Meditation

In the past few years of writing about and teaching meditation, I get one question more than any other:

“Are you saying that thinking is bad?”

No. I’m not. Nor are Michael Singer, Eckhart Tolle or Thich Nhat Hanh.

How does this come up? Well, meditation is about quieting our minds by placing attention on something other than our thoughts. Breathing, sounds, bodily sensations. All in the service of redirecting attention away from our thinking minds.

The mind as kidnapper

That thinking that we’re trying to avoid, or at least observe when we meditate, is what I call unintentional thinking. It’s the kind of thinking involved when the egoic mind swoops in on our consciousness and kidnaps our attention. We, our conscious selves, didn’t decide that we wanted to start thinking those thoughts. In fact, we had zero say in the matter.

Consider. You’re talking on the phone while driving. Your spouse/significant other reminds you that you forgot to do something you said you’d do. You cop to it. And then you get, “Never mind, I’ll do it…As usual.” Then click. They hang up on you.

Your mind immediately steals your attention and gets you thinking thoughts of, “Man, I hate it when she hangs up on me…I mean, as if she never forgets to do something…I don’t need this crap…Not today…”

YOU don’t decide to think those thoughts

The ultimate question here is, did you say to yourself, “Alright, let’s think about what she just did. And let’s get pissed off about it and do a bunch of thinking about it. Okay, here we go…Man, I hate it when she hangs up on me…” Of course you didn’t.

These are all unintentional thoughts. They are ginned up by our egos, which feast on drama and conflict. It’s their lifeblood.

The other kind of thinking is intentional. That’s the kind of thinking I’m doing right now in writing this piece. It’s using our brains to help us in our lives — trying to figure out what’s got our kid upset, preparing a presentation for work or simply generating a to-do list in the morning. Intentional thinking is great. It’s what separates us from animals.

What true intelligence is

Quick caveat, though. The value of intentional thinking is way overblown in today’s world. I know too many people who believe they can think their way through any problem. Or others who believe that intellectual thinking is the highest form of intelligence and the most valuable tool for realizing one’s human potential.

Not so on either front. The best way to deal with any problem/challenge is, as Eckhart Tolle submits, to meet it from a place of presence. From a place of no thought.

And the highest form of intelligence, and it’s not even close, springs not from our thinking brain, but from the state of silent stillness within each of us. Who believed this? None other than the person considered by many to be the most intelligent human who ever lived, Albert Einstein. He said:

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”

Far worse, though, is unintentional thinking. In fact, a case can be made that the entire spiritual path is about minimizing the influence that this kind of egoic thinking has on our lives.

Disidentifying with your thoughts

One way to look at that, espoused by Eckhart Tolle, is to disidentify with those unintentional thoughts. In other words, when you’re having egoic thoughts about what an awful (or superhumanly awesome) person you are, you just observe those thoughts as something in your field of awareness, no different from the bird sounds you hear outside. You’re not the bird sounds, are you? Likewise, you’re not the egoic thoughts you’re thinking.

Mickey Singer takes a different tack. He simply doesn’t listen to his crazy thoughts. He says, “I stopped listening to Mickey a long time ago. He was always wrong!”

Creating separation is the key

Inherent in both of these approaches is creating separation between our conscious and egoic selves. Most people are so wrapped up in their out of control, thinking minds that they think that’s all there is.

This is why meditation is so powerful and helpful. It allows the real US, our conscious selves, to lean away and observe the chattering mind as the separate entity it is. Over time, this has the profoundly transformative effect of creating separation between our conscious and egoic selves.

In that last sentence lies the entirety of the spiritual path:

Creating separation between our conscious and egoic selves.

Whether we’re talking about the Buddhists, the Hindus, Eckhart, Mickey, Deepak Chopra, and to some extent the Christians and Muslims — that sentence above encapsulates where our spiritual work lies. We “Go to God” by separating from, and eventually shedding, our egoic selves.

And this egoic self manifests in the unintentional thinking our minds revel in.

The takeaway

Bottom lining this. First, I advocate that we put our eggs in the ‘separate the conscious self from the egoic self’ basket. And that means working every single day on stilling our minds through meditation and noticing when our minds have wandered into thought as we go about our day. Over and over. Day after day. [If you want to get started with meditation, go to davidgerken.net for my free, easy to understand program.]

Second is to always be mindful that intentional thinking is not the be-all, end-all. It is a powerful tool that can aid us in navigating life in this wacky world we live in. But it can’t deliver us to the highest place. Only the quiet stillness inside us can do that.

Grievances. We all have them. What do I mean by grievances? I’ll define it as harboring bad feelings about others.

And here’s what matters: They do us absolutely no good and all harm. Try this. Take a moment and think about someone you currently have a grievance with. Now ask yourself: Is anything good coming to me by feeling this way?

Poisonous packets of pus

The answer is, in just about every case, a resounding NO. Not only does nothing good come from it, but we actually pay a price. Because every grievance manifests as a packet of psychic, poisonous pus inside us. Acquire enough of these packets and we become that type of person we all know: A walking grievance in search of a cause.

The reason grievances are all negative, no positive is that they spring from our egos. How do we know that? Because our conscious, true selves don’t even know what a grievance is. They can’t be injured by anything somebody does or says to us.

My own embarrassing grievances

Here are a couple of ego-produced grievances of my own. [No judging, please. Remember the great words of Jesus Christ himself: “Let ye who has not harbored an embarrassing grievance cast the first stone.” Or something to that effect.]

The first is against my son’s lacrosse coach because he doesn’t give him enough playing time in the games. And here are the kickers, the things that show that my grievance is 100% USDA prime egoic.

First, my son doesn’t even complain about it! He’s not the type, as I was when I was twelve years old, to get all spun up about not getting into the game. He’s more laid back about it. So this is obviously about MY ego, not his.

Second, the coach is actually really good. He’s energetic, enthusiastic and knows the game really well (I’m clueless about lacrosse). He just doesn’t play my son that much. And it infuriates me.

Harshing on the mom I’ve never met

Then there’s the embarrassing grievance against someone I’ve never even met. It’s one of the moms at my daughter’s preschool.

When I go to pick up, the two of us are ALWAYS in the short line outside, waiting for the classroom door to open. She chats with the other moms, but never says hello to me. Then again, I’ve never said hello to her, either. So maybe she has a grievance with me. Or maybe she doesn’t like me because I wear the same jeans, running shoes and one of four combinations of sweatshirts and tee shirts every day. Who knows?

The bottom line is it doesn’t matter. Whether we have a grievance with somebody for a valid reason — let’s say this mom came up to me and told me she thought I was a slob — or not, it doesn’t do us any good to harbor it.

Dealing with low-hanging fruit grievances

So what should we do? Well, in the case of the invalid (irrational) grievances, see lacrosse and mom-I’ve-never-met examples above, the solution is obvious: Get over it. Just go inside yourself and let go of these feelings. Simple enough. And doable.

But what if someone really has wronged us? And not just some anonymous mom at preschool. How about your mom? Or a sibling? Or a close friend? Or a coworker? What do we do with those grievances?

Dealing with the coworker I couldn’t stand

I’ll recommend what to do by giving an example of what not to do. From my life. I worked in Hollywood on a show with someone I absolutely detested. And for good reason. He was literally the most arrogant, baldly sycophantish person I had ever met.

The problem was that while everyone else on staff loathed, or at least disliked this guy, the boss loved him. Frankly, he was good at what our boss wanted from us. In other words, there was nothing anybody could do and he knew it.

So what did I do? I stewed over it. Fantasized in the car on the way home from work about what I would do if I ever saw him in a dark alley. [Unfortunately, this episode occurred many years before I dove into the spiritual ocean.]

And what did that get me? Absolutely nothing. It just filled me with bad vibes and fed my voracious, unhealthy ego that absolutely delighted in obsessing over this guy. It was all cost, no benefit.

What I should have done

If I had it to do over again, what would I do? I would have made a conscious effort to excise those toxic feelings from my being. How? Well, not by doing something phony and trying to be best friends with this guy. That would, and could, never happen.

But I could have saved myself a lot of heart ache if I’d just come to terms with, and accepted, who this person was. He clearly had major internal issues, one of those people who screamed that he was not comfortable in his own skin.

Which doesn’t devolve to, “Oh, come on. Pity the poor guy. He’s miserable.” It’s more, “You don’t like him. He’s not a happy camper. But hating him hurts you. So stop hurting yourself. How? By resolving to work on not hating him…For your own well-being.”

How to stop hating somebody

How would I, or you, work on not hating somebody? That’s easy. By not giving in to the pernicious interests of our egos every time the opportunity arises. It really is that simple.

And how do we stop our egos from pouncing on every lurid situation that comes across our transoms? Well, that brings us, just north of 900 words in, to the point of this piece. Which is this.

Eliminating our grievances requires only that we resolve to ourselves that we don’t want to harbor ill feelings about people.

That really is it. The problem for most of us is that this grievance issue isn’t even on our radar. Why? Because we’re busy living our lives. Working, taking care of kids, rushing around from one thing to the next. We never stop to think about how many people we’re at “war” with.

And if nothing else, I hope that that is the one helpful thing you will take away from this piece. I hope that at the very least you’ll stop and consider how many people you currently have a grievance with. Seriously. Take out a pen and paper and write them down.

Then think about all the emotional baggage you could shed by resolving to let go of some, or all of these grievances you harbor. Also include people you’ve had grievances with in the past that you’ll never see again and let those feelings go, too.

If it isn’t already apparent, this is a 100% selfish endeavor. Because it is WE, those who let go of our grievances, that benefit. It also happens to benefit the grievancees (I made that word up). And the world, too. But mostly us.

What you can do

So give it some consideration. Make a list. At the very least consider letting go of the low hanging fruit grievances, like my lacrosse coach and anonymous mom. Maybe start with just one.

Through writing this piece, I’ve already let go of my ill feelings toward the coach and the mom.

And that guy I worked with so many moons ago? I let go of that many years ago. I heard he got married recently. And I sincerely, genuinely hope that he and his wife are happy.

On March 27, 1975, Denzel Washington was hanging out in his mom’s beauty parlor in Mount Vernon, New York. He’d dropped out of Fordham University after his less-than-stellar 1.7 GPA led the higher-ups to “suggest” he take some time away to get his act together. He had no idea what his next move was. He was lost.

In his rousing commencement address given at Dillard University in 2015, Washington relates that at the beauty parlor that day was an elderly woman with her hair under a dryer who kept looking at him. Finally, she called out, “Everybody. I have a prophecy.” After everybody quieted down, she looked at Denzel and said:

“Boy. You are going to travel the world and speak to millions of people.”

No explanation. A prophecy à propos of nothing coming out of nowhere. It’s a moment that has stuck with Denzel Washington for the rest of his life. It got him to start thinking big. Dreaming big.

A college counselor sparks a flame

As a camp counselor that summer Washington participated in a talent show for the campers. One of the counselors told him he thought he’d be really good at acting. Upon reentering Fordham, Washington dove headlong into the drama program and the rest is history.

Most commencement addresses are painfully boring and uninspiring. I know mine was. “The world needs you!” “Blaze your own trail!” “Don’t settle!”

Denzel’s was anything but boring. His passion and pathos infects. Check out this truncated version of it set to inspiring music.

He talks about daring to fail. And not just fail. But fail big.

I like that he doesn’t bullshit the audience by saying, ‘Just go for it and you’ll get whatever you want.’ He tells them they have to work hard. Consistently. Persistently. He said,

“Hard work, works. Working really hard is what successful people do.”

And he hammers home that these kids need to dream big. Shoot for the stars.

It’s similar to Steve Jobs’ famous address to Stanford when he told students that they were just going to die someday anyway, so why not pursue something interesting in life? He urged them to use their inevitable death as a motivator for doing something special.

The only thing I would add to Denzel’s address, and many others that exhort graduates to dream big, is to expound on the whole dream concept. How? I’ll explain by inserting the following addendum into Denzel’s speech:

“… So dream. And dream big… Now many of you out there might be looking at me saying, ‘I don’t have any problem with dreaming, Denzel. But I don’t have a dream.’ In other words, many of you don’t have any clue what you want to do with your lives. Well, you’re only 21, 22 years old. Of course you don’t. That’s fine.

The key is to listen to yourself. Stay open. Listen to your insides. To your intuition. And whenever you hear it say something, DO IT!

That’s where the risk comes into play. Because your parents may be doctors and they want YOU to be a doctor, too. But inside… in your gut, you don’t want to be a doctor. You’ve always loved teaching. That’s what your insides are clamoring for.

Have the courage to follow what your insides are telling you. Teach.

When that counselor told me in the summer of ’75 that he thought I’d be good at acting, the clouds didn’t suddenly part, with the sun shining on me and a voice from above saying, “He’s right, Denzel. Go into acting. You’ll win Academy Awards, play some of the greatest roles in film and make a boatload of money while you’re at it!”

No. He said that and something inside me, my intuition, my little genius who has a direct connection with God, said, “Yeah. I did like this performing thing I did for the campers. I’m gonna check out the drama scene when I get back to Fordham.”

If I ever gave a commencement speech, that’s what I would emphasize. Having the courage to listen to your insides and act on what you hear.

I’m glad Denzel did it. We got Philadelphia, Training Day, Man on Fire and a slew of other fantastic performances because he listened to his insides.

That and a divine assist from a wise soul drying her hair in a beauty parlor.

Yogananda was one of the towering Indian saints of the 20th Century. Born in 1894, he spent almost the entirety of his life in America between 1920 and his death in 1952.

His service in bringing Hindu and yoga teachings to the West was foretold by Lahiri Mahasaya, his guru’s guru. Mahasaya told his disciple, Sri Yukteswar, that a special devotee would seek him out someday and that he should send this person to America to spread the teachings. Several decades later, long after Mahasaya’s death, Yogananda came upon Sri Yukteswar who informed him of his long foretold fate.

Admirers and followers of Yogananda include Mahatma Gandhi, Henry Ford, George Harrison, Steve Jobs and my favorite spiritual teacher, Mickey Singer. Cool Fact: Each attendee at the Stanford memorial service Steve Jobs personally planned for himself received one gift: a copy of Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda.

The following five pearls of wisdom offered by Yogananda are a guidebook for living a contented, fulfilling, peaceful life.

1. “Live each moment completely and the future will take care of itself.”

This is something that anybody could build an entire life around. Just that sentence. Give everything we have to the moment in front of us and then let life/God/The Universe work its will.

Most of us spend way too much time stuck in our heads, worrying about the future. Our present moments get short shrift.

How can we mere mortal human beings facilitate present moment living? Quote number two offers a path.

2. “You do not have to struggle to reach God, but you do have to struggle to tear away the self-created veil that hides him from you.”

The ‘self-created veil’ Yogananda refers to here is our thought-chattering, conditioned mind we develop in childhood and into adulthood to help defend us from the world. Unfortunately, this conditioned, egoic self we develop is what prevents us from inhabiting the moments of our lives.

Yogananda is saying that if we want to live in the moment, and thereby reach God, it is incumbent on us to eliminate that conditioned self/veil. I love that he doesn’t preach the babying of humanity. No. He exhorts all of us to put our big boy boots on and struggle to tear away the veil.

What is involved in that struggle? Yogananda taught an ancient Indian practice called Kriya Yoga, which involves a specific meditation technique. Kriya is still taught around the world at Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship centers around the world. If you’re interested, check out Ananda.org for information on Kriya and all things Yogananda.

But the basic work of eliminating the egoic self, as I’ve written about several times, involves letting go of that self. As Mickey Singer teaches it, it’s about the consistent process of relaxing and letting go when that egoic self rears its head, which for most of us means several times a day. That, in conjunction with regular meditation and mindfulness practices, is the chopping of wood and carrying of water that eventually leads to elimination of that egoic veil.

It’s the work of a lifetime. But there is no more important work we can do.

3. “Be as simple as you can be; you will be astonished to see how uncomplicated and happy your life can become.”

This is another one of those pearls of wisdom we’ve heard since we were kids, but often fail to follow. The joy of living simply. I don’t know anybody who lives simply who isn’t some measure of peaceful and happy.

Look at Eckhart Tolle. He says he does very little. Reads. Takes walks in the woods. Writes. Has a glass of wine with dinner. No cigars. No 1961 Chateau Latour. No Mercedes.

My mom was really simple. No flashy clothes. No flashy cars. In fact, as the wife of a Fortune 500 CEO, she’d wear costume jewelry that cost ten bucks to lavish parties in Los Angeles. If it were real, these necklaces and bracelets would have been worth at least $100,000. The other women, thinking it had to be real, would gush over how beautiful her jewelry was! She relished her little ruse.

This is not a righteous slam on materialism. It is an empirical observation that those who pursue happiness through material pleasures almost to a person seem less happy and peaceful than those who live simply. So why not, as Yogananda urges, live simply? It costs less and you’ll be happier.

4. “Continual intellectual study results in vanity and the false satisfaction of an undigested knowledge.”

I fell prey to this for a good many years, gorging myself on knowledge of art history, ancient history and all types of literature. I did it with good intentions, like trying to better myself by learning from the wisdom handed down from the past.

But if I’m being honest, there was, as Yogananda calls it, some vanity involved. Throwing around Rembrandt, Alexander the Great and Tolstoy, when doing so wasn’t all that pertinent to the situation.

But the most important point of this quote is what the pursuit of intellectual study often leads to: a misperception of what true intelligence is. As Eckhart often points out, authentic wisdom doesn’t come from exercising our brains/computers. It comes from listening to the quiet stillness inside us.

None of this is to say that people shouldn’t pursue Phd’s and the like. It is to say that focusing on intellectual pursuits to the exclusion of plumbing the depths of our inner being, whence true intelligence emanates, in most cases leads to a vastly limited and incomplete life education.

5. “The goal of yoga science is to calm the mind, that without distortion it may hear the infallible counsel of the Inner Voice.”

What a beautiful expression of the yogic path. We meditate, practice mindfulness and let go of our staticy, egoic selves in order to calm the mind. Because only when we calm the mind can we “hear the infallible counsel of the Inner Voice.”

What is that inner voice? Here’s how Maya Angelou put it:

“Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God.”

It’s the voice of divine providence. The voice that guides us in the right direction.

Anybody on the fence about whether to start a meditation and mindfulness practice need look no further than this quote to get inspired. I can’t think of anything more important than gaining access to the divine voice inside.

The takeaway

If you want to dive further into the teachings of Yogananda, try reading Autobiography of a Yogi. It’s known as one of the surpassing spiritual books ever written. Here’s the Amazon link.

I’ve been a regular meditator for over eight years now. But I still have days where I find it tough to rev up my meditative mojo to start a session.

I might feel frazzled from one of my kids annoying the heck out of me with some “getting ready for school” shenanigans like “Find me my brush or I don’t get to brush my hair. And if I don’t get to brush my hair, I’ll be late. Your choice, dad…” Or feeling generally anxious just…because. Or overwhelmed with lots to do.

Recently, I came up with something that calms me down and gets me rolling with my meditation, regardless of how I feel. I say to myself:

“Let’s go home.”

I mean home in that traditional sense of a place where we feel safe, secure and peaceful. For most people, when we’re out in the world — at our jobs, at the store, at our kids’ schools, etc. — we feel anything but at home. I liken it to feeling like a pinball pinging all over the machine, flung from one thing to the next. Out of control.

For me, the word that best captures this sense of unease as we navigate the world is vulnerability. We feel susceptible to the words and actions of all the people we come across in our daily interactions.

A path to invulnerability

Meditation provides the best way for us to go back to our inner home, a place where we feel completely invulnerable. Why do we feel invulnerable in that place? Because our inner home is where we find our true self. Our conscious self. It’s a place that can only be inhabited when our attention is fixed on the present moment.

It’s a place we reach when the mind slows down. When the snow in the snow globe settles on the bottom and we feel clearheaded. As Eckhart Tolle says:

“You are never more essentially, more deeply, yourself than when you are still.”

That true, conscious, still self we experience when we “go home” inside doesn’t know what vulnerability or worry is. That’s why we feel so peaceful when we become that true self.

And that true self is always there. We just need to quiet down the egoic, unconscious self, mind static (the falling snow in the snow globe) to inhabit it.

And here’s the great thing about meditation: The more we do it, the stronger our connection to that inner home, conscious self becomes. To the point that, when we go out and face the vicissitudes of the world, that true self lurks behind everything we encounter. Bottom line: the more we meditate, the more invulnerable we feel.

Ralph Waldo Emerson summed this up perfectly when he wrote:

“The great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

I literally used to think of that quote in my younger years as I tried to make my way through a large crowd at a party. Just trying to stay connected with my inner world as I experienced the busyness of the outer world.

It’s important to note that going home does NOT mean running away and hiding from the world. It’s precisely the opposite. It’s going home to strengthen our connection to our true self so that we feel stronger and more secure as we engage with the external world.

The takeaway

The great author, Thomas Wolfe, was wrong. We can, and should, go home again. Repeatedly.

When you meditate. When you’re out and about, interacting with the world…

Go home.

This article is mainly for people who either hate cooking or, even more so, for those who’ve never done it because they think they’ll hate it.

For those people, I have good news: Cooking is a fantastic way to increase your mindfulness. Why is that?

Before answering that question, it’s worth defining what mindfulness is — being present in the moments of your life and not stuck in your mind thinking involuntary thoughts.

Another way to frame mindfulness comes from the story of the Zen master and his disciple who was having difficulties.

Disciple: “Master, I’ve been at the monastery for five years and I still don’t know what Zen is. Can you please tell me?”

Zen Master: “Zen is doing one thing at a time.”

Cooking requires both of these. Being continuously present as you do one thing at a time.

Mindful sauteing of an onion

Here’s what’s involved in sauteing an onion:

• Turn on the stove.
• Get a pan out and put it on the stove.
• Take out measuring spoons and cooking oil and put two tablespoons of the oil in the pan.
• Take out a cutting board.
• Take out a cutting knife.
• Get an onion.
• Dice the onion (which requires about five steps itself).
• Put the diced onion in the pan.
• Set a timer for five minutes.
• Take out a wooden spoon.
• Stir the onions occasionally, while you’re preparing other parts of the meal.

All of these are individual actions you take, one after the next after the next. All in a particular order. One thing at a time.

Many people say they find cooking highly relaxing and I think this is why. When following the various activities required to make something, it’s hard to get swept away by our chattering minds. In fact, if meditation is defined as placing our attention on something happening in the present moment, then cooking is meditation.

Why I love cooking

I do the cooking for our family and love it. It’s something I look forward to when I finish up writing each night at six. And I don’t love it just for the relaxing mindfulness of it. Cooking at home is much less expensive than ordering in or going out to eat. I find we eat way healthier at home than when we go out. And I love enjoying a fun drink every night while cooking. Of late that has been a vodka with a fresh-squeezed half grapefruit. It’s just fun.

I don’t do anything hugely complicated; i.e., I ain’t no gourmet chef. On the other hand, there are a slew of easy-to-make recipes on the internet that are fantastic. My wife often comments when we go out that the stuff I make at home is better than what we eat at restaurants. And again, I’m not doing anything that requires a) a lot of time or b) expert cooking skills. Long story short: If I can do this, anybody can.

If you’ve never cooked before, probably best to start real simple. Here’s an amazing, easy, sauteed shrimp over rice:

Step 1 — Go to store: Buy a one pound bag of frozen, UNCOOKED shrimp, a small box of rice, butter; a bag of lettuce, a bottle of salad dressing, maybe one other topping for the salad (tomato? avocado? yellow/red/green pepper?).

Step 2 — Cook:

Shrimp — One hour before getting started, put shrimp on a plate and let it thaw. An hour later, rinse the shrimp under cold water. Pat dry with paper towels. Season with salt and pepper.

Follow the directions on the rice box. Once the rice is almost done (around ten minutes later — good time to make a drink!)…

Heat a medium-sized skillet (should be big enough to fit roughly 20 shrimp) on medium-high, add the butter and let it melt. Put the shrimp in the skillet. Cook for about two minutes, then turn them (a basic fork will do) and cook another two minutes…until it’s pink/red.

Spoon some rice on a plate (or two if serving spouse, etc.). Put a bunch of shrimp over the rice (5–10 pieces depending on how big they are and how hungry you are!). Done.

Salad — Take out a salad bowl (or two). Put enough lettuce in the bowl for one salad. Slice up any fixins (tomato, etc.) you have and put on top of lettuce. Shake salad dressing. Open. Pour on salad. Done.

Dinner is served. From the time you start rinsing the shrimp to when dinner is ready should be around fifteen minutes.

Easy! And you not only get a great dinner, but a good, sustained period of mindfulness. Go for it.

Bon apetit…

As a former Hollywood screenwriter, I’m prone to letting my imagination go wild. I wrote a movie twenty years ago about how the U.S. government could plausibly fall into a dictatorship. Impeachment. The 25th Amendment. Sound familiar?

Then there was a television pilot about a brilliant, charismatic, billionaire, but bipolar, U.S. senator who takes Washington by storm. That one was fun. The first act ended with Senator David King diving into a mosh pit at an ACDC concert.

Imagination gone wild

But this time my imagination is going somewhere WAY deeper and farther off into the future; it is thus much harder to envision.

I’m trying to imagine what the world would look like if Eckhart Tolle’s uber prognostication came true; namely, that our world is evolving toward a conscious awakening.

What does Eckhart mean by evolving toward a global, conscious awakening? I could write 500,000 words on that, but I’ll do my best to winnow it down.

What the heck is a conscious awakening?

One way to describe an awakening in one person would be the loss of their ego, aka their conditioned self. Eckhart sums up the awakened being as someone who has achieved “disidentification with thinking.” In other words, someone who has a crazy thought, leans away from it and says, “That thought is not who I am. I am the observer who noticed the thought.”

Look at Eckhart himself for what an awakened person looks like. He is the rare human that seems completely present, not stuck in his head battling thoughts about how good or bad he is, successful or unsuccessful, secure or insecure. He’s just there.

In essence, Eckhart is mostly gone. He himself says that he is mostly just a field of consciousness. And so are all of us…at times. When we’re completely focused on something, like rock climbing, for example, we’re also totally conscious and in the moment. We mere mortals just don’t exhibit that level of consciousness nearly as often as someone like Eckhart.

Why are we evolving toward consciousness?

And why does Eckhart believe that humanity is evolving toward higher consciousness? It does make sense. Our species’ brains evolved to the point that we could think, which made us better able to, for instance, create tools for hunting, etc. This helped our species survive.

Of course, the past several thousand years saw our thinking abilities advance well beyond crude tool production. Thinking progressed to the point that we all created egoic, chattering, thought producing minds that torment us. We also advanced to the point that our thinking created nuclear, biological and chemical weapons that have the capability of destroying humankind many times over.

The point being that there’s a case to be made that for humanity to survive, we’ll need to shed those egos and become more conscious. And if you believe that evolution is a universal law of nature that puts survival of the species topmost, one could understand why evolution is pushing humanity toward higher consciousness. It could be the only way we homo sapiens survive as a species.

What a conscious world would look like

Fine. Now the question becomes, what would the world look like if we all evolved to the point of reaching “Eckhartian,” or near-Eckhartian levels of consciousness?

I’ve struggled mightily the past few days trying to figure out a way to approach this question. What I’ve come up with is this: What would the world look like if a bunch of Eckharts roamed the earth? Here are some thoughts that come to mind, but frankly, this idea is so monumental that, at best, these are just musings.

Imagine walking into the grocery store. Observation number one is that people aren’t rushing around in a frenzy trying to get to that next thing on their to-do list. They’re slow. And peaceful. The check out person takes their time running items through the scanner. People in line don’t mind waiting. They just chill out. Look around. Talk with each other. No rush.

Peace on the roads

On the roads, people don’t lean on their horns if a terrible driver (like Eckhart!) bumblingly drