–more “at one” with the world. You’ll be more compassionate. You’ll appreciate why other people are the way they are, without being triggered by their attempts to deal with life. And, your mind will be clear and razor-sharp.

How do you do all this? By becoming more aware. The more aware you are, the more you see things the way they really are. That makes sense, doesn’t it? How, then, do you become more aware? Meditate. Use Holosync if you’re in a hurry. Watch. Pay attention. Be mindful. Examine your beliefs and realize that all of them are just mental bullshit. Find out how you create your life and your reality by watching the part of you that creates it: your mind.

Awareness is the solution to everything that has a solution. It’s also the solution to knowing what has a solution–and what doesn’t.

It’s your life. Wake up.

***

Wait. Don’t go yet. I have a couple of recommendations for you.

**First Recommendation: If you are a Holosync user, go to www.centerpointe.com/participants to view a video I recently made for you. Sorry, but you can’t access this part of our website unless you are in our database as a customer. This video, though, is very much worth seeing if you are at all interested in the “problem of being a human being.”

**Second Recommendation: I recently was interviewed by the folks at Integral Life, part of Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute, and I think this interview will be of great interest to you. Though many topics are discussed, this is the only time I’ve ever described in detail my own spiritual path on camera (or in writing, for that matter), starting from my childhood right up through some of my amazing, intense, private work with Zen master Genpo Roshi. They’ve split the interview into 4 parts, 3 of which are online now, with the 4th to be posted soon.

To watch these videos you have to be a subscriber to IntergralLife.com, but the first month is free (plus, I’ve arranged for the first 50 people who sign up for the free month to get a copy of the Integral Institute book, Integral Life, which I highly recommend).

From the website: “IntegralLife.com features hundreds of hours of audio and video discussions with today’s greatest thinkers, leaders, artists, and visionaries. It is a portal into the many facets of the 21st Century’s cultural renaissance—including spirituality, sexuality, psychology, ecology, art, business, and politics. Through this rich diversity of subject matter runs the single thread of our mission: to weave together the many strands of our modern lives into a deeply meaningful whole.”

To get your free month, use this link: http://integrallife.com/landing/gia/gia.html?utm_source=Bill%2BHarris&utm_medium=Blog&utm_campaign=seeing%2Bthings

Then, after you’re logged onto the Intergral Life site, use this link to find my interview:

http://integrallife.com/bill-harris-profile

At the bottom of the page you’ll see links to the three parts of the interview that have been posted already. After you watch, I’d be interested to hear your comments, which you can post on this site. Do check out the other content they have on this site while you’re there.

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Some of what I share isn’t easy to express, or get, using the written word. I try to write in a way that might in some small way help you have an experience of what I’m talking about, or lead you to do something on your own that helps you have the experience. This isn’t always possible, though.

What I write about almost always comes from my personal experience. A full understanding requires a similar experience, in the same way that a full understanding of Mexico comes from having been there. Just hearing about it might be informative, but incomplete. Since I’m talking about some rather rare and esoteric experiences, with no foolproof recipe for making sure you have the experience (much less fully embody it) writing in a way that gives you the experience is difficult. In that case, the value comes in at least having some context for understanding the experience if you ever do have it.

Sometimes merely knowing about something is almost useless. If I tell you about my experience of emptiness you end up wondering what the hell I’m talking about because no written or verbal description can adequately describe it, any more than you could adequately describing to a child what it’s like to have sex (not that you should do that), or describing to a child what it’s like to be an adult.

Whether the experience is profound or mundane, you have to experience it for yourself in order to really know about it. Understanding this, for most people, is an entirely new way to look at life. Almost all people decide what is true and real based on what someone else tells them or on something they read. Though you’re reading something I’ve written, I don’t want you to use it as a source of information that you just swallow whole, but rather as an impetus to find out for yourself by sitting with it, and by trying on the perspective I suggest.

Though ultimately inadequate, an intellectual understanding does have some value. It can help you avoid confusion, it can help you to know what something is NOT, and it can help you better understand your own experience of what I’m sharing, if and when you do have one.

If you do come to experience a perspective I describe, the preview I’ve given you might help you recognize what is happening and save you some confusion. If you’ve already experienced some of these insights, this discussion will hopefully create additional clarity. Genpo Roshi has certainly helped me clarify a whole constellation of experiences and insights I’d had before I met him, helping me to understand and embody them much more deeply because of his help.

Each person has a view of the universe and how they (and other people) fit into it. I began this blog with a series of posts describing how these perspectives, these ways of understanding what it means to be a human being and how to deal with the human condition, develop–in other words, change as needed. Human development is, in fact, the evolution of increasingly sophisticated and more inclusive perspectives about what it means to be a human being, why we’re here, how to navigate through life, what it all means, why we suffer and die, and so forth.

I strongly suggest that you read (or review) these early posts, as they contain some very powerful information that will help you better understand your life. The main point, though, is that your perspective regarding who you are and what it means to be human develops. For some it doesn’t develop very far; for others this development continues throughout life. 

Why doesn’t development continue for everyone? Because we stick with our current view or perspective as long as it provides a workable explanation for the concerns and questions I listed above. Only when the old perspective no longer helps us successfully navigate our life are we pushed to develop a new and broader perspective.

The perspective I’ve been describing in recent posts is my attempt to describe the point of view of someone who is awake and aware, what some people call enlightened. I’m doing this in my words, based on my understanding (and limited by the fact that some of this is, really, impossible to fully impart in words).

I’m not saying that what I’m describing is an ultimate perspective, or that it’s better than some other perspective, including yours. Just in the last two and a half years since I’ve known Genpo Roshi I’ve had at least five or six major shifts in awareness. Each time I experience such a shift, I realize that my previous perspective was incredibly limited. Based on that, I’d be willing to bet that my current perspective is also limited and that, in fact, it always will be no matter how much more it expands.

Human beings tend to assume that their current perspective is accurate, that it’s THE perspective. I’ve come to see that every perspective I’ve ever had, and very likely all those I will have, are true in some sense, but also partial. Genpo Roshi is fond of saying that whatever your current perspective, that’s where you’re stuck.

Though some human beings do experience an incredibly expanded perspective, part of being human is to be limited, and part of seeing things the way they really are is to acknowledge that this is true.

Finally, you’ve probably noticed that a lot of what I share includes ideas common to Buddhism. I’m not, however, trying to show you yet another dogma, another set of ideas, that you might choose from amongst other dogmas. And, I’m certainly not trying to get you to be a Buddhist. I’m describing my own experiential understanding, limited though it may be, and I’m using terms from Buddhism because I’ve found that the great Buddhist patriarchs brilliantly described the experience I’ve had and the perspective I’ve arrived at (so far) as accurately as such things can be described.

So, with that already-too-lengthy introduction, I’d like to begin a review of several key insights about the human condition, several of which I’ve talked about in other posts but bear repeating.

First, then, let’s look at the idea of what Buddhists call the mutual interdependence of all things. One aspect of this is what a lot of people call “oneness.” This is the observation, the feeling–or, you might say, the perspective (since not everyone sees the world this way as they look around)–that everything is connected to everything else, and everything depends upon everything else.

From this perspective everything is clearly seen as one big multi-dimensional happening. Separate things and events are seen as useful ideas about reality, but with a clarity that these ideas are not reality itself. Reality, from this perspective, is one infinitely huge thing-event. Though it’s often useful to conceptually slice reality into mental “things” and mental “events,” all supposedly separate things, exist in relation to all other things, and all supposedly separate events flow out of previous events and into future events. Nothing really has any separate or individual essence. What look like separate things and events are really just ever-changing waves that make up the ocean we call the universe.

This means that no “thing” has any independent nature. It also means that you can’t describe any part of the universe without also describing its environment. In Buddhism this view is sometimes called the doctrine (or theory) of emptiness. It is also sometimes referred to as the law of cause and effect. Here’s what the Dalai Lama said about this subject in his book, The Universe in a Single Atom:

One of the most important philosophical insights in Buddhism comes from what is known as the theory of emptiness. At its heart is the deep recognition that there is a fundamental disparity between the way we perceive the world, including our own experience in it, and the way things actually are.

In our day-to-day experience, we tend to relate to the world and to ourselves as if these entities possessed self-enclosed, definable, discrete and enduring reality. For instance, if we examine our own conception of selfhood, we will find that we tend to believe in the presence of an essential core to our being, which characterizes our individuality and identity as a discrete ego, independent of the physical and mental elements that constitute our existence.

The philosophy of emptiness reveals that this is not only a fundamental error but also the basis for attachment, clinging and the development of our numerous prejudices. According to the theory of emptiness, any belief in an objective reality grounded in the assumption of intrinsic, independent existence is simply untenable. All things and events, whether ‘material’, mental or even abstract concepts like time, are devoid of objective, independent existence. To intrinsically possess such independent existence would imply that all things and events are somehow complete unto themselves and are therefore entirely self-contained. This would mean that nothing has the capacity to interact with or exert influence on any other phenomena.

But we know that there is cause and effect–turn a key in a car, the starter motor turns the engine over, spark plugs ignite and fuel begins to burn… Yet in a universe of self-contained, inherently existing things, these events could never occur!

So, effectively, the notion of intrinsic existence is incompatible with causation; this is because causation implies contingency and dependence, while anything that inherently existed would be immutable and self-enclosed. In the theory of emptiness, everything is argued as merely being composed of dependently related events; of continuously interacting phenomena with no fixed, immutable essence, which are themselves in dynamic and constantly changing relations. Thus, things and events are ‘empty’ in that they can never possess any immutable essence, intrinsic reality or absolute ‘being’ that affords independence.

Before we dive into this a little more, I want to remind you once again that I’m not suggesting this as another theory for you to adopt because it sounds good, or because someone you see as an authority has said it. Look around and confirm for yourself that everything does indeed exist in relation to everything else, that anything that happens to any part of the whole happens as a result of this relationship, and that the whole is, in fact, totally dependent on everything that is part of it.

Don’t just believe me about this–look around and confirm it for yourself. Though you might see in a flash that what I’m saying is true, you might need to investigate for months, or even years, before you see it fully. In fact, your ability to fully see how everything is related to everything else will continue to expand and probably never be complete.

This idea that nothing has an independent nature, and must exist in relation to everything else, is a very profound insight. When you really get into it, you see some very interesting implications.

First, if nothing has any independent nature, can there be a separate “you” who acts independently of the rest of the universe (other that, as with other “things”, as an idea)? It seems to most people that they are separate from the rest of the universe, and that they make decisions about what to think or do from some independent part of themselves–that they decide and act from within, independent of what goes on outside of themselves. It seems to such people that what they think or do is an independent choice.

This doctrine of emptiness, or the mutual interdependence of all things, however, implies that any decision, any action, any thought, is a response to the environment, rather than an independent choice.

Look at it this way. Living things are in many ways response mechanisms. Even the lowest viruses have ways of perceiving their environment and responding to it. They perceive food and move toward it, or perceive a lack a food and set out to find it. Higher forms of life develop more sophisticated ways of perceiving the environment, including ways to learn. Nerve ganglia remember certain stimuli and the consequences of those stimuli, and develop the ability to remember an effective response. The more sophisticated the learning mechanism and its ability to store what is learned, the wider the repertoire of responses.

In human beings, for instance, the repertoire of responses becomes huge and the ways of evaluating which response might be best become quite complex. All of these responses, however, are still just that–responses to the environment, whether spontaneously built into the organism or remembered. Because there are so many possible responses, it can seem as if we are independently choosing, but these choices are still reponses to the environment (while, at the same time, it is responding to us), just as with the simple virus.

Any way you slice it, every part of the whole is inextricably connected to, dependent upon, and responding to the rest of the whole. None of the supposedly agentic decisions are made independent from, or outside of, this connection to the whole.

I can’t resist telling you about one of Alan Watts’ quite witty descriptions of what a human being is and what it’s all about. Human beings, Watts once said, are really just tubes. Food goes in one end of the tube, and waste comes out the other end. So the tube develops different ways of finding food and getting it into the top end of the tube, which allows the tube to have enough energy to look for more food so it can continue to put it in the top end and allow waste to come out the other end. Eventually the tubes develop these nerve ganglia that help it become even better at finding food and putting it into the top end so the waste can come out the bottom end.

