Meditation

“Dad, can we go to Shirley’s Bagels?” my 12-year-old daughter asked on Sunday morning. “Sure,” I responded. “I’ll order online so we can just go in and pick ’em up.”

I went online and ordered four everything bagels, toasted, with cream cheese, and two apple juices in those little glass bottles — you know, the ones that cost $2.75 for ten ounces of pure sugar?

My 14-year-old and 12-year-old have loved them since they were toddlers when we’d get them at the Western Bagel on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. Sentimentality trumps health every time when it comes to those damn apple juices.

So I ordered at 10:50 a.m. The receipt said to pick up at 11:20. Bing, bang, boom. We were good to go.

My daughter and I get in the car 25 minutes later and drive to the bagel shop. I walk in. Look at my watch: 11:20. Right on time. We’re cooking with gas, baby!

Yeah, uh, no… “Hi, I’m picking up an online order for David.” The young lady checks the bags on the online shelf… “It’s not ready yet.” So off I slink.

The place was jammed with people standing around. That should have been my clue that an operational disaster was afoot.

Five minutes go by. The girl picks up a bag. Gets ready to address the hungry masses. I make a minor, anticipatory move forward… “Sarah?” Dang. No such luck.

At this point, I’m fine. Five minutes is no big deal. The only reason it’s any deal at all is that the other times I’ve ordered online from this place, I’ve walked in, given my name, been handed a bag, and walked out.

The Gerken Tank Battalion

But then another five minutes go by. At this, a gaggle of soldiers in my lower self, the 102nd Gerken Ego Tank Battalion, climb inside their tanks and fire up the engines. The war isn’t on yet. They’re just preparing their tanks should HQ order them into battle.

What do I mean by this? I’m getting bugged. Annoyed. Who is this ‘I’ that is getting bugged and annoyed? Not the conscious, real me. That guy doesn’t get bugged or annoyed…about anything.

It’s my ego. Rearing its ugly head. Shooting its toxic brew of bile, anger and complaining juice to every corner of my being. Any of you know what I’m talking about? You bet you do!

It’s that pointless, stupid feeling of, “What the hell is going on here? How long can it take to slap four bagels together?”

But rational me is thinking, “Just chill out. They’ve been on time every time before. They’re ten minutes late so it’ll be ready in another minute or two, max.” Right? Wrong.

Another five minutes go by. It’s now fifteen minutes past the time they told me to pick up, when every other time they’ve been right on schedule. That could mean only one thing.

It was go time.

Which meant that Ego Headquarters sent a direct order to the tank drivers to haul ass toward the enemy. The battle was officially engaged.

Probably the most important part of this piece is defining just who those “ego” tanks were going into battle against. In other words, who is the adversary in this battle?

Me, that’s who.

Huh? Yes, me. The real me. The conscious me. The present me.

It was a classic battle of ego versus conscious self. A battle that, unfortunately, most of humanity never wages because they don’t even know there is a real self to take on the powerful, complaining, critical, fearful ego we all have.

Specifics of the battle

How did this battle play out inside me? It was brutal. Seriously. Every time Conscious David would close his eyes and take a few deep, cleansing breaths, about 5–10 seconds later my ultra-skillful tank commanders would come roaring back with, “This is just f-ing ridiculous! It’s four f-ing toasted bagels with cream cheese!”

Wah, wah, wah. I hope you’ll all pardon my French here, but the most apt description of my ego is this:

He’s a whiny little bitch.

Conscious David returned fire by going to, “Don’t be such a jerk. There are five women busting their asses trying to make your stupid bagels, you spoiled little shit! CHILL THE F OUT!”

But Ego David’s firepower was too much. He blasted back with, “I don’t think I can come here again. This is just unacceptable.”

And then, thirty minutes after my established pickup time, the sweet sound of, “David?” flew through the air and into my ears. Ahhh….

I graded myself

Is that the end of the story? No. Because as I was walking out, a brilliant thought occurred to me. It was a thought in the form of a question, which was this:

“What grade would you give yourself for how you handled this little imbroglio?”

I thought about it for a few seconds as I walked to the car where my twelve year old daughter had been patiently waiting (i.e., playing on her phone). The answer? I gave myself a C.

Why not a D or an F? Because I never lost it with anybody working at the shop. I wasn’t rude. Didn’t make a stink about how long it was taking. That’s D/F territory.

What success looks like

What would an A or B look like? Going from closing my eyes and taking deep, conscious breaths to looking around the shop and just noticing my surroundings to going on my phone and reading ESPN.com and writing on my gratitude app…Until I heard my name called.

So I certainly didn’t do great, but I also didn’t fail miserably.

But that idea about grading myself? It dawned on me that I may have stumbled into genius on this one. Why? Because I think that might give me just a little more incentive to try harder next time.

This stuff is hard!

Because this stuff isn’t easy. The unexpected waiting and other little annoyances of daily life have always been hard for me to brush off like water from a duck’s back.

And why is that? Because I came out of the womb a hugely impatient human being. I swear, it’s a physical thing for me.

But I need to let go of that stuff. I need to get that egoic junk out of me. We all have it. At least some of it.

Our inner superpower

Fortunately, we all have a superpower within us that can render those egoic tanks useless. That stops them dead in their tracks and causes every soldier inside them to pass out.

That superpower? We simply relax and watch the tanks, rather than step onto the battlefield with them which literally fuels those tanks. It’s witness consciousness, pure and simple.

That superpower is something that needs to be cultivated. It needs to be strengthened through doing the basic daily work of mindfulness. At red lights. Grocery store lines.

And yes, at bagel shops.

Many if not most spiritual teachers describe the spiritual path as one that places awakening as its ultimate aim. The word Buddha literally means “awakened one.” I don’t think this is the most accurate depiction of what actually happens when we travel the path. Why?

Before getting to that, let’s ask two central questions: What are we awakeningfrom? And what does that final, awakened state look like?

What is awakening?

Obviously, when we awaken, it’s from sleep. So what is the state of sleeping? We can quibble on the exact words to describe it, but let’s go with this: Sleeping is akin to our egoic minds ruling our lives and, in the process, drowning out our conscious, true selves. So awakening is when our mind chatter quiets and our consciousness shines through in our lives.

This is how this process plays out from a macro view. When we’re born, we’re awake. Fully conscious. We look around at the world and remain present.

This continues for several years until we start to “grow” up. Then the mind revs up its engines and starts to take over. We get a crush on a girl when we’re ten and she’s all we can think about all day long. And on and on. As the years go on, we fall further into a deep sleep.

Our practices wake us up

The spiritual path then becomes doing all the things we need to do — meditation, yoga, letting go, etc. — so that we can ultimately “wake up” from this sleep.

But is that the best way to describe the whole process? I don’t think so.

I think the one word/concept that best describes the spiritual path is this:

Fog.

How so? Same as above, we’re born and we’re conscious. Then, as we mature and the world starts to take hold of us, our egoic selves develop in order that we can defend and protect ourselves.

To me, that is like a fog rolling in. What that fog is doing is obscuring our consciousness. That consciousness is still there; it’s always there. It’s just that it can’t be accessed because of the fog.

Our practices burn off the fog

So the spiritual path then becomes about doing the practices that help lift the fog. And what lifts fog? Sunlight. Warmth. That’s what our practices do. They beam light and warmth on our “fog.”

But fog doesn’t burn off all at once. It happens gradually. Little by little.

The same is true for spiritual growth. We meditate, we let go, we do all kinds of things as part of our sadhana, over a period of years. And we grow, gradually, as the fog burns off.

When I awaken from my sleep, I’m up. That’s it. Not much graduality involved.

The path in a sentence

That’s why I think fog best describes what we go through. Here’s my one sentence summary of the entire path:

We’re born, it’s sunny and clear, the fog rolls in, then we spend the rest of our adult lives doing the spiritual work that burns off the fog so that we can bask in the beautiful, healthy rays of the sun again.

You might be asking: Why the hell does this even matter? I find it helpful to have images and analogies that help contextualize what I’m working on. It helps to center me.

Best of luck to all of you in burning off the fog so that the light of consciousness can beam through you and into the world. It’s why we’re here.

I’m always on the lookout for ways to simplify life. To make things less complicated.

What’s an example of a complicated life? I need to make lots of money so I can afford big houses, nice cars and expensive jewelry to keep my trophy wife happy. So I need to work constantly and, when I’m not working, continue calculating the ways I can improve my work situation.

I also need to befriend the “right” people so my kids can get into the “right” private schools and then get into the “right” colleges. And on and on.

The alternative path

It’s an exhausting existence that rarely leads to peace of mind or any kind of sustained happiness. The unfortunate truth is that most people don’t realize there are alternative paths available. To whom? To everybody.

Here’s another, simpler approach to living life:

Wake up every day and use life as your vehicle for letting go of your egoic self.

That’s it.

First things first. What the above assumes is that the purpose of our lives is to let go of ourselves. That’s something I agree with.

What are we letting go of? All of the experiences we’ve accumulated since we were kids that we didn’t let go of. That we held on to. That are stuck in our lower selves. That determine the course of our lives.

Don’t cling, don’t resist

Buddhists would call these attachments. Experiences we either clung to or resisted, with the result that they just sit inside our being causing us problems.

I’ve written about some version of this many times, but I’ll give just one glaring example of how this works. You had a horrible father who told you time and again that you would never amount to anything.

Thirty years later you get passed over for a promotion. Your response?

“Dad was right. I never succeed at anything.”

Which isn’t the truth. It’s not who you are. It’s the egoic baggage lodged inside you that’s doing the talking. And it needs to be let go.

We are all filled with this kind of baggage. Some big. Some small.

But we don’t have to be. We can let it go.

Assuming letting go of our stuff is the most important thing we can do in life, the logical question is: What’s the best way to execute that strategy?

Wake up every day and use life as your vehicle for letting go of your egoic self.

Let’s take a closer look at this. If you want to get really good at playing the piano, what do you do? You sit your butt down at the piano and practice. And practice. And practice.

Like practicing golf

If you want to improve your golf game, what do you do? You go to a driving range and hit buckets and buckets of golf shots. And practice your short game by chipping and putting for hours on end.

What’s the driving range and piano equivalent for getting good at letting go? In other words, what’s the practice setting for letting go?

Life.

What do I mean by that? Here are some examples:

-You wake up and the first thing that happens is your wife says, “Way to go, Einstein. You forgot to put the trash cans out.” Relax and let go.

-An accident on the road makes your drive to work a slow crawl. Relax and let go.

-Your visiting mother, who was always hyper-critical of your figure growing up, asks 42-year-old you if you really need to put all that sour cream on your baked potato. Relax and let go.

In other words, life provides the piano and the driving range. So when life happens, let go. Stop fighting and resisting everything and let go.

Stop letting your ego rule your life

That doesn’t mean you turn into a passive amoeba. Far from it. It simply means that you renounce a life that is spent marching to the tune of your ego.

What does marching to the tune of your ego look like? In our prior example, it would be:

“Hey mom, here’s an idea. Why don’t you go f#*k yourself!” At which point you fling a massive spoonful of sour cream into her face.

Night ruined. Your baggage with your mom lodged ever deeper into your lower self…Not good.

Be a letting go machine

The alternative is to turn yourself into a letting go machine, as Mickey Singer calls it. Just keep using whatever life throws at you to let go of your stuff.

Where do spiritual techniques like meditation come into play? We do them. Why? Because by enhancing inner stillness they make us more aware of when our stuff comes up in our day. They enhance our ability to let go.

The takeaway

At the end of the day, what this requires is taking a hard look in the mirror and saying, “I don’t want my ego running, and ruining, my life anymore. For that to happen, I need to let go of my stuff. To let go of my stuff, I need to quiet down inside and devote my life to letting go.”

That’s it, right there.

Once we do let go, great things happen. We feel lighter. Calmer. More peaceful.

AND we get better at everything we do. Job, relationships, golf game, dad, mom, friend.

Why? Because we’ve cleared out the junk that has blocked access to our highest being inside.

Who knew my six-year-old daughter would be such a deep spiritual guru, running around the house singing from the movie Frozen:

“LET IT GO! LET IT GO!”

She’s right. Let it go.

rtists come in all shapes and sizes. They paint, sculpt, etch, draw, write, dance, act, sing, play the guitar and so on.

According to Eckhart Tolle, the ones that create sublime work have something in common. He puts it like this:

“All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.”

My 17 years in Hollywood as a screenwriter taught me that Eckhart is right. The best stuff I wrote came when I quieted down and just listened.

Writing dialogue in Hollywood

This was especially true when writing dialogue. I wouldn’t think to myself, “Okay, now what would she say?” I’d just sit in my chair, close my eyes, envision the character and then wait to hear what they said.

The bottom line is that there wasn’t a lot of thinking going on.

Which isn’t to say that artists don’t employ thinking in certain parts of their process. This is where craft enters the picture.

Mastering craft

What is craft? Whether you paint, write or play the piano, you have to master certain elements of your art. In writing, that means a three-act structure for movies. It also means ensuring your scenes contain conflict among characters, otherwise the audience will be bored silly.

Learning the craft takes many hours and years of hard work. People like Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Vladimir Horowitz and Mikhail Baryshnikov didn’t just show up and create transcendent work. They worked tirelessly to perfect their craft.

But once it was time to sit at the piano or easel, or enter the stage…their minds went still.

The genius of Bob Dylan

I remember an interview where Bob Dylan remarked about his process when he wrote those surpassing songs of the mid 1960s. Songs like Blowin in the Wind, Mr. Tambourine Man and Like a Rolling Stone.

He said something to the effect of, “It was strange. I’d be sitting there and it was like I was just channeling something. Like I was taking dictation. It would just come through me.”

Taking dictation from whom? God? Nature? The Supreme Being? Whatever it was, it wasn’t his thinking mind that created beautiful lyrics like these from Blowin in the Wind:

“How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?Yes, ’n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?”

Or these from Bruce Springsteen’s Jungleland:

“Outside the street’s on fire in a real death waltz;
Between what’s flesh and what’s fantasy.
And the poets down here don’t write nothing at all,
They just stand back and let it all be.”

Or these heartbreaking lyrics from Cat Stevens’ Father and Son:

“How can I try to explain?
When I do he turns away again;
It’s always been the same
Same old story.
From the moment I could talk
I was ordered to listen, now there’s a way,
And I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.”

Powerful. Emotional. Heartfelt. Beautiful. And I’d bet my life that they all came from a place of quiet stillness.

Fine. So brilliant and talented artists create from stillness. What does that have to do with us?

Everything.

Why? Because everybody creates. Maybe not works like Michelangelo’s statue of David or Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, but we create.

As Eckhart would say, creating is what the Universe wants from us. That’s how it expresses itself.

What do we create? Some of us cook and create meals for ourselves or our families. Some create strategic plans for their business. Some write articles for Medium.

The great Joe Wielgus

My Uncle Joe, who died a few years ago at age 101, was a welder in a Wisconsin factory for forty years. Though his formal education ended at age ten, Uncle Joe was incredibly creative, mostly in carpentry. He made chairs, desks…all kinds of cool things. And he loved it.

Uncle Joe was not a big thinker. He wasn’t stuck in his head. He was a simple, mostly present man who created amazing stuff.

The takeaway

The point of all this is that whatever you’re creating in your life, be mindful about doing it from that quiet place. Doing so may not get your painting into the Louvre, but it will energize you and make you feel alive.

I’ve been struggling the past several days on the writing front. My inner Austin Powers keeps bellowing, “I think I’ve lost my mojo…”

I can’t point to anything in particular. Just that post-holiday, new year malaise. Anybody else suffering from this malady?

How have I handled these mojo-less past days? Mostly by employing what I’ve learned these past several years doing spiritual work. Like what?

How the old David G. handled things

This is best explained by relating how the old me used to handle downturns like this. Which is that I used to tough it out, forge through, put the pedal to the metal…(insert whatever American-style work ethic trope suits your fancy). This was inevitably preceded by days of feeling lousy/guilty/losery about not getting anything done.

Here’s the problem with this approach — for me, and for most who pursue it. The motivating force behind it is the ego.

“Come on Gerken, you lazy schmuck! Get a move on! What good are you if you can’t produce?”

Where does this mind chatter come from? In my case, it’s origins lay in a high-powered, highly talented family, led by a dad who was ultra-successful (in the traditional sense).

For others, this may spring from tough parents or simply the influence of American culture and its lionizing of people like Elon Musk.

My Elon Musk story

Quick aside/non sequitur having nothing to do with this piece. Around ten years ago I sat next to Elon Musk at a dinner. My political friend Frank Luntz had been a guest on HBO’s Bill Maher show. Maher takes the guests and their friends to dinner after each show so Musk must have known one of the other guests.

So I’m sitting next to Musk and, having no idea who he is, ask what he does. He says, “I work at Tesla.” I say, “Cool. What do you do there?” He says, “I’m the CEO,” in that clipped voice of his. I say, “Oh. Great!” True story.

By the way, this is what I love about writing on Medium. No editor to tell me to cut this because it has absolutely nada to do with the subject of the article.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

Ego based work ain’t that good

The work that gets done at the behest of the ego is, in most cases, not as good as it could be. Why? Because producing our best, to our highest potential, can only be done when the mind is calm and not responding to the fear of the ego. Whether it’s playing tennis, writing a work memo or writing the next great novel, the highest quality work derives from a place of stillness.

So what’s this other way of doing things that doesn’t involve the ego? In other words, what did I do to dig myself out of the low-mojo hole I found myself in?

Mostly I resisted the urge to plow through, get tough, etc. That has always been my default setting so step one was to NOT do that.

Step two: relax and stay calm

Fine, what’s step two? It’s staying calm and not panicking by thinking things like, “Oh my God! What if I never come up with another article idea? What then?”

It’s mostly about placing confidence in this process of “This too shall pass…” As it always does.

These tough work times — most writers would call it writer’s block — are inevitable. We aren’t always going to be “in the flow.”

The key is realizing that the best way to get back in the flow is to relax. Be good to yourself. Be patient. Eventually, the dark cloud that is raining on top of your head will pass by.

And that dark cloud will pass faster the LESS you try to force it to pass.

Forcing, in this case, would be bearing down and slogging through it the old-fashioned, American way. We all know that the work we do, especially writing, suffers when we’re slogging through.

A note about discipline

There is a caveat to all this. It’s about discipline. The more traditional type of discipline is that which entails toughing it out. Because what is discipline but getting ourselves to do something that we don’t feel like doing?

But there’s a different kind of discipline required here. It involves calming yourself and not defaulting to the egoic demands you normally acquiesce to. That’s not easy for most people. That’s why it takes discipline.

We also have to have the discipline to not be TOO easy on ourselves by saying, “Hey, I’m going to be good to myself and not sit my butt in the writer’s chair for the next two weeks, two months, two years…” This form of discipline is about calming ourselves and then when the cloud passes, getting back to work.

It’s a balance. Not too hard and not too easy on ourselves.

The takeaway

Next time you lose your mojo, try relaxing and letting the cloud pass. Your work product will be better AND you’ll feel better. You know what that is, don’t you?

Groovy, baby…

Jiddu Krishnamurti was one of the great Indian spiritual teachers of the 20th century. Hailing from southern India, Krishnamurti’s teachings influenced a wide panoply of consequential leaders including Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Aldous Huxley, the Dalai Lama and Eckhart Tolle.

Among many things I like about him is that he had no allegiance to any religion, philosophy or nationality because he felt such attachments fostered a sense of separateness. It was his version of proclaiming “Sub ek,” which means “All one,” in Sanskrit and is what my favorite human, Neem Karoli Baba, used to say to anybody who would listen.

Spells of stillness

In his 20s, Krishnamurti began to experience bouts of what he termed the process or the other.Although usually accompanied by physical pain, these spells were characterized by a sense of total ego loss and pure presence. They happened intermittently for the rest of his life.

I wholeheartedly recommend his seminal work, Krishnamurti’s Notebook. It’s essentially his travel diary over a long span. He didn’t mean for it to be published, but we should all be glad it was because it contains some of the most eloquent and powerful descriptions of deep inner stillness ever written.

One of the things he learned from these experiences he summed up like this:

“To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.”

What does he mean by this? Obviously, it is one of many assertions of the power to be gained through stillness.

What is stillness? And quiet? It’s the inner state achieved when the mind shuts up.

Think of a snow globe that gets shaken up, the falling snow eclipsing the ability to see clearly. When all of the snow is allowed to settle, there is clarity. We can see everything.

Reaching that state of stillness allows us, in Krishnamurti’s words, “To understand the immeasurable.” What does he mean by this? What is the immeasurable?

Understanding the immeasurable

I take it to mean the vast mystery of the universe. Everything from the fact there are trillions upon trillions of stars in the universe to understanding the One Source, God, the Tao, or whatever your belief system is.

The one word I don’t agree with in his quote is “understand.” Why? Because it connotes the knowing of these weighty matters. I don’t think stillness allows any of us to truly understand or know the complexities of the universe and God, etc.

I would replace understand with sense. When we block out the noise of our minds and become still, I believe we can sense these weighty, metaphysical things. We can’t put our hands on them, but we can sense their presence. At least that has been my experience.

The takeaway

In the end, I don’t think it matters whether stillness brings understanding, knowing or sensing these mysteries of life and the universe. What does matter?

That we devote ourselves to furthering stillness.

It’s the highest, most beneficial use of attention and effort that humans can undertake. Why?

Because achieving stillness, whether through meditation, mindfulness, yoga, praying, chanting, mantra, qi gong, walking in nature, or any combination thereof, maximizes our life potential in every way.

We become better parents, siblings, bosses, athletes, workers, students and, most important, human beings.

One of the reasons I love Mickey Singer, among many, is that he’s funny. He takes this spiritual stuff ultra-seriously, but also lightens things up with some fun. I try to do the same.

Lately, I’ve heard him make references to Pepto Bismol. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Pepto Bismol is an over-the-counter medicine used for indigestion and other ailments of the gastro-intestinal tract. It was my mom’s go-to remedy any time I had a stomach ache.

Here’s how Mickey uses Pepto Bismol to describe the plight of humanity:

Junk food bender

You eat a mountain of junk food — onion rings, two double cheeseburgers, large fries and a chocolate shake. Afterward, you feel awful, your stomach trying to make sense of the sewage you dumped into it.

You look around for the Pepto Bismol. Can’t find it.

Your friend comes over. Sees you’re struggling. Asks what’s wrong.

“I have a stomach ache.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t find the Pepto Bismol.”

You don’t have a stomach ache because you can’t find the Pepto Bismol! You have a stomach ache because you ate a ton of crappy food.

What’s the life analogy? Here’s an example.

You were scrawny as a kid. Terrible athlete. Girls never gave you the time of day. But you were a smart cookie. Did great in school.

This led you to develop a crippling inferiority complex. It also ignited a fire inside you that burned 24/7.

Success at all costs

It was a fire that spurred you to stop at nothing to succeed. You went to Yale. Harvard Business School. Worked 100 hour weeks on Wall Street year after year.

All in pursuit of overcoming that painful, hurtful feeling of inferiority. But it never works.

Sure, when you got into Yale, Harvard and made that first million, then ten million, then fifty million, things felt great inside…

It never works

But that fleeting feeling of achievement inevitably passed…And you went right back to feeling like that awkward, pimply, eighty-pound, high school freshman again.

Working your ass off to make it big and show everybody that you are the real big man on campus is no different than taking Pepto Bismol to cure your stomach ailment. That’s just compensating for the underlying problem.

You need to let go

What you really need to do is go inside and do the work of letting go of those painful feelings you accumulated as a kid. That baggage is stuck in there and unless you do the work of letting it go, you will never achieve any sense of inner peace.

People who constantly feel the need to be in romantic relationships also suffer from the Pepto Bismol Syndrome. They look for their partners to cure their inner ailments.

Relationships as Pepto Bismol

Again, most of the time those relationships are just Pepto Bismol. What they really need to do is go inside and get to work on why they don’t feel okay in life.

It’s about, as the Buddhists say, working at the root. Reaching for the Pepto Bismol is akin to working at the leaves at the end of the branches.

The good news is that once we realize that our work is inside and not outside in the Pepto Bismol remedies of relationships, career success, Porsches and trophy wives half our age, we can make real progress.

We’re in charge of our inner work

Why? Because we are the captain of our ships. Yes, that work is hard, but we have the power to do it.

The Pepto Bismol solutions are mostly out of our control. Significant others come and go because they have their own problems to work out. Sometimes jobs work out, sometimes they don’t.

Ever had a boss who kept you back for absurd reasons having nothing to do with your work product? They resented you because you were a highfalutin city boy from Manhattan and they grew up on a farm in Minnesota. You’re tall, they’re short. Sounds crazy, but it happens all the time.

The point being that you have no control over any of this. But you do have ultimate control of working on your insides. And that’s a great thing.

The takeaway

My hope is that you’ll consider the bigger picture here. Stop looking out to the world to cure what ails you inside. Go inside to cure what ails you inside. It’s the only way that works.

Reach into the medicine cabinet and throw that figurative bottle of Pepto Bismol into the garbage can…

The world is in a tough place. The planet is warming to dangerous levels, roughly 25 percent of humanity lives on less than four dollars a day, and authoritarianism is on the rise across the globe.

Is it the worst things have ever been? No. I remember my mom telling me that the latter part of the 1960s was awful with race riots and the Vietnam War tearing America apart. Or how about living in the middle of the 14th century when the Black Plague wiped out almost half the population of Europe? That couldn’t have been a happy time.

As we close out 2022 and look to 2023, now is as good a time as any to ask ourselves what could make things better for humankind. If told they could wave a magic wand on this question, most people would wish for things like ending hunger, eliminating wars and curing the warming of Earth.

Those are all wonderful, powerful ideas. But they don’t get to the root of the problem.

Any of you who’ve read my other stuff know what I think is the root problem plaguing humanity: People live the entirety of their lives in the direction of their fearful, selfish, sensitive egos.

With that in mind, here are the three things that, if I could wave a magic wand, I’d have every Earthling do in 2023.

1. MEDITATE FIFTEEN MINUTES A DAY

This is an obvious one. Why? Because meditation helps to gradually quiet the chatty, thinky, judgmental, fearful, egoic minds that torment us.

Meditation thickens the prefrontal cortex, the most advanced part of our brain that acts as an inhibitory influence on the amygdala, our fear and emotion center. It also reduces the size and activity of that ‘worry wart’ amygdala.

Imagine a world where people worry less, fear less and are more present…

2. PRACTICE MINDFULNESS IN DAILY LIFE

That means people become aware when they are being pulled away from the present moment. Catching the mind wandering while driving down the road, waiting in line at the market, listening to your kid tell you a story…People catch themselves doing any of these things then bring themselves back to the moment by taking some deep, conscious breaths.

Over and over and over. Every day of 2023.

The result? A planet full of people who are better able to remain present.

3. WORK ON LETTING GO

Another perennial of mine. When people get poked by some provocative event, they would notice they’ve been poked, then immediately relax all over. Then lean away from the feeling that came up in order to give it space…so we can let it go.

What are those provocative events? The boss, spouse, kid or friend says something that upsets you. And small things like getting aggravated by a slow driver. People would let go of all these things.

What is that accomplishing? Clearing out the baggage we all carry inside us. Why is that important? Because that baggage rules our lives. It determines how we feel, what decisions we make and basically everything we do in our lives…And not for the better.

What the world would look like

What would be the net result of humanity doing those three things in 2023? A more conscious world population.

And what would a more conscious world look like? I wrote an article (link) last year about that very question that I recommend reading. Suffice it to say that a more conscious world gets to the root of humanity’s problems.

What about the least fortunate?

I imagine some of you might be wondering, “Great. Meditation and all the rest might do well for those with enough food to eat in places like France and the U.S. But what about people being terrorized by Boko Haram in Nigeria? Or people starving in Sudan? What will meditation, mindfulness and letting go do for them?”

It’s a good question. In the short term they might become somewhat calmer and less fearful doing this work, but life would still be tough.

And that gets to the heart of what this piece is really about. Because it isn’t about 2023. Yes, one year of all of us doing these exercises would undoubtedly make the world a better place.

It’s about the long term

But for those suffering in Nigeria, Sudan and too many other locales around the globe, the answer isn’t short term. Because the reason most of these people are suffering has to do with the brutality inflicted on them by some pretty awful, unconscious people. A lot of it relates to tribalism of some sort dating back decades and even centuries.

And curing our world of that unconsciousness would require more than one year of meditation, mindfulness and letting go. It would mean decades and maybe even centuries. But with everybody practicing and becoming quieter inside and more present…peace would eventually come.

And that is why I’m doing the work that I’m doing. Trying to spread these practices to as wide an audience as possible to help as many people as possible achieve greater quiet inside.

The takeaway

I don’t have that magic wand. But I do have those of you reading this who I hope are doing the work of quieting down and letting go. And maybe getting family and friends to do the same.

A new year is about to begin. Let’s rev up those inner engines and move this consciousness thing forward.

I wish you all a happier, quieter, more peaceful 2023.

Last December I published an article (link here) about my two resolutions for 2022. They were: 1. To add a second daily meditation, and 2. To chop wood and carry water.

As you can see from the above photo, I wrote them down and taped them to my desk so I could be reminded every day what I’d committed to. I’m a big believer in new year’s resolutions; as long as you keep them to a minimum of one or two. The fewer the resolutions, the fewer excuses we have for breaking them!

Adding the second meditation

So, how did I do? On adding a second meditation I fared…just okay. I’d say I did my afternoon meditation on fifty percent of the days of 2022.

That’s decent but not great. Why? Because my afternoon session was only five minutes. I should have been able to do that at least eighty percent of the days.

What does it reveal about me that I missed a bunch of afternoons? The same thing it reveals about most people who have trouble with meditating in any capacity: It’s all about resisting having to slow down and stop when every part of your being is saying, “Nope. We have some mojo going. No way I’m gonna stop to meditate.” At least that’s how it is for me.

What’s the answer? I think it’s to reiterate to ourselves this simple truth: That slowing our minds and checking in with our conscious “home” base is possibly the healthiest exercise humans can perform. And doing that twice a day, as Mickey Singer and transcendental meditation practitioners recommend, is even better.

Chopping wood and carrying water

As for my second resolution, chopping wood and carrying water, here’s a quick explanation of what that phrase means for those unfamiliar with it. It comes from Ram Dass’ iconic, groundbreaking book Be Here Now. He likens the daily work of an ordinary villager, chopping wood and carrying water, to that of the daily work of the spiritual seeker.

What is that daily work, or sadhana as it’s called in Sanskrit? It differs for everybody. For me, it includes meditating for fifteen minutes every morning (I probably missed 5–10 days in 2022) and for five minutes in the afternoon (that number will increase gradually).

Breathing while brushing and riding

It also includes countless examples of daily mindfulness. Like what? When brushing my teeth I close my eyes and breathe deeply and slowly throughout. When on my 45 minute bike rides I count my breaths up to five when I find that my mind has gone to the Bahamas.

I do those kinds of things several times a day. Every day.

I also listen to spiritual talks every day from a rotation that consists primarily of Mickey Singer, Eckhart Tolle and Ram Dass.

Doing it all day, every day

The point is that I do this stuff every day. Day after day. Just like a villager who chops wood and carries water every day. Day after day.

And I did well on this in 2022. Did I slip up and erupt like Vesuvius at my kids from time to time? You bet.

Just a few hours ago my fourteen year old son took my daughter’s three foot long stuffed animal (snake) and thwapped me hard right in the head while I was writing. No warning. Just a cold, calculated, surprise attack on his loving dad who then yelled at the top of his lungs while chasing after him…to no avail. He’s too fast and I’m too old to catch him anymore.

But most of the time I did pretty darn well. That daily work over the years builds and builds and builds, which manifests as feeling better and better in what I’d call a sense of overall well-being.

The takeaway

And that is the point of this article. I hope you’ll figure out what that daily spiritual chopping of wood and carrying of water looks like for you. And then do it. Over and over. Day after day. In 2023 and beyond.

I’m super confident that if you do, you’ll also increase your overall sense of well-being. I can’t think of anything more important.

In case you’re from a country or culture that isn’t familiar with the phrase “Throwing the kitchen sink” at something, this is what it means: To throw every available resource at something.

So if you were going to throw the kitchen sink at trying to get better at golf, you’d buy an expensive set of clubs, hire the best golf teacher you can find and commit to practicing two hours a day, seven days a week.

What does that mean for our purposes of growing spiritually? Before tackling that, let’s get specific on what the objective of spiritual work is.

There are many ways to approach that question. We could say the objective is to quiet down inside. To become more present. To let go of our baggage. And many more.

Calming the mind

Another commonly held objective laid down over multiple traditions over thousands of years is this: Spiritual work is about calming the mind. That’s what I’m writing about today.

Hinduism is but one of those traditions. The Bhagavad Gita, arguably the most sacred text in Hinduism, was written approximately 2,200 years ago and contains several passages about the mind. Here are two:

“Strive to still your thoughts. Make your mind one-pointed in meditation. The mind is restless and difficult to restrain, but it is subdued by practice.”

“The mind acts like an enemy for those who do not control it.”

Do those 2,200-year-old words resonate with any of you? They sure do with this writer.

Fine, so spiritual work is about working with our minds. How do we go about doing that? Should we just focus on exercises and techniques that calm the mind, like meditation, yoga, and mindfulness?

Don’t confine yourself to traditional techniques

We should definitely do those things. But the point of this article is that we should “throw the kitchen sink” at working with our minds. Use everything at our disposal. And don’t be precious about what we throw at our minds.

Like what? How about good, old-fashioned positive thinking?

If you think that’s too Dale Carnegie American for you, consider that one of the highest and most revered Indian saints of the 20th century, Yogananda, was an ardent proponent of positive thinking. He taught us that when we had a negative thought, we should replace it with a positive one. My favorite teacher, Mickey Singer, is a devotee of Yogananda and also believes in positive thinking.

Exercise as a spiritual technique

What else can we throw at our minds? How about physical exercise? I work out six days a week, largely because it helps my mental health. Exercise relieves tension. And our thought-hungry minds love nothing more than a tense, anxious, inner body.

Here’s one I just thought of: Reading. You read that right. When we read, our minds are focused on what we’re reading and not swirling with unwanted thoughts that do us no good.

Bottom line is that anything that keeps us from getting stuck in our minds thinking involuntary thoughts could be considered spiritual work.

Make your own list

I’m sure there are many other things you can think of that fit this bill. And I encourage you to come up with your own list.

The point of all this is that we shouldn’t confine our work to meditation, mindfulness, yoga, and other traditional spiritual practices. Throw everything you have in your mind!

But also remember not to fight with your mind. Or try to directly control it. Our minds are strong and they will win that battle.

The takeaway

The objective of all these practices is to strengthen our consciousness, awareness, presence…whatever you want to call it. Doing that leads to our unconscious, thought-factory minds having less influence over our lives.

And that, it could be said, is the whole kit and kaboodle of spirituality.