As the tube becomes more efficient at finding food to put in one end so waste can come out the other end (and so it has the energy to find more food to put in the top end to keep the process going), it ends up with a certan amount of free time, so it creates various ways to keep from being bored–hence literature, music, the Beverly Hillbillies, American Idol, Monster Truck shows, and other profound and significant human endeavors.

All this food going through the tube, unfortunately, wears it out after a while, so the tubes also develop a way of making other tubes, so that when the tube wears out there are other tubes who can keep up this business of putting food in one end and letting waste come out the other.

When I heard this I had to admit that he had a point, and that he had boiled down human existence to a very basic (and actually pretty funny) truth.

But back to our regularly scheduled program. What this discussion–of emptiness (of any independent nature or essence) and mutual interdependence of all things–really means is that whether or not it feels this way to you, you, as a separate entity, don’t exist. Yes, there is an organism (which is not exactly the same as what people think of as “me”, and isn’t any more separate from the whole than anything else). And, that organism chooses many of its behaviors, but all of this choosing, and which choices are available, flow directly from the immediate interactions the organism has with the rest of the whole, plus (in some cases) what it has learned from past interactions. None of its actions or choices happen in isolation.

In fact, you could turn this idea that you depend on the entire universe on its head and say that the entire universe also depends on YOU. Even before you were born, the universe depended on the fact that you would someday be here, and after you’re gone it will depend on the fact that you were here. In my own case, this is a universe that does something called Bill Harris, in the same way an apple tree produces apples, and the existence of Bill Harris (or you) can’t be separated from the whole going on of it all.

I’ve been talking off and on over many posts about the experience of emptiness, or what some call the transcendent, and a few people have posted lately saying that they’ve had such experiences, while using Holosync, while doing Big Mind with Genpo Roshi, or in some other way. In this experience, you FEEL, or experience, how everything goes together. It is obvious that everything goes together and is dependent upon everything else. So let’s look more closely at this sort of experience, and why is might happen (or not happen).

First, if everything goes together in the way I’ve described, why do most people tend to see the universe as a collection of separate things and events? In fact, seeing the world as a collection of separate things and events is so common that those who talk about emptiness, the transcendent, oneness, or whatever you want to call it, are seen as a bit nutty.

The common explanation for the experience of separateness is that the mind, by its nature, divides everything into separate things and events. This is in line with what I said earlier: these divisions are conceptual. They are mentally generated and are not intrinsic to the world. As Alan Watts used to say, a thing is a “think,” a unit of thought, as much of reality as you decide to get your mind around in any particular moment.

When we’re very small we learn the names of things and events, which gives us the impression that things and events are something concrete instead of merely conceptual (in addition to learning that a thing and it’s name are synonymous–that the “map” is the same as what it represents). This leaves us with an underlying premise that a separation exists between one thing (or event) and another in reality, not just in the mind.

Once we learn to see the world in terms of separate things and events, we learn to divide them into two categories: those that are desirable and those that are undesirable. Then the fight (what I’ve referred to as The Game of Black and White) begins. Most people spend their entire life trying to get what they (with the help of parents and society) think is desirable, and to avoid what they think is undesirable.

This fight, which happens both internally and externally, can’t happen unless we mistakenly believe in the reality of separate things and events, and unless we believe that these supposedly separate items really are in opposition. There is a deep secret (shhh!) about all things that seem to be in opposition: they are really one indivisible and interdependent unit. The two warring sides actually go together. Neither side of the conflict can exist without the other. And, ultimately, the division itself happens only in your head. 

I’ve often written about the problems created by focusing on (in other words, making internal representations of) what you don’t want. To the degree that you do this, you feel bad and you unconsciously arrange to attract or create more of it. The whole process of focusing on what you don’t want–trying to avoid one side of a supposed polarity– is rooted in the underlying premise that separate things and events are real rather than merely conceptual. Focusing on what you don’t want (along with clinging to what you do want) causes most human suffering.

The mutual interdependence of all things is also another way to refer to the process of cause and effect, or karma, but that’s a topic we’ll tackle in another post.

As I said in the beginning of this post, learning about how everything is dependent upon everything else has limited value. The real ah-ha comes not from intellectual understanding, but from really seeing and experiencing it for yourself.

This is, then, something for you to sit with in meditation and be mindful of as you go through your day. Look around and notice how you are connected to everything–in fact, that every living thing, every object, and every event is connected to and flows out of (and into) its environment. Keep noticing this and reminding yourself of this basic premise and eventually it will become obvious. Your goal is to embody this truth, so that it is with you all the time.

Next time we’ll look at another aspect of “seeing things the way they really are”.

Before I let you go, though, I want to remind you of a few upcoming events:

1) September 19-20, New York: Genpo Roshi and I will be leading another of our 2-day workshops. These events really are life-changing. I can’t emphasize enough the benefit of spending two days with us. For more information, see www.centerpointe.com/bigmind.

2) September 30-October 3, Calgary, Canada: I will be speaking with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, billionaire Richard Branson, Nobel Peace Prize-winner F.W. deKlerk, and several other world thought-leaders, business experts, and charitable activists. Many are calling this the Event of the Decade. For more information to to www.engagetoday2009.com.

3) October 24-25, Houston, Texas: Genpo Roshi and I will be leading another 2-day workshop. Again, a rare opportunity to spend time with a true Zen master, and me. For details, and to register, go to www.centerpointe.com/bigmind/houston.

I would love to see you at one–or all three–of these events.

Be well.

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When you have such an experience you also find that it’s impossible to communicate this knowingness in a way that anyone could possibly understand–unless they, too, have had the experience. When you try to communicate what you’ve realized, anything you say seems foolish and inarticulate, even before you say it. There’s just no way to capture it with ideas or words. For that reason, I’m not going to try to explain it (though I admit I’ve tried in many of these posts), because it can’t be explained–at least in a way that would actually be helpful.

Despite all of this, from this experience I did have one insight I want to share–something I already ”knew,” but now see at a deeper, more visceral, more profound level.

Emptiness is an interesting term in Buddhism. It doesn’t actually mean nothing, and it also doesn’t really mean empty in the normal sense of there being nothing there, or that it’s all empty space. Emptiness is actually an attempt to describe what I’ve already said can’t be described. It’s a kind of code-word amongst those who have had the experience.

You could, I suppose, call it “no-thing-ness,” because in this state it’s very clear that there are no separate things, that everything is interconnected and all divisions are unreal–other than in a conceptual sense. Things are units of thought, not units of reality. In this state conceptualizations seem silly, unnecessary, inconsequential, and not pertinent to what really is. You don’t want to conceptualize. It just seems like a lot of effort serving no real purpose.

Even if you’ve had such an experience many times before, this is an odd sensation. After all, for almost all people life is almost entirely conceptual. All but a few rare people live in and through their ideas about reality, their map of how it all is. That map has been taken as the real territory to such a degree that it’s all that most people see. But in the emptiness experience, all these maps and ideas just don’t seem to matter or have much importance.

When you “see how it all is” in this way, your map seems so skinny and insubstantial it’s hard to believe you built your life around it. To say that it seems partial is an understatement. It’s like mistaking a stick-figure for the real you, or a one paragraph biography for the story of your life. This realization–that pretty much everything you’ve hung your hat on for your entire life is insubstantial, partial, and largely irrelevant–is life-changing.

When you’re in touch with this emptiness (or, I should say, when you realize that you are this emptiness), you see the truth of what all the sages, Zen masters, and enlightened beings have said: there really is nowhere to go, and nothing to get. In fact, even if there were something to get, there’s no separate entity who could go anywhere to get it.

When you’re enmeshed in your map of reality, it sure doesn’t seem this way, though. Of course there’s somewhere to go, something to get, and someone to get it! Not only can I feel it, everyone else agrees with me about it. C’mon. Look around. It’s obvious that there are separate things and separate events, including a separate “me.”

All of this seems quite real when you identify with your ideas about reality–which is what all but a few human beings do. It can be quite difficult to untangle yourself from your map (or, at least, it seems to be difficult). The mind can be quite subtle in the way it tempts you to believe in your map. For instance, if you know a lot about Eastern philosophy and mysticism and such things, you might identify with your ideas about emptiness and no-thing-ness, all the while thinking that you “get it.”

In thinking about this experience, I realized how much of life is about getting somewhere and getting something. Wherever we are, we’re dissatisfied. If we are satisfied, it’s momentary, and then we’re off after something else. Wherever we are, we think we’d be better off if only we were somewhere else. And whatever we have, we want (or think we need) something else or something more. Whatever our material, mental, or spiritual situation–we never feel like we’re quite “there.”

This is how it feels when we’re under the spell of our mind and think and feel that we’re a separate entity confronted by lots of other separate things and entities (who don’t care about us or have our best interests at heart). We feel, as the poet A. E. Housman said, “Alone and afraid, in a world I never made.”

If, on the other hand, you really, really, really got that there’s just One Thing, and you’re it–not intellectually, but experientially, in your bones–where would you need to go? Where could you go? And what would you get if you went there?

We have this underlying sensation, then, that there’s something we don’t have, and if we could just get it, then we could rest, then we’d be okay, then things would make sense. (Then there’s the other side of that coin, that there’s something terrible that had better not happen, and which in relation to we feel reasonably okay–but that’s another story for another time.)

When you were a baby, life was all about eating, sleeping, and pooping. But once you could walk and talk, then you were getting somewhere. But being a toddler wasn’t enough. You wanted to get to kindergarten, then first grade. You want to learn to read. It’s coming, that something, and when you get it, well, then things will be great. Keep going. Maybe when you’re bigger.

Maybe it will come in junior high school. But when you get there you want to be in high school. Well, maybe it’ll happen when you have sex, or make the football team. Or, maybe, it’ll come when you’re in college, or when you get married, or have children, or get your PhD. Maybe you’ll get it once you get a job, establish a career, accumulate some money. Climb the success ladder, and then maybe you’ll get it. Maybe it will come once you have children, or when the children are gone, or when you retire.

And so on.

Somewhere along the line a few people begin to suspect that it (whatever it is), might not come from worldly accomplishments, so they turn their attention to spiritual development. Getting it shifts to “if I meditate long enough,” “if I find the right teacher,” “if I read enough spiritual books,” “if I say my mantra for enough years,” “if I finish koan study,” “if I experience grace,” “if I please God,” “if I get rid of desires,” “if I study the Bible,” “if I read all Ken Wilber’s books,” and so on. In some spiritual approaches you actually have to die (physically, not metaphorically) before you get the goodie you’re after. Or, you might have to experience thousands, or even millions, of lifetimes before you get it.

Does this remind you of a donkey trotting after a carrot?

Whether you’re searching in the realms of worldly or spiritual achievement, there’s always something more to get. And, whatever you do get, it’s never quite it. It’s like taking a journey to the horizon. No matter how fast you go, no matter for how long you travel, you never get there. The it you’re looking for is like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but the darned rainbow keeps moving.

All this seeking puts you in a double bind. Why? Because you’re trying to get something–whatever that indefinable something is–that you actually already have (or, to be more accurate, which you already are). When you look at it this way, you begin to see all the spiritual books and scriptures, the seminars, the meditation techniques, and all the teachers and gurus in a different light. 

Pretend for a moment that you’re a fish. You’re swimming along minding your own business when I come along and tell you that there’s this amazing stuff called water. It’s the ultimate stuff, I tell you, and if you can find it all your problems will be solved. Come to my weekend seminar ($995) and I’ll teach you what you need to know. I have it–the Ancient Secrets of Water–and you don’t. Luckily for you, I’m willing to reveal these sacred secrets to a few lucky fish like you.

Whatever you get from my seminar, though, won’t be quite enough, so you’ll have to come to my advanced seminar ($1995). You’ll be much better off after that (at least you’ll think I’m wonderful, because I’ve obviously got it). You may need, however, to study with me individually for a while. This, of course, is more expensive (but worth it). After all, you do want the Secrets of Water, don’t you?

All the while, you’re swimming in it, and you always have been.

Now, I’m not saying that all seminars are bullshit, or that all teachers are conning you. After all, I make my living as a teacher, and I think what I offer is pretty valuable. Some seminars and teachers, thankfully, are doing their best to say (as I am), “Look, you already have it. In fact, you’re it.”

Ironically, as long as you’re thinking, “If I just do more Holosync, if I just do more Big Mind, if I just spend more time with Baba Suchabanana, if I just become a Zen monk, if I read more spiritual books, if I just could get rid of desire, if I could finish all of Ken Wilber’s books, if I could just get rid of negativity,” you won’t see that you’re already it. As long as the fish is searching like crazy for the water, he’ll fail to see that his entire world is water. It’s like those times when you can’t find your keys, and all the while they’re in your hand.

This search for what you already are, then, is a double bind, an insoluble problem, a wild goose chase. It’s like trying to bite your teeth with your teeth, or touch the end of your finger with the end of the same finger. No matter what you do to get it, you’re never quite there.

This is one of the main reasons why life is so filled with frustration. We’re all busy trying to get the un-gettable (or, rather, what we already have). We’re not even quite sure what it is, but we have this nagging feeling that something is missing. Wherever we are, it isn’t quite the right place. Whatever we have isn’t quite the right thing to have. Whoever we are isn’t the right “me.”

An authentic teacher–one who really knows that it’s all “nothingness” and therefore has seen through the double bind–will take an interesting approach to helping you. On the premise that “a fool who persists in his folly will become wise,” he’ll try to get you to act consistently with your delusion. He’ll put you in a microcosm of the double bind I’ve described, hoping that after some intense, disciplined, and incredibly frustrating seeking, you might begin to doubt the whole enterprise and give it up.

A teacher might, for instance, tell you that the source of your chronic frustration is that you desire. The Buddha said that desire (clinging, thirsting) creates suffering. Stop desiring and you’ll be fine. Ah, that’s the secret! So, you set out to get rid of your desires, and periodically you meet with the teacher so he can check on your progress. As time passes you seem to be able to get rid of a few desires, but others seem quite stubborn. “This is harder than I thought,” you say.

Then the teacher really throws you a curve. “Isn’t your attempt to get rid of desire just another desire? What are you going to do about that?” Oops. Now what? “Hmm. I guess I’ll have to stop desiring to get rid of desire.” But how do you do that? The teacher has put you in a double bind and no matter what you do there’s no escape.

Or, he might ask you, in one of many different ways, to be totally spontaneous, to not act from any of your ideas or concepts. So, you work on that. But how can you be intentionally spontaneous? Another double bind.

And, if you do get it, the teacher will tell you what a wonderful start you’ve made, but there’s more. Keep going. He’ll keep jollying you along as long as he can, until you’re tied up in knots.

These double binds are, as I said earlier, the double bind of life in microcosm. The double bind, along with the authority of the teacher (he seems to have it), your intense desire and commitment to get it, can create incredible frustration and doubt. This frustration and doubt is designed to drive you to the point where you give up, where you see through the whole thing.

This Great Doubt, as it’s called in Zen, throws you into the transcendent, into the experience of emptiness, and from that place, you suddenly see how ridiculous the whole endeavor was. You, the fish, see that it’s all water, and what in the hell were you searching for all that time?

Or, the whole thing drives you completely out of your mind.

But let’s look at the other side of the coin, because while all of the above is true–there really is nothing to get and nowhere to go, and none of your getting or going is going to save you or solve the basic problem of life (that we suffer). As long as you’re here, you have to go somewhere and try to get something. You have to play the game. If you don’t, life has no juice, no pizzazz.

You can only rest in emptiness (or Oneness, or whatever you want to call it) for so long. After a while, the relative world comes along and bites you in the ass. Everything may indeed be one all-encompassing and interconnected thing/process, and who you are may certain be that process, but that doesn’t mean the relative world isn’t here.

As that one thing/process manifests as the entire natural universe, it obeys the laws of cause and effect. And, as I said at length in a previous post, there is no escape from that. What’s more, there’s also no escape from the fact that everything in the relative universe is impermanent and eventually passes away or falls apart.

Eastern philosophy has a wonderful metaphor to describe the fact that while you’re it you’re also subject to impermanence and cause and effect: the one energy of everything is playing Hide and Seek with itself. You’re it, but you pretend to not know that you’re it. You hide who you really are from yourself, and then you look for it. What fun.

At first, though, you look for it in the form of worldly pleasures, status, power, and all the other things you think will satisfy you. As you probably know, none of them, at least in any ultimate sense, can satisfy you. When you do get what you want, it only satisfies you for a short while, and then you need something else. You get a new car and for a while it’s all very exiting and satisfying, but within a month or so it’s just transportation. You have one Pringle, but then you want another.

What’s more, whatever you get is eventually used up or falls apart. No matter what you do, eventually impermanence wins.

If somehow you could scratch your itch to find satisfaction in every possible way, until you totally run out of things to try, you might see through it all and realize that nothing will ever give you any real and lasting satisfaction, salvation, or relief. This would be the equivalent of trying in every possible way to get rid of desire, until you were completely stymied.

The great spiritual masters, down through the centuries, have found that this experience of coming to the end of your rope, this experience of Great Doubt, can lead to an experience of awakening, of emptiness, of seeing that you already are what you’ve been seeking–and that all along there was nowhere to go, nothing to get, and nothing to realize.

The Zen master who asks you to get rid of desire, or to show your original face (or one of many other double-bind problems he might give you) is giving you a short cut, because he knows you’ll never be able to try every way of (hopefully) gaining lasting salvation or satisfaction.

So here you are. Perhaps you know who you are. Perhaps you just believe me and the others who may have told you who you are, but it’s intellectual rather than experiential. Knowing intellectually, I’m afraid, isn’t going to help. It might be a good start, but to really know who you are, it must be experienced. As long as it’s merely something you believe, it’s just another “something” to chase after. If so, once again, you’re chasing your own tail, because you’re already it.

But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you really do know who you are. You know that you are the emptiness the Buddhists speak about, and you know it experientially. You might want to just hang out in that emptiness place, and for a while you probably will. It’s a great place to hang out. But, as I said, the relative world will eventually intrude on your reverie. The organism though which this Oneness is being experienced is still subject to impermanence and cause and effect, and sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with that.

Knowing who you really are makes this a lot easier, though. If you were an actor playing Hamlet, but somehow forgot that you were an actor, and thought you really were Hamlet, it would be a tragedy, because everyone dies in the end. If, however, you knew it was just a play, and that after the curtain fell you’d all go back to the green room, take off your makeup and your costumes, and go out and have a beer together, you’d have a great time playing at being Hamlet.

So after the experience of emptiness (there could be many, each one deeper than the last), the next step is to integrate this knowingness of who you really are with the reality of the relative world. In part, this means acting as if there really is somewhere to go and something to get, while in the back of your mind you know it doesn’t matter. You pretend like crazy, though, that it does matter, and you do this because this is what makes life worth living. And, anyway, what else would you do?

What’s different is that from this integrated place you have choice. Instead of unconsciously careening from one object of desire to another, from one place you think you should be to another, from one “me” you want to be to another, you consciously choose what to want, where to go, and who to be, knowing the consequences and consciously deciding to accept them. You know that whatever you become attached to eventually will be used up, fall apart, or end, but you decide to become attached anyway. This frees you to love the people and things in your life–but to do so with awareness.

Zen student and British-born Japanese scholar R.H. Blyth once wrote to Alan Watts, saying, “How are you, Alan? As for me, I’ve given up all thoughts of satori and enlightenment and am busy becoming attached to as many people and things as possible.” This is an expression of this idea of becoming attached, not unconsciously, but with awareness and choice.

So in your game of Hide and Seek, once you find what you were looking for (yourself), you keep playing, but now your playing is more relaxed. Instead of trying hard you “try soft,” because you know that although cause and effect and impermanence are real, they’re just the play of that one that one all-encompassing “it” and though it won’t always appear as what you think of as “me,” it will always appear as something, and that something is who you really are.

*******

Before I let you go I have a very important announcement–what some people are calling the biggest personal and spiritual growth event of the first decade of the new millennium. On August 29th and 30th, Ken Wilber, Zen master Genpo Roshi, Zen master Bernie Glassman Roshi, and I will present Enlightenment and the Western Mind in Westminster, Colorado (in the Denver area). This will be a highly interactive, free-wheeling event–one I suspect will never happen again, ever.

As you know if you’ve been following this blog for long, for the last several years I’ve been fortunate to know and work with the great author, philosopher, and spiritual teacher Ken Wilber, and to have an even closer relationship with the great Zen master Genpo Roshi. I’ve also done everything possible to share these great teachers with those who use Holosync and are involved with Centerpointe. I’ve had huge positive growth in my own life as a result of these relationships, and I want you to experience the same thing.

This is your chance to sit at the feet and learn from two Zen masters, and Ken Wilber (and me, too). We’ll be talking about the development of Western Spirituality, and where it might go from here, but I suspect this weekend will cover MUCH more. In fact, I’m quite sure that this weekend will profoundly deepen your experience and understanding of who you are, what life is about, and how to live with true inner peace, happiness, compassion, and success.

I’m convinced, in fact, that this is going to be a truly historic event. Many people are calling it the key spiritual event of the first decade of the 21st century. If I were you, I would do whatever you have to do to be there. It took an event of this magnitude to tempt Ken Wilber, who is in poor health, into making a rare public appearance. None of us are really sure when Ken might stop appearing in public altogether.

To see Ken, along with Genpo Roshi, Bernie Roshi (Genpo’s dharma brother, known for his deep understanding, his skill as a teacher, and his compassionate service in the world), and me, together in the same event, is something that will probably never happen again.

Besides, I really want you to meet Ken, Genpo Roshi, and Bernie Roshi–and, if I haven’t met you in person, I want to meet you, too.

The cost for this special event is $1295, but you can save $300 if you sign up by July 21st. Quite frankly, I’m pretty sure this is going to sell out, and quickly, so if you want to be there, grab your spot right away. Just go to www.vastsky.org and click on “register now” on the right, or call 801 328 8414. I look forward to seeing you at what I’m sure will be the experience of a lifetime.

So, until next time, be well.

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Here’s the question, and then my (expanded) response.

Hi Bill,

I’m convinced that watching with awareness will integrate any shadow material, but I don’t understand why Ken Wilber in his many books is stating otherwise. Terry Patten, Adam Leonard and Marco Morelli wrote in Integral Life Practice [a book recently published by Integral Institute]: “If I meditate, and meditate very deeply, what can happen? I can watch my fear and sadness arise as objects in my awareness. I can relax my ‘identification’ with them. (…) But unless I do shadow work in addition to meditating, I probably won’t truly face my shadow.”

In one of the editions of Mind Chatter [Centerpointe's now-defunct newsletter/magazine, which was replaced by this blog--hence the name, The Blog that Ate Mind Chatter] you said that you were going to ask Ken about Shadow work versus Watching with awareness, aka witnessing. You wrote that your own experience and many others showed that witnessing can resolve shadow material.

Have you ever asked that question to Ken. If you did, what was the answer? If you didn’t, will you ask it? I’m just curious about this topic. I know that shadow work can be useful, but the method you are proposing is a lot faster, easier and more effective than 3-2-1 process [a process taught by Integral Institute for re-owning shadow material] or any other type of therapy.

This is a great question. Here’s how I see it. [If you aren't clear on what a "shadow" is, you might want to read my previous post, "What's Hiding in Your Shadows".]

When the people at Integral say that you can meditate forever and not deal with your shadow material, I think they are right. You can meditate for years, even decades, and not deal with your shadows, and many people do. That’s because there’s more to dealing with shadow material than just observing your feelings during meditation and “relaxing your identification with them”.

This is a bit of a detour, but I think this idea of “relaxing your identification” with your feelings is a mis-statement of what actually happens in meditation. It assumes a separate self that feels something and then identifies (or dis-identifies) with it. What hopefully happens in meditation is the realization that while feelings happen, there is no feeler–no separate “you” who then feels something. Feelings happen, but a separate feeler is not necessary and does not exist (contrary to what nearly everyone takes to be common sense).

What we take to be the feeler is, in fact, just another feeling, a ghost in the system (you could also say that what you identify as the “thinker”–i.e., “you”–is just another one of the thoughts). I know this seems like a weird idea, but sit with it and see what happens. Look for the thinker or the feeler (or the walker or the talker or any kind of doer) and see what you find.

Here’s another example, one that doesn’t involve the question of a separate “you”, but illustrates the same point: it’s inaccurate to say that there’s something called “lightning” which then does something–it flashes. The lightning IS the flashing, and the flashing IS is lightning. There’s just flashing, but no need for a flasher, a separate something that does the flashing. 

Requiring that every action (every verb) include something that does the action (a noun) may be a grammatical rule and a social convention, but it isn’t what happens in reality, and it’s the essence of an unreal and unnatural duality.

The doer is nothing more than an idea. All supposed “things” are actually actions, events. A cat is “catting”, a table is “tabling”, a tree is “treeing”. Action does not require an actor, and assuming that an actor exists ultimately creates the (seeming) duality that keeps people in anxiety about life (but that’s another story we won’t go into here, but which I have written about in other posts).

What’s missing from this Integral Institute description is the fact that those feelings (or, other consequences, such as actions taken, results created, etc.) are generated by something inside the organism (its internal cognitive processes–or, you might say, the “respond-ability”–of the organism). Feelings are a response the organism’s nervous system has to stimuli from the environment, and they happen without the need of a separate self who “has” these feelings.

The feelings, however, aren’t the problem. The problem is the illusion of a separate self. Since the feelings aren’t the problem, dis-identifying with them isn’t the solution. If there is no separate self (which there isn’t, even though almost everyone operates as if there were), who would dis-identify with them? Perhaps it feels as if there is a dis-identification in the early stages of meditation, before the separate self is seen as an illusion. Such a person is still under the delusion that there is a separate self that now “feels less identified” with the feelings or thoughts.

In fact, dis-identification with these feelings might even contribute to making them into shadows. Dis-identification causes us to say, ”This isn’t coming from me.” It makes you think the feelings must come from outside of you, when they actually come from you (not the separate-self “you”, but rather the responses of the organism you associate with “you”). 

But I’ve gone far astray in order to make sure you get that the people who wrote the Integral Life Practices book are speaking as if there is a self who can “identify” with feelings. So let’s get back to the real question of whether Holosync will allow you to deal with and resolve shadow material (otherwise, who knows where we’ll end up!).

I think the point the Integral folks are making is that what they are calling dis-identification with your feelings (and what I would rather call a realization that there is no separate self) isn’t going to resolve your shadow stuff. In fact, even if you had the spiritual insight that there is no separate self–even if it becomes luminously clear that doing, feeling, thinking, etc. do not require a doer, feeler, or thinker–the shadow stuff would remain. An organism’s ”doing” is a learned response, programmed into its nervous system. Something happens, and the organism responds in a certain way. For instance, another person acts in an angry way, and you become afraid.

To continue with that same example, that pre-programmed response might include being triggered by angry people (which happens if you’ve disowned your own anger). It would also include expressing anger in covert and dysfunctional ways, which also happens when you have disowned anger. If this is the case, it won’t matter if you are “dis-identified” with the anger, or even if you’re firmly established in a no-self point of view. The shadow response is programmed into the organism’s nervous system. It’s just as automatic as moths being drawn to a porch light.

There is another way for a nervous system to operate, however. Responding in pre-programmed ways has its advantages, because you don’t have to re-think each event you experience. Disowning anger (or any other human quality) has its benefits. If anger is disowned, it probably was the best response the organism could come up with in order to deal with the anger of others during childhood.

There is, however, a largely untapped talent humans have where responses are not automatic. When this talent is developed, the person responds spontaneously and intuitively in each moment, perhaps drawing on pre-programmed responses if they are appropriate, but exercising choice rather than just responding automatically. Instead, the person responds from a wider pallet of choices that come out of the needs of the moment.

This talent, if you want to call it that, depends on awareness.

If you’re aware enough to see, for instance, that your internal representations (your internal pictures and internal dialog) directly create your feelings, as they happen, you’ll see that 1) some of the feelings created don’t serve you, and 2) that you have choice about the internal representations that generate the feelings (awareness creates choice–without awareness, internal processes operate automatically).

Usually these “creative” internal representations happen automatically, outside your awareness. If so, they create a pre-programmed response, as I described above. You can, however, become aware of the process by which these responses are created. Once you do, your responses stop happening in a pre-programmed and automatic way. They become a choice.

So it’s the awareness that internal representations (along with a few other internal processes) generate certain responses–and their consequences–that creates the shift. If you have a shadow–an aspect of yourself which you’ve disowned and projected outside of yourself, onto others–and you merely experience the feeling of it during meditation (with or without “detachment” or a no-self perspective), it isn’t going to shift anything. The automatic response will continue to happen whenever it is triggered.

That’s because there’s nothing about experiencing the feeling that causes you to realize that it was created in your own mind. You could still assume (as people do all the time with feelings) that the feeling was caused by external events. If the point of choice (which internal representations are made) is outside of your awareness, you’ll naturally assign another “cause” to the feelings. Or, you might assume that feelings “just happen,” without a specific cause.

If, then, as I said above, you dis-identify with those feelings (as the authors of the Integral Life Practice book describe it), it makes matters worse. Dis-identifying (or a no-self perspective, for that matter) certainly isn’t going to cause you to get that the feelings are being generated by your own internal processes.

However, when you become aware enough to see that what you do in your mind generates how you feel (which also includes the realization that the environment is the trigger, but not the cause), it becomes clear that you’re doing it, that what you feel comes from your nervous system’s pre-programmed responses rather than from something ”out there”. 

Or you could say that you see that what internal representations are made in response to a certain trigger (i.e., experience) is a choice, and the pre-programmed response isn’t the only choice. This realization requires that you own the feeling (i.e., acknowledge that it comes from something in your nervous system), which dissolves the shadow.

Remember that “disowned” really means “it doesn’t come from me–it’s out there. It isn’t my anger, my selfishness (or whatever), it’s that other person’s.” Owning something means that you SEE (in other words, are aware of) that it’s coming from you. Seeing this creates choice. And, it’s important to realize that this doesn’t mean merely knowing that you create it, but rather seeing how you do it, as it happens.

With even more awareness, you also see the potential consequences being created, and that these consequences originate from something you do.

This is why, if you’re aware, you have choice–because the feeling being created originates in something YOU DO. Or, you could say, to the degree you are aware, to that degree you have choice. If you’re aware of what you’re doing, and how you’re doing it (what you’re doing inside to create it), while you do it, you have choice about it (which, with even more awareness, includes seeing the potential consequences).

The consequences of disowning a human quality include 1) being constantly triggered by it when you see it in others, 2) attracting people who exhibit the disowned quality so that the world seems to be full of that type of person, and 3) expressing the disowned quality yourself (though you don’t see that you’re doing so) in covert and dysfunctional ways.

In clearly seeing that the response is coming from something in you and not from something outside of you, and in clearly seeing the consequences, it becomes difficult keep doing it when the consequences aren’t resourceful. In that case, the shadow is re-owned and the automatic responses it was generating becomes difficult or even impossible to continue doing.

I want to add another wrinkle, though, for the sake of completeness. A major point of my last two posts is that despite the fact that you potentially have all this choice (if you’re aware enough to exercise it–a big assumption), and despite the fact that this choice gives you much more power and control over your life, there are still two things that you can’t escape from: the impermanence of all things and events, and the fact that you are caught in a huge web of cause and effect, most of which you have no control over.

The consequences affecting you from all the events in the physical world (galaxies, stars, the sun, the earth, gravity, cosmic rays, the weather, that rocks are hard, what your body needs to stay alive, etc., etc.), and from the actions of all the other people who have a different agenda than yours, are like “cause and effect bullets” wizzing around you. When you’re aware enough, you avoid many of these bullets because you’re more likely to be aware of them and step out of the way.

The more aware you are, the more you see this huge web of cause and effect and how it might affect you. In doing so, you have more choice. You avoid involvement with certain bullets–for instance, unpleasant people and situations, bad investments, risky situations, and so forth–that you might otherwise, with less awareness of the potential consequences, get involved with. 

A shadow represents a lack of awareness. When you have a shadow, you unconsciously attract certain difficult people and difficult situations, and you act in ways that create negative consequences. Being unaware, you don’t see yourself doing this, so you keep doing it. As certain consequences happen, you place responsibility for them outside of yourself. See this process (and your part in it) with awareness, however, and the shadow is re-owned, the consequences seen, and what happens in your life changes for the better. You avoid the bullets previously generated by that particular shadow.

The more aware you are, the more of this suffering you avoid, but there’s no way to avoid all suffering (other than dying, I suppose). First, there are just too many bullets for anyone to avoid them all. With enough awareness, though, you can avoid a lot of them. Even though the choice created by increased awareness only affects a small percentage of the “cause and effect bullets,” it’s enough to dramatically improve your life.

Second, there’s no way to avoid the fact that everything in this universe is impermanent. Everything, no matter what it is, eventually falls apart. You can surrender to impermanence, and in doing so end the suffering created by your resistance to it, but you’ll never get rid of impermanence itself.

If you come to terms with these two, you become a master of your life. Few people do this, however, because there’s a price to pay to have this kind of awareness, and most people aren’t willing to pay it (by using Holosync, though, you are paying a large part of it). This “coming to terms with what is”, by the way, is the point behind the first of my 9 Principles for Conscious Living, Let Whatever Happens Be Okay.

I respect Ken Wilber’s opinion that meditation does not help a person deal with shadow material. I’ve seen many long-time meditators who are still screwed up emotionally and have lots of shadow material. At the same time, I’ve personally known thousands of Holosync users who clearly have resolved all kinds of shadow material.

Over the last 24 years, many Holosync meditators have become aware of how they create their feelings, their behaviors, which people and situations they attract or become attracted to, and what meanings they place on what’s going on around them. As you gain this awareness, you stop creating what does not serve you–which includes disowning certain aspects of being human, which is what shadows are.

My friend John Dupuy, who has applied Ken’s Integral theory to addiction recovery, and has made Holosync the cornerstone of his approach to drug and alcohol recovery, tells me that he has observed the same phenomenon: nearly all the addicts he treats who use Holosync seem to shed emotional problems in a way non-Holosync clients don’t.

Another good friend, psychologist Dr. Beverlee Marks Taub (who, by the way, has  been using Holosync since the very beginning, way back in 1985) works with many Holosync users in her therapy and coaching practice. She has been telling me for years that Holosync users move through their “stuff”, including their shadows, far more quickly than non-Holosync users.

There is considerable evidence that the awareness Holosync creates dramatically accelerates the process of seeing how you create your life.

Shadows are the result of a lack of awareness. They cause you to inadvertently step in front of the bullets I referred to above. When you disown a human quality (making it a shadow) you are, by definition, unaware of it. You’ve pushed it out of your awareness because being aware of it feels painful to you. Someone in your childhood taught you (usually through positive and negative reinforcement) that it’s something bad or wrong. They made it painful for you, so you disowned it.

When that shadow, that human characteristic, does intrude into your awareness, you respond to what seems like an emergency by making it seem as if it’s coming from someone or something else, something outside of you–rather than seeing or admitting that it’s actually a part of you. It isn’t your anger, your selfishness, your weakness (or whatever). It’s someone else’s anger, selfishness, or weakness that bothers you.

So you can see that if you begin to become aware of how your feelings, all your ideas, all your premises about life and reality, all your behaviors, and how you become attracted to certain people or situations, all originate in your own mind, it becomes increasingly more difficult to disown something, to project it out onto someone or something outside of you.

For whatever reason, Holosync seems to create that awareness in a way that traditional meditation does not. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s just a matter of degree. Perhaps traditional meditation just doesn’t create quite enough awareness, or perhaps you just have to do it much longer to get the same result.

It could also be that the shadow recognition we see in Holosync users is at least partly the result of all the information we share with you, including the information on this blog. Whether we look at the entire population of Holosync users or the entire population of, say, Zen practitioners, we see some people who are aware of their shadows (or, we might say, are in the process of becoming aware of them, since no one seems to be aware of all of them), and many who aren’t.

When I look at Zen master Genpo Roshi, who I know quite well at this point, I see someone with a great deal of awareness of his shadows, and who works on re-owning them as fast as he can become aware of them. I like to think that I’m doing the same–my relationship with him has had helped me to become much better at doing so. I also see plenty of people in the Zen world, as well as in the Holosync world, who have lots of shadow material and seem to be relatively unaware of it. Is this just a matter of how much Zen training, or how much Holosync training, a person has? Is it a matter of how much additional outside-of-actual-meditation training a person has? I’m sure we’ll learn more as time goes by.

All I can say is that Holosync users seem to own shadow material much more easily than non-Holosync users, and with much less outside feedback, than those who use traditional meditation only. If you’re not yet using Holosync, what are you waiting for?

***

Finally, before you go, I’d like you invite you to spend the weekend with with Zen master Genpo Roshi and me in Vancouver, British Columbia, on June 27th and 28th. This will be the sixth in our series of Big Mind workshops we’ve been doing for the past two years. No public event I’ve ever done has received the raves Genpo and I get for these workshops, and nothing I could say could fully convey the huge benefit you’ll receive by spending this time with a true Zen master (and me!).

I truly can’t think of anything I’ve done over the last 30 years (other than Holosync) that rivals the experience Genpo Roshi and I have created for you in this two-day event.

Just to give you an idea of what might happen for you when you attend, here are a few of the many comments we’ve received from others:

“Hi Bill, I was one of the 220 participants in the two day workshop of Big Mind/Big Heart. I can attest that all you say is true. It is a mind blowing experience, and like the gift that keeps on giving–days after I am still basking in the glow.” –April

“I have been in the audience of many wonderful teachers, but nothing in my experience compares with this last weekend. I had no expectations really (except my usual nagging feelings of self doubt i.e., I won’t be able to get this). I must admit that my mind is still trying to figure out what took place. It’s still hard for me to put into words, but I can say the experience and clarity is beyond any doubt. I must truly say that this is THE most extraordinary experience of my life so far.” –Richard

“For someone who lives in their emotions, this may seem phony at first. But actually, it is quite liberating. It freed up a lot of stuff for me, just to see that it was possible to live in a different way. Would we attend another conference? Absolutely. Why? Because it’s a great thing to participate in the group dynamic, Genpo Roshi, Bill Harris. Did anyone mention that Bill and Genpo are funny together? They can almost go on the road with a standup routine.” –Sandy

“I knew very little about Zen or Genpo Roshi; signed up intuitively. I’ve been meditating, attending growth seminars, workshops, studying, seeking, for 40+ years and most recently Holosync-ing, which I Love! AND I was completely amazed to be in Big Mind, experiencing the Transcendent State, feeling Bliss and One With Everything completely out of the ego state within the first 5 or 10 minutes of Genpo’s process. Exhilarating! Such an elegant, simple process, masterfully facilitated by Genpo Roshi and also Bill. At the end of the 1st day I realized a lifetime of shame and shallow breathing had been released. My body still feels very light and fully breathed, effortlessly, with an added measure of Happiness, Joy; Far less grasping at what I thought was ‘Reality’. –Jani

I’ve emphasized awareness a lot in recent posts. These workshops are one of the fastest and most powerful ways to increase your awareness I’ve ever seen. You’ll not only experience the transcendent, the state of Oneness everyone talks about, you’ll also leave behind several shadows that (trust me) have been causing suffering for you for years. So please come and be with us. It will transform you.

And, this is my chance to meet you in person and get to know you. As you’ll see, both Genpo and I are very approachable and available to you during this weekend. Do come up and introduce yourself so I can get to know you.

To learn more, and to register while there still are seats available, just go to www.centerpointe.com/bigmind. Because of the tough economy we’ve reduced the cost significantly, so this is the time to attend a Big Mind workshop.

And, if you’ve never been to Vancouver, it’s one of the most incredibly beautiful cities in the world, especially in June. See you there!

Be well.

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There are certain problems you can’t do anything about. There’s no way to change the fact that everything in this world is impermanent and will eventually come to an end or fall apart. You also can’t escape from the web of cause and effect that you’re a part of. The solution, if you want to call it that, is to stop making these things into problems. In other words, stop resisting what cannot be resisted.

You can, however, avoid or minimize some of the problems of life, and awareness is the key to doing this. If you’re aware, you can exercise choice regarding the way you enter into and engage the world of cause and effect. Though you can’t control everything raining down on you from the world of cause and effect, you can exercise enough control to substantially improve your life.

There are two ways to approach life: you can live automatically, on autopilot, or consciously, with awareness. Unfortunately, nearly all people live with little awareness, on autopilot. What’s more, if you’re living on autopilot, you won’t even know you’re on autopilot, unless someone tells you. That’s why they call it autopilot.

Identifying the areas where you’re operating unconsciously is one of the benefits of having a teacher. The teacher is like a mirror, showing you what you can’t see for yourself, about yourself. Even a teacher needs a teacher.

Of course, whether you live on autopilot or with awareness isn’t an either/or proposition. There’s a huge spectrum of possibilities between living unconsciously and living with awareness, and each person is somewhere between these two–hopefully developing toward greater awareness. I described this developmental process in detail in the first dozen or so posts on this blog. You might consider reading those posts if you haven’t already done so. They are important, and it’s fascinating information.

The process of becoming more aware can continue to almost infinite levels–or it can stop somewhere along the way. The process pauses periodically to allow you to integrate the latest bit of awareness you’ve gained. Each new gain in awareness changes your perception of reality, and of who you are, and this new perspective takes some getting used to (think of a child going off to school for the first time, or when you went off to college).

Whatever amount of awareness you have, you use it to navigate your life. As long as you can navigate with a reasonable amount of success with the awareness you already have, and as long as your environment remains relatively stable (in other words, doesn’t make any out-of-the-ordinary demands on you that require you to become more aware), you’ll likely stay at your current level of awareness.

As long as what you’re doing works, you’ll keep doing it.

If something significant changes, however, your awareness might need to expand in a way that allows you to deal with the change. If it doesn’t, you’ll be handicapped in certain ways. Most mental and emotional dysfunctions are the result of incomplete developmental shifts.

Some people purposely seek change and put themselves in situations that require an ongoing expansion of awareness. They continually try new things. They take in new ideas. They read. They take classes and seminars. They meditate. They spend time with new and different people. They put themselves in challenging and novel situations. All these things can stimulate the development of additional awareness.

On the other hand, some people do everything they can to limit the amount of change they experience, or the amount of new information or novel experiences they have. For these people (in fact, for most people), development levels off at a certain point–unless something beyond their control causes a significant change to their environment.

As awareness expands, you see more. You watch, you might say, from a higher spot on the mountain. Your perspective grows. For instance, you take into account a longer span of time as you look at life. When you’re young, you’re more in the moment, but as awareness expands you gain a longer-term view. You plan more and delay gratification. You’re more likely to see the effects of the past on your life, and how what you do now will affect the future. Ultimately you might come to see your place in the ongoing flow of life in terms of, and from the perspective of, eons of time–or even infinite time.

As awareness expands you gain the ability to take increasingly larger, broader perspectives. At first, you may see only your own perspective, not even realizing that other people even have a different perspective. As your awareness expands, though, you begin to see the perspectives of others, first of those in your own family, then your peer group, then the perspective of other groups (”them”).

If you continue to develop (a big “if”), your perspective eventually takes in that of all people, then expands further to include all living things. It might eventually expand beyond that of living things. It might even expand beyond the perspective of a limited separate self looking out on a separate world and separate others.

As awareness expands, you more clearly see the web of cause and effect, how it affects you, and how you affect it. You see, for instance, the potential stream of effects that flow from the thoughts and other internal representations you make, from your actions, from what you believe, and from previously unexamined basic premises about reality.

You also see a similar flow of effects from others, and from events originating in the non-living world. You may see that what you thought was solid reality is just an effect that begins with certain premises you always thought were solidly true, but actually aren’t.

To see all of this, though, you have to learn how to observe certain things that most people are unaware of. Much of my teaching is about how to gain (and direct) this awareness. I’ve often said that I do two things: I offer a tool that dramatically expands awareness (Holosync), and then show you where to direct that awareness to give you the greatest amount of control over your life.

An infant first becomes aware of his own existence as something or someone separate from the rest of the world. He then becomes aware of his body and it’s movements and sensory experiences. Eventually he becomes aware of his emotions, and then, hopefully, his thoughts and beliefs.

In many ways, however, the amount of awareness most people have of these basics is just the tip of the iceberg. Most people are aware that they have thoughts and emotions, but only consciously experience them now and then. It is extremely rare for a human being to be aware of how he creates his feelings, or of the effects of his thoughts.

It is even more rare for a person to be aware of the premises that underlie the reality he creates in each moment (or even that he is creating such a reality). Even fewer people see how their thoughts, actions, and basic premises affect the ongoing flow of cause and effect, and the complexity of how cause and effect affects them.

Why are your thoughts, internal representations, actions, beliefs, and premises so important? Because these things generate nearly all of your experience of life. Your internal cognitive processes, and particularly your internal representations and beliefs, create how you feel, how you behave, which people and situations you attract or become attracted to, and what the things going on ”out there” mean (or at least what you think they mean).

These four outcomes make up most, if not all, of your experience of life. If you can become aware of how you create them, you gain a tremendous amount of choice over what happens in your life. Why? Because awareness creates choice.

If you’re not aware of how you create your life, you’ll do it automatically. The part of you that creates your experience of life operates continuously, whether you’re aware of it or not. If you’re unaware, it will create your life on autopilot, and you’ll get whatever you’ve been programmed (mostly during your childhood) to create.

In other words, your past will determine your present, for better or worse.

For this reason, it’s very important that you become aware of the ongoing stream of internal pictures you make and the thoughts you think–and the effects they create. Ninety-nine percent of this happens outside your awareness, but it’s the raw material that creates your experience of life.

If you watch carefully enough, you’ll see exactly how these usually unconscious events generate your feelings and other internal states. If you aren’t willing to learn how to watch this stuff, though–and all of it continues to happen automatically (as it does for all but a tiny percentage of people)–your feelings will continue to “just happen”.

Then, because your internal states generate your behavior, your awareness of (and choice over) how you create your internal states gives you choice over your behavior. You’ll stop behaving in ways you later regret. You’ll also stop failing to do what you know you want to do, or know you should do.

With a wider, more aware perspective, you’ll see the consequences of your thoughts, internal pictures, and actions. And, in clearly seeing this, those things you’re doing that don’t serve you will fall away.

Why? Because you can’t do something that doesn’t serve you and do it with awareness. You can do something over and over (in fact, for your entire life) if you do it without awareness–which is what most people do. You can’t, however, do something that isn’t resourceful with awareness and keep doing it.

I want to be very clear, though, that awareness of how you do something isn’t the same as knowing that you do it. You probably know that you do all kinds of things that aren’t good for you. You may even know why you do them. You may have noticed, though, that knowing this has not helped you to stop doing those things.

Awareness, in this case, means actually seeing what you do inside that generates the outcome, as you do it, and making the connection between what you do and what is created when you do it. Doing this requires quite a bit of awareness, which is why the awareness created by Holosync is so valuable.

It’s also crucial that you become aware of what you believe, because most of what happens in your life flows from something you believe. A belief is something you think is true. When you look at beliefs more closely, though, you see that believing involves a kind of faulty, circular logic.

Look at it this way. Why do you believe that something is true? That’s right–because you have “evidence”. This assumes, though, that “having evidence” is a good way to determine whether or not something is true. It seems like common sense, but is it?

Here’s the problem: no matter what you believe, you’ll automatically generate evidence that it’s true. In other words, you’ll find a way to convince yourself that anything you believe is ”true”. You could just as easily say that the whole idea of ”true” is faulty, since whatever you believe will create its own evidence. Believe something, and you’ll accumulate evidence that you’re right. Meanwhile, someone else is busy accumulating evidence that the opposite belief is also true.

How do you create this evidence? There are three ways. First, you unconsciously attract people and situations that help you accumulate evidence that you’re right, as if you had some sort of psychic radar. By deciding what to believe, you’re deciding what kinds of people and situations you’ll attract or be attracted to–those who will help you be “right” about what you believe.

If you believe that the world is full of assholes (for instance), you’ll attract the perfect people and situations to help you prove that you’re right. Believe that you can do anything, and you’ll attract the people and situations that will allow you to be right about that. Whatever you believe, you’ll recruit people to help you prove it, and you’ll find yourself drawn to situations tailor-made to help you prove that you’re ”right”.

The second way you prove the “truth” of whatever you believe is by interpreting what is happening in a way that makes it seem that you’re right. Out of all the possible interpretations in any situation, you’ll pick the one that supports your belief, and reject the others.

And finally, you’ll act in a way that makes what you believe come true.

And, since this is all going on outside your awareness, you won’t even know you’re doing it! If you’re unaware of this process and how it works (which almost everyone is), you’ll do it unconsciously, and it will look like all the things you believe really are true.

All you’ve done, though, is selectively (and unconsciously) select people and situations that allow you to be right (while avoiding the people and situations that would contradict what you believe), select the interpretation of what is happening that allows you to be right, and act in a way that causes you to be right.

Had you selected different people and situations, picked a different interpretation, or acted in a different way, you would have generated a different set of ”evidence”, and something else would have appeared to be true. So what seems to be ”true” is just whatever appears that way, based on something you do.

So, becoming aware of your beliefs, and observing how they generate the people, situations, and outcomes in your life, is pretty important, don’t you think?

Or, you can just unconsciously keep believing whatever you already believe, and keep unconsciously generating whatever outcomes those beliefs create.

There are several more internal processes you use to create your experience of life, but if you learn to observe these basics, you’ll probably figure out the rest (or, I can teach them to you). Watch these basics with awareness and you become a remarkable person, one other people will marvel at. You’ll see things about “reality” that will completely change your view of life, the universe, and your place in it. And, you’ll discover that a lot of what you thought was true is complete delusion.

There is a price to pay to achieve this kind of mastery, however. What you’re setting out to become aware of is very illusive. It zooms by very quickly, and in the beginning it’s quite outside your awareness. You won’t be good at it right away. Like anything else worth mastering, it takes practice and persistence to become aware of how you create your reality.

Are you willing to pay this price?

If you aren’t, that’s fine. If that’s the case, be content with the amount of control you have right now over your life, because it isn’t going to get any better unless you become more aware.

If you are willing, and you keep practicing, a whole new world will open up for you, and most of the problems of life will fall away.

You’ll be left with the two “givens” I’ve told you about: that everything is impermanent, and that there’s no escape from cause and effect. You’re just going to have to let go regarding the problem of impermanence. You can either surrender, or fight, and since it’s a fight you can’t win, fighting just creates suffering, for you and for others. You might as well fight against breathing, or circulating your blood.

As for cause and effect, though you can’t escape from it, you can, if you’re aware, see the potential consequences of your internal processes and your actions. With this awareness, you can choose to a much greater degree which effects you’re willing to experience.

How, then, do you pay the price to have this awareness? My first suggestion would be to commit yourself to meditating daily with Holosync. Holosync isn’t the only way to create the necessary awareness, but it’s the best (and fastest) way I’ve found.

Second, spend some time each day observing your internal pictures and internal dialog, and noticing how they directly create your internal states. You might, for instance, get into bed each night and spend five or ten minutes recalling one or two significant experiences from your day. Rewind your memory tape and see if you can determine what you said to yourself and what pictures you made, and how these things created the internal states you experienced at the time.

Or, think about someone you have strong feelings about, either positive or negative. Notice the internal representations you make, and the feelings that follow from them.

You might also pick another time to practice during the day, so that you spend ten to twenty minutes a day, divided into at least two sessions, observing your internal representations. Keep in mind that at first you might not be very good at it. If you keep practicing, however, even if it’s hard at first, you’ll get better at it. Eventually you won’t be able to make internal representations that don’t serve you without seeing yourself do it. Once you see that you’re doing it (see, not know), you won’t be able to keep doing it.

Here’s something else you can do. Notice if there’s a result you don’t like that keeps happening in your life. Perhaps you never seem to get the respect you think you deserve. Maybe you keep getting stuck in a lousy job. Perhaps your relationships don’t work out and you keep ending up alone. Maybe you keep losing your money when you invest.

Whatever it is, consider that you might have an underlying core belief about yourself, other people, or the world that causes you to 1) attract the perfect people and situations to help you prove you’re right, 2) choose from all possible choices the one interpretation that make it seem that you’re right, even if there are other possibilities, and 3) act in ways that cause you to be right about what you believe.

Once you figure out what the belief is, instead of trying to get rid of it or change it, watch yourself prove that it’s true. Go into the next situation knowing that you’re going to prove that you’re right, and watch to see how you do it. Become incredibly curious to find out how you do it. Watch your internal representations. Observe what meanings you place on what happens. Watch how you make decisions about what to do, and with whom. Watch your actions.

Become fascinated to discover how you arrange to be right. If what you’re proving doesn’t serve you, watching in this way will make it impossible to continue. You will lose all enthusiasm and motivation to keep going, and the belief (and the outcomes it creates) will fall away.

Finally, if you want to go much more deeply into how what you do on an unconscious level creates your reality, consider taking my Life Principles Integration Process online courses. Just go to www.centerpointe.com/change to read about these courses (and to enroll), or go to www.centerpointe.com/life/preview to listen to a free preview lesson.

You can’t control everything in life, but you can control enough of it to allow yourself to create an amazing, fulfilling life that contains most of what you want. You’ll even figure out how to turn what you didn’t want, when it happens, into an opportunity. Sometimes you even end up with more than you thought possible.

That’s what happen to me, and it can happen to you, too.

***

Before I let you go, I have two Five Star recommendations for you, one highly entertaining and the other highly educational.

The first is about my good friend Stuart Davis. Stuart is totally crazy–but in the best possible way. He’s also one of the most talented people on this planet, and I really mean that (I can’t speak for other planets, but Stuart probably can).

Stuart is a super-talented indie-rock musician and composer (he has, I believe, 14 or 15 albums), an hysterically funny comedian, a talented writer, a social commentator in the same vein (the jugular vein, I believe), as Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, and a very talented visual artist.

I wanted to alert you to the fact that Stuart has a new TV show on HDNet. I have an advanced copy of the first six shows, and they are FUNNY IRREVERENT FUNNY THOUGHTFUL BIZARRE OUT-THERE FUNNY (if you know what I mean). Really funny. I strongly suggest that you watch this show! Here is a press release about it:

Zen Buddhist-indie rocker Stuart Davis is launching a new comedy series: Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll. Season One of this ground-breaking TV show debuts April 26 on HDNet across the U.S. and Canada. Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll is written, directed, and hosted by Stuart Davis, and features edgy humor from the open-hearted maniac. Each episode follows Stuart performing stand up comedy, news, sketches, and his acclaimed music. A twisted mind and a sensitive soul, David has made a career out of parsing tricky topics, and Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll finds this ‘Punk Monk’ at his multi-faceted best.

“We are excited to welcome Stuart Davis and Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll to HDNet. Stuart is one of a kind, and we are thrilled he is on HDNet.” –Marc Cuban, President of HDNet

Davis has studied his heroes (Ricky Gervais, Amy Sedaris, Jon Stewert), but is finding a unique voice with his ’spiritual’ brand of comedy. SGR&R is a delirious dive into life’s Mysteries through the mind of a Cosmo-centric comedian. It’s no wonder Davis has become known as the Twisted Mystic.

“Without exaggeration, Stuart Davis is one of the most fascinating and exceptional songwriters in modern music.” –San Jose Metro

While Davis is a happily hyphenated artist (writer-director-actor-comedian-songwriter), he’s first known for his music. The sound track to Season One of SGR&R (’Songs From The TV Series’) is being released simultaneously with the debut of the TV show. The first single, Twisted Mystery, hits radio in April and is also featured on Showtime in the series I Can’t Believe I’m Still Single. Davis will be touring nationally through the summer to promote the TV series and the new collection of pop songs.

So mark April 26 on your calendar and watch Stuart make fun of everything you hold near and dear. You can also learn more, and see clips of Stuart (and other bizarre stuff), at www.sexgodrocknroll.com.

***

My second recommendation is of a completely different nature. If you have kids, and you want them to excel at school and at life, check out Supercamp. My friend Bobbi DePorter, a fellow-member of Jack Canfield’s Transformational Leadership Council, started Supercamp many years ago, and it is the premier learning and life-skills experience for young people.

If your son or daughter would benefit from state-of-the-art methods for studying, problem-solving, relationship success, or could use more self-esteem, better grades, more confidence, more motivation, and the opportunity to learn and internalize the keys to life success, take a look at Supercamp.

About fifteen ago (before I knew Bobbi DePorter), I sent my daughter, Brisa, to Supercamp. She was already a good student, but after Supercamp she became unstoppable. Eventually she became a National Merit Scholar and was offered two full-ride scholarships (to Lewis and Clark College and Scripps College), and was also admitted to two prestigeous Ivy League colleges. Brisa will turn 25 in June, and I still see evidence of what she learned at Supercamp. I highly recommend this incredible program.

You can watch a great 6-minute video on their home page (upper right-hand corner) at www.supercamp.com. If you have a school-age son or daughter (or grandchild), please go watch it.

You can also listen to a longer teleseminar at www.supercamp.com/supercamp_teleseminar.html. It’s called “Teen Success in Challenging Times/Practical Tips on How You Can Help Your Teen”.

Finally, please share this blog post with people you care about.

Be well.

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Also think for a moment about all the people you know about, but don’t know personally–politicians, celebrities, leaders, and so on.

All these people have one important thing in common: they’re all doing their best to make sense of what it means to be a human being.

Think about it. Here we are, on this spinning rock ball, in the middle of endlessly vast space, in a thin and fragile protected environment absolutely necessary to us if we’re to stay alive. We come into the world, and then, after an undetermined amount of time, we’re gone. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

(Actually, if you think about it, it would be more accurate to say that we come OUT of the world, like an apple comes out of an apple tree, but that’s another story, for another day.)

When you think about it, doesn’t it strike you that this whole business of being a person is quite weird? I mean, what’s it all about? Why is it happening? Is there any purpose to it? If so, what is it?

One of the reasons we wonder so deeply and so universally about these questions is, I believe, that as it’s all going on, we suffer. Our tender bodies allow us to connect and interact with the world, but this same sensitivity also makes us vulnerable to pain. Then there’s the fact that we want things, but sometimes we don’t get them. When that happens, we also suffer. Then there are the times where we get what we don’t want, and we suffer when that happens, too.

As if that weren’t enough, we’re each part of a gigantic web of cause and effect over which we have minimal control. Numberless ongoing physical events throughout the universe affect our galaxy, our solar system, our planet, and, ultimately, our lives. There’s nothing we can do about cosmic rays, gravity, weather patterns, the tides, sunspots, the seasons, the Earth’s magnetic field, the tectonic movements of the continents, earthquakes, the volcanic stirrings beneath the Earth’s crust, the makeup of the atmosphere–and an infinite number of other things totally beyond our control.

What’s more, billions of people, including you, are acting to get what they want in each moment. Some of these actions affect you directly (positively or negatively), while others affect you in a less direct way. Even far-removed events still have an effect on you, though it may be less apparent.

And though your own actions give you some small degree of control over what happens, ultimately you’re at the mercy of forces vastly beyond your control. There’s no getting around it: there is no escape from cause and effect.

As if this wasn’t enough, there’s another big reason why we suffer. Despite our puny influence on cause and effect, we still manage to get what we want some of the time. But even when this happens, whatever it is eventually passes away or falls apart. Everything is impermanent.

We probably suffer about this more than anything else. Nothing lasts. The people and things we love won’t last, and neither will we. Because of this, even though we can enjoy things while they exist, and can enjoy life while it lasts, human existence is imbued with a certain underlying regret or melancholy–an underlying awareness of the transience of things, and a bittersweet sadness at their passing.

You might not have thought of it this way, but much of life, and much of our effort to make sense of it, consists of an attempt to come to terms with these two things: that we’re caught in a web of cause and effect over which we have very limited control, and that all things are impermanent, including ourselves.

Humans have come up with endless strategies to try to deal with this. Some just don’t want to think about it. They stay busy, distracting themselves with activity, drugs, striving, or something else. Some create an after-life or rebirth, or a higher power that they hope does have control, and who might hopefully have a larger plan we’re unaware of, that hopefully will cause everything to turn out alright.

Some decide to make hay while the sun shines. They strive to accumulate wealth, or power, hoping to gain more of a fighting chance in the struggle against cause and effect. Others do what they can to fend off the inevitability of impermanence with modern medicine, exercise, and healthy living. Some find comfort in leaving good works or some sort of legacy that will remain after they’re gone.

Some people just try to stay high all the time. Others become interested in philosophy, hoping to find an explanation. Others become deeply angry and lose control. Still others hope that controlling their mind will provide an answer.

Some hope that individual action will save them. Others seek the security of their group, their tribe, their religion. “If I follow the rules, everything will be fine.” Some divide the world into good and bad, appropriate and inappropriate, and fight against the bad and run after the good. Others hope their adherence to certain guiding principles and ideas will help. Others hope that going beyond principles and ideas, into a state of “no mind,” will provide a solution.

Though it’s not hard to find people who swear by the effectiveness of each of these methods, so far no one has found a way to escape from cause and effect, and no one has found a way to escape from the underlying impermanence of all things. We don’t like to hear this, though. It gives us an uneasy feeling. “There’s no escape? There’s nothing I can do?” So, many people hold out hope that there will turn out to be an afterlife, or that reincarnation will bring them back again (interestingly, Buddhists and Hindus are hoping to step out of that cycle, not perpetuate it).

You may have tried many, or even most of, these methods. You may have tried them all. I’ve tried most of them myself. In the short run, all of them work, or at least seem to work while you’re involved in them. In the long run, none of them work.

As infants we hope that if we cry loudly enough someone will take away our suffering. That’s the only method we have access to. As small children we imagine magical powers that will give us control over what happens (we also keep the crying option open). As we get older, we stop thinking that we have magical powers, but instead attribute them to a parade of powerful others: parents, authority figures, worldly (or spiritual) leaders, a romantic partner, or some higher power.

None of these methods, though, allows us to escape from cause and effect, or from impermanence, because there is no escape. Maybe that’s why we feel so profoundly disappointed (and sometimes angry) when it becomes apparent that one of these “powerful others” isn’t going to provide the answer, the salvation, the solace, or the solution.

No one escapes from these two cornerstones of the human condition. Some people, though, do come to terms with them. Except in rare cases, though, this doesn’t happen until every possible means of escape has been tried.

Human development (which I’ve written about extensively on this blog–see the first dozen or so posts) can be seen as a series of increasingly sophisticated approaches for dealing with impermanence and cause and effect, along with an increasingly broader perspective about such things. Magical thinking (I have magic powers that allow me to control the universe) and mythic thinking (placing the magical power in a powerful other rather than in the self) are examples of this, but there are many other ways human beings attempt to defeat or forestall the effects of cause and effect and impermanence.

You’re probably thinking that I’m about to suggest a solution to all of this. I’m not. I don’t have a solution. There isn’t one. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but there really IS no escape.

But what if we took the fact that there’s no escape as a starting point, instead of fighting it or ignoring it? What if we could somehow come to terms with death and other forms of impermanence, and with cause and effect? Wouldn’t that at least be more realistic? Perhaps surrendering to “what is” would do something that would make life worthwhile, despite the realities–in the same way that someone who has finally accepted their terminal illness exudes a transcendental radiance and inner peace, creating a sense of awe (and a contact high) in everyone around them.

Buddhists call the unwillingness to accept impermanence and cause and effect delusion, ignorance–in other words, an ignoring of the most basic facts of life. But, you say, accepting all of this seems to be such a profoundly negative outlook. Ironically, though, this embracing of “what is” turns out to be incredibly freeing.

I mentioned earlier that you probably won’t give up your struggle against these two until you’ve tried everything. Just being told that there’s no escape doesn’t work. Reading this post isn’t going to change anything for you. Even if you agree on an intellectual level that there’s no escape, you’ll still keep trying to escape–until and unless you run out of options.

There are some people running around who still believe the Earth is flat. No amount of arguing will change the minds of such people. To change the mind of such a person, you’ll have to show them, experientially. How would you do that? You might say to them, “Well of course the Earth is flat. Wouldn’t it be fun to go look over the edge?”

And, then to make sure you didn’t wander around in circles, and not find the edge just because you were sloppy about your search, you’d program your GPS and head due east, for instance, on a certain line of latitude. In other words, you’d head for the edge you’re hoping to find, in a disciplined way. Then, when the two of you finally returned to the place where you’d started, the flat-Earth person would have to at least admit that the Earth is a cylinder.

In much the same way, a good spiritual teacher will send you off in a disciplined search for a solution to the problems of impermanence and cause and effect–not to find a solution (though that’s what you think is going on), but rather to get you to try every way out, until you have no choice but to come to the inevitable conclusion, from personal experience, that there really is no escape.

I’ve discussed Zen master Genpo Roshi’s innovative Big Mind process many times in this blog. In this approach, you’re asked to speak from various “voices” or aspects of the self (as well as those of the transcendent “no-self”). One of the most potent of these voices is the voice of Great Doubt. This voice represents the part of you that really, truly doubts everything, including that there’s any possible escape, solution, or salvation.

Amazingly, when you really get into the voice of Great Doubt, instead of the darkness and gloom you might expect, you find ultimate freedom. This gives us a second way to drop your impossible quest for a way to escape: you could try every possible way out, until you exhaust every possibility, or you could go right to Great Doubt–be Great Doubt.

Great Doubt is, in fact, the road to Great Enlightenment. Few, however, want to go there. After all, it seems so negative. Great Doubt involves doubting that ANYTHING will save you: your ideas, your knowledge, your skills and expertise, your health, your accomplishments, the power you’ve accumulated, your religion, your physical prowess, your money, your possessions, your fame, your self-esteem, the respect you’ve earned, the therapy you’ve gone through, your love relationship, your children, your friends, your healthy diet, your doctors, your philosophy, yoga, meditation–or anything else.

Let me be clear that I’m not against any of these things. All of the above are part of what makes life juicy, interesting, and worth living. However, if you’re doing them under the illusion that they’ll save you from cause and effect or impermanence, you’ll always end up disappointed.

When you doubt–and therefore see through–all of these things, when you’ve doubted it all (that is, doubted that any of it will ultimately save you from cause and effect and impermanence), there’s nothing left to hang onto. In a spiritual and psychic sense, you’re naked. This seems like it would be very negative, doesn’t it? But once Great Doubt brings you to the place where you have nothing to hang onto, something remarkable happens and YOU’RE FREE.

There’s a koan in Buddhism: How do you take the first step off a 100 foot pole? It seems that taking that step would lead to death, annihilation–a splat on the pavement. Unless you actually take that step, though, you never discover that when you hit bottom, you bounce.

I once heard Alan Watts tell a story about a play he saw when he was a little boy. The curtain opens to a man sleeping in a fancy Victorian-era room crammed with fringed lamps, extravagant Victorian furniture, and all kinds of ornamental gewgaws and bric-a-brac. The alarm clock rings, which enrages the man so much that he grabs his shoe and begins smashing the alarm clock until it’s a flattened pile of metal and gears.

He then jumps out of bed and in his rage begins tearing the sheets off the bed and ripping them to shreds. He then smashes the crockery and the mirror and the furniture, and everything else, until the room is a scene of total demolition. The last thing standing is a tall floor lamp with a fringed lampshade. In a final act of anger, he picks up the lamp and throws it across the room…and it bounces. The surprise is that it’s made of rubber.

Though the actual contents of the story have nothing to do with what I’m talking about (other than the idea that, in the end, you “bounce”), it created such a vivid image that I’ve never forgotten it. Watts told this story to illustrate what I’m saying here: when you take that step off the 100 foot pole–when you really and truly give up all hope that anything can save you from cause and effect, or impermanence–you bounce. When you step into the abyss–or what looks to be the abyss–the dreadful consequence you were so afraid of doesn’t happen.

Instead, you discover that you are free. You discover that you are the transcendent, the unborn/undying pure awareness, the Christ, the Buddha, the One. This realization is freedom. Then, for a while, you float along in this transcendent state, where there are no problems and no one to have them, because you’re the infinite Oneness that was never born and will never die.

Later, you might come to see that even though that’s who you are, the organism through which you’re experiencing who you are is still subject to impermanence and cause and effect.

Until you decide to actually take that leap, though, what else can you do? Let’s start, then, from the assumption that there really is no escape–even if you’re the Buddha–and that you can choose to surrender to impermanence or fight it, but either way, it will win. True wisdom is seeing things as they really are.

Here you are, then, in a universe over which you have little control, and where everything eventually falls apart, including you. You realize, though, that who you really are is beyond the separate me in a bag of skin you thought you were. Still though, here you are, living (for now) in the relative world, a world of cause and effect and impermanence.

I’ve often said that awareness provides the solution to all problems. Let me explain how that’s the case even in this situation. I’ve also said that awareness gives you choice. So look at it this way. If you are caught in cause and effect (which you are), and you’re unaware, you’ll be likely to unknowingly place yourself in situations where the consequences–the effect–involve getting something you don’t want. You’ll find yourself with outcomes you don’t want, with people you don’t want, in situations you don’t want to be in.

If you have enough awareness, though, you can see that web of cause and effect before you act. You can see the inevitable karma (to use the Eastern philosophy word) you create whenever you think a certain thought, make a certain picture in your head, make a certain decision, or take a certain action. With enough awareness, no matter how complex the situation, you’ll see the potential consequences, and act accordingly. You’ll enter into life choosing the consequences you experience.

To the degree that you’re unaware, you’re quite likely to step into one situation after another, think one thought after another, make one decision after another, which leads to suffering, both for you and for others.

So while you can’t do anything about the fact that as a human being you’re subject to cause and effect, you can choose–if you’re aware–what consequences you create, what situations you enter into, what thoughts you think, what decisions you make and which actions you take. Though consequences are inevitable, you do have a choice about which consequences you generate.

The gift of awareness is choice. Remain unaware, though, and you have little or no choice. When you’re unaware, life seems to “just happen,” and some of what happens is unnecessarily painful. Suffering is built into life, due to cause and effect and the impermanence of all things. From these two there is no escape. None. The super-aware human being surrenders to impermanence, because all other choices involve delusion–the delusion that you can do something about it.

The super-aware human being also sees how cause and effect works and, in that awareness, CHOOSES how he becomes involved in it. Knowing that all thoughts and all actions have consequences, he chooses the thoughts and actions whose consequences he’s willing to experience. I choose, for instance, to be emotionally involved with Centerpointe. Because Centerpointe, like everything else, is impermanent, I know it will change and eventually fall apart. I also choose to be attached to my wife, Denise; to my daughter, Brisa, and to my son, Evan.

To be unattached to these things would make life, well, lifeless. I also know that this attachment generates consequences, but being aware, I can see them. I also know that everything I’m attached to is a choice I’ve made, with full knowledge of what I’m getting myself into. Without awareness, though, these things are not a choice.

The only thing that really gives you a leg-up in this world is awareness. Ironically, you are that awareness. That’s the only thing that was never born and never dies. That Pure Awareness, the real you, is beyond impermanence, and beyond cause and effect. The body you’re in, however, and the concepts and ideas that make up who you think you are–what I’ve called your Map of Reality, or what could be called “the separate self”–are all impermanent, and are all subject to cause and effect.

This is why Holosync is so important. Holosync creates awareness in a way I’ve never seen anything else do. As you become more aware, you start to see how you’ve been unknowingly creating the karma, the consequences, that you’ve been experiencing. The more aware you become, the more clearly you see this. And the more you see it, the more you automatically know the most resourceful thing to do in each moment.

Zen master Genpo Roshi makes a distinction between the human part of you, the part that is subject to impermanence and cause and effect, and the being part of you, the pure awareness that is beyond these. Ultimately, while you’re here, in a body, as a living thing (a “sentient being,” as they say in Buddhism), you are both human and being. The idea, then, is to integrate your humanness with your beingness, to transcend, and at the same time include, both. Genpo calls the result of this integration “the one who consciously chooses to be a human being.”

I’m not going to tell you to surrender to impermanence, because you won’t do it until you’re truly convinced that there’s no other choice. No one takes that first step off the 100 foot pole until they have no choice, though sometimes you fall without intending to. I am going to tell you, however, to do everything you can to become more aware. In my opinion, that means meditating with Holosync every day.

Another tool I’ve create to help you with this process are my Life Principles Integration Process online courses. These courses show you, among other things, where to direct that awareness in order to create the greatest amount of choice. (You can learn more about these courses–which, considering what you get and how you will change, are ridiculously inexpensive by going to www.centerpointe.com/change. You can also listen to a free preview lesson at www.centerpointe.com/life/preview. (And, until April 15th, the price is much lower.)

I would also strongly recommend that if you are really interested in your psychological and spiritual growth that you bend Heaven and Earth to attend one of the weekend workshops Genpo Roshi and I have been offering. The next one will be in Vancouver, B.C., on June 27-28. These workshops are the fast-track to waking up, and they are extremely affordable (greatly reduced price). To register, go to www.centerpointe.com/bigmind.

Alan Watts used to say that from the moment of your birth, you’re in free-fall. Clutching at the other things falling alongside you isn’t going to help. While there might not be any escape from impermanence and cause and effect, there is a way to enjoy the ride, and to be much more in charge of what happens during your plunge to the bottom. Awareness is the key.

Keep watching, and be well.

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“You are full of promise.”

This post is going to be a bit different than the others you’ve read or listened to here. I want to tell you about a friend of mine–an amazing man, Bob Danzig. This post, more than any of the others, is a must-read.

Because of Centerpointe’s huge success, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet many amazing people. Bob Danzig is certainly one of the top two or three. Just spending time with Bob Danzig leaves you feeling good about yourself and more confident about your own value and what you can accomplish.

One reason why Bob is so amazing has to do with his sad and difficult childhood–and his amazingly successful and inspirational adult life. For twenty years Bob was CEO of the entire Hearst Newspaper Group, a multi-billion dollar company, working his way up from office boy in a small newspaper in Albany, New York. Considering where he started, his story shows how anyone, with the right encouragement from people who care, can create a life that matters.

Bob never had a family. Instead, he grew up in a series of foster homes. In one home, he slept in an attic with no lights. The family he lived with would leave his dinner on the bottom step of the attic stairs. He ate in the attic, alone, in the dark.

For his entire childhood Bob owned one pair of much-too-large scuffed black sneakers that he grew into over several years by taking out bits of the tissue paper stuffed in the toes as his feet grew. His other possessions consisted of two shirts, two pairs of jeans, two pairs of socks, and two pairs of underwear. ”When I had to move to a new foster home,” Bob says, ”I would reach under my mattress, take out the folded black plastic trash bag I kept there, put my clothes in it, and move to a new home.”

Today, Bob is in his 70s, and is one of the kindest, most gracious, most inspirational–and most well-dressed–people I’ve ever known. As I learned more about his childhood, I understood why dressing well is so important to him. When he got his first job at the Times Union newspaper in Albany, New York, each pay period he took a part of his paycheck and bought himself one nice piece of clothing–a quality shirt, a cashmere sweater, a pair of Italian slacks, a silk necktie, and so forth.

He never wore dungarees or blue jeans–they brought back too many painful memories of his childhood. He was embarrassed about the two sets of plain and wrinkled clothing he alternated every other day. “The other kids had clean, unwrinkled clothes. They looked like someone cared about them. I wanted someone to care about me.”

No one ever took Bob to the beach. No one took him fishing. He never had a baseball card collection. His few friendships didn’t last because he never lived in one place for very long.

Despite his lonely, sad childhood, Bob Danzig became a Fortune 500 CEO and an inspiration to his employees and to thousands of other people, including me. Today he writes books and speaks to thousands of people each year, donating all the money he earns to help foster children.

Bob had to leave the foster care system when he graduated from high school at age sixteen. “You’re probably thinking that a guy has to be pretty smart to finish high school at sixteen,” he told me. This happened, however, because of a mistake. When he was moving from one foster home to another, the school made a mistake and placed him in the wrong grade. As he told me, “Then I just drifted through those grades.”

Can you imagine what this was like? Never having a family, never doing what normal kids do, moving from place to place whenever a family couldn’t keep him or didn’t want him, never staying long enough to make friends or create a close connection with anyone, and then being totally on your own at age sixteen?

One important incident from those years never left him, and he still talks about it. Mae Morse, the social worker who met with him periodically and who would send him on to his next foster home when his foster family ”didn’t want him anymore” said something to him that changed his life forever. At the end of each of their meetings, he told me, she would take his hands in hers and say, “Bobby, don’t you ever forget this. You are worthwhile.”

Here’s how he described his reaction in his book, Conversations With Bobby:

“Just like that, she uttered such a simple, pure sentence. But the funny thing is, the reason I remember it so vividly is because I know she meant it. I could tell she was genuine and sincere. She truly wanted me to know that I, Bobby Danzig, was worthwhile. She had no motive for saying what she did. I had nothing to offer, she had nothing to gain. I was worthwhile–not because I would shine shoes. I was worthwhile–not because I would carry coal. I was worthwhile–not because I would make no trouble. Just me, I mattered.”

This, he said, was like “warm milk pouring over me, the idea that I had some sense of possibility and promise.”

When Bob left foster care, he got a job at Montgomery Ward in the wholesale mattress department. His job was to climb up onto catwalks high above the floor, find the mattress the foreman wanted, and push it over the edge onto a trampoline on wheels, after which it was wheeled out to the customer.

One day he must have mistaken the number the foreman called out, because when he pushed the mattress over the edge, there was no trampoline. Instead, the mattress hit his boss, and he was fired. That night, he told a friend what had happened. The friend had just been promoted from office boy to clerk at the Albany Times Union newspaper. “If you get down there fast, you might be able to get my old job,” his friend told him. “But you look kind of young. You’d better get a hat.”

So Bob went to a men’s clothing store, bought his first hat, and went to the newspaper offices. Nine others were waiting to see about the job, and Bob was the last to be interviewed. The woman who interviewed him looked, in his words, “like a pitbull.” The first thing she said to him was, “Why are you wearing that hat in here? Don’t you know it’s rude to wear your hat indoors?”

Bob had never owned a hat, so he didn’t know anything about hat etiquette, but for some reason this woman–the office manager–saw something in him she liked, and he got the job. It was the lowest possible job at a newspaper, but Bob eventually became an advertising salesman, then head of the advertising department, and eventually the publisher of the Times Union. Later he became CEO of the entire Hearst newpaper group, managing a considerable number of newspapers, many popular magazines (Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Harpers Bazaar, Popular Mechanics, Country Living, Colonial Homes, and many others), and 27 television stations.

A few months after starting as office boy, the office manager called him into her office. “I’ve been watching you,” she said. “Oh, no. Fired again,” he thought. But she continued, “and I just wanted to tell you that I believe that you are filled with promise.”

This had such a powerful effect on him that even after becoming publisher of that newspaper, after the Hearst Company later sent him to Stanford University on a journalism fellowship, and even after he became head of the entire Hearst newspaper group, he never stopped hearing those words.

When I heard this story I was reminded just how powerful what we say to others can be, especially if you’re a parent or in some other position of respect and authority.

I want to tell you how I met Bob Danzig, because he has had a powerful effect on my life.

In the late 1990s, during the dot-com days when venture capitalists were giving new internet companies millions of dollars, I thought I’d should try to get some of that money, too, and start an internet company.

An advisor told me that the first thing I should do was to put together a board of directors of prominent business people. I didn’t know any prominent people then, and I wasn’t sure how to find any, much less convince them to be on the board of my start-up company. I told Jim Hennig, a friend who had been the president of the National Speakers Association, about my idea. Jim, who knew many prominent business people, said, “I know who you should get. Bob Danzig.” He told me a little bit about Bob and made an introduction.

I was a bit awed to be speaking to someone like Bob Danzig on the telephone, but he was warm and gracious and even invited me to come to New York to have dinner with him at the Harvard Club in midtown Manhatten. The Harvard Club was just like what I’d imagined a private Ivy League club would be: dark wood panelling, expensive rugs, overstuffed chairs around warm fireplaces, old and beautiful artwork, and richly attired and attentive staff. Bob was friendly–and impeccably dressed. He seemed genuinely interested in me and my idea. Fifteen minutes into the conversation he said, “I have a feeling we’re going to do big things together.”

When he said this, you could have knocked me over with a feather. You have to realize that at this point in my career Centerpointe wasn’t very big. I had six or seven employees and our “headquarters” was a small down-in-the-heels building that had once been a print shop. My spartan little office looked like the office of a warehouse manager. No art, no ferns, no credenza.

Every day I would show up for work, sit in my office all day, and do whatever needed to be done. I didn’t know more than two or three other people in the personal growth world–Hale Dwoskin at Sedona Training Associates and Pete Bissonette at Learning Strategies Corporation, and maybe two or three others. I had no business education other than the school of hard knocks. I was living in my own introverted little world, running Centerpointe with little or no communication or feedback from other personal growth leaders or business owners.

Other than the fact that Centerpointe was reasonably successful (the year I met Bob Danzig our sales were about $2M), I had no idea if my business skills were mediocre, competent, or something else. So what Bob said to me really meant a lot. “Wow,” I thought. “This guy was CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, and he wants to do something with me?” An hour later, when I asked if he’d be willing to serve on the board of directors of the new company, he said, “I’d be happy to serve on the board of any company that had Bill Harris as the CEO.”

I was stunned, and very happy. Now that I know more about Bob, his childhood, and the way he worked his way up from office boy to CEO of the entire company, I can see that he was doing for me what important mentors in his life had done for him–looking past my flaws and inexperience and seeing the promise in me–promise I didn’t yet see in myself–and then communicating it to me in a way that helped bring it out.

Literally days after I’d finished putting together what turned out to be a rather impressive board (Bob was the biggest, but not the only, ”star” I  recruited), the stock market crashed and all the start-up money for internet companies disappeared. The company never got off the ground. Instead, I turned my attention back to Centerpointe. Because Centerpointe has grown by about 900% since then, I’m glad it happened the way it did. I still stay in touch with Bob, though, and he still inspires me every time I speak to him. Just as he never forgot the people who told him, “You are worthwhile,” and “You are filled with promise,” I’ve never forgotten what he said to me because it significantly boosted my confidence.

Several years ago, after he’d become publisher of the Albany Times Herald, he tracked down Mae Morse, the social worker who had said to him, “You are worthwhile” when he was just a small boy. She was in a nursing home, old and frail. Here’s how Bob described their meeting in Conversations With Bobby:

“They had set her up in the parlor chair of the nursing home. She beamed when I walked in. I can see her so clearly, her knit shawl hung over her shoulders. I walked over to her and put my hands in hers. Before I could utter a word, she said to me, ‘Didn’t I always tell you that you are worthwhile?’ I was in awe. I told her how I looked forward to this day–the day when I could share with her my gratitude for the confidence and value she placed in me. I said to her, ‘In a life stuck in the shadows, you, Mae Morse, gave me my first shining moment that penetrated the darkness.’”

Other than the fact that Bob’s story is so touching, there’s another reason why I’m telling it to you. Somehow, out of my own painful childhood and my struggles to master my anger and depression and lack of success, hundreds of thousands of people now look up to me for help and seek my guidance. Believe me, in light of where I started and the person I used to be, no one is more surprised about this turn of events than I am.

Many people tell me that they benefit from Holosync and that they’ve had many “ah-ha’s” from the information I share. It’s obvious, however, that my focus is not motivational or inspirational. What I teach is more theoretical,  intellectual, and informational rather than inspirational.

So as we all do our best to navigate our way through some very difficult and scary times, I want to express to you something a little more heartfelt–something I’ve unfortunately failed to say as often, or as directly, as perhaps I should:

I value you. Even though I may never meet you in person, I’m glad that you’re in my life. You are worthwhile. You are filled with promise.

Everything I do at Centerpointe is based upon the premise that anyone, if they know what to do, can be happy, peaceful inside, and successful, regardless of their past or present circumstances. If I can do it, anyone can. So I want to express my hope that Holosync, along with all the other information and tools we provide at Centerpointe, will in some small way make is easier for you to navigate your life, and allow you to bring forth the promise that is in you, whether in bad or good times.

Be well.

[I urge you to visit Bob's website, www.bobdanzig.com, where, among other things, you can see a very moving clip of him speaking. Also, please purchase a copy of Conversations With Bobby, or one of his other books. Just go to Amazon and type in Conversations With Bobby. Every cent of Bob's book royalties and speaking fees go directly to the Child Welfare League of America to help foster children.]

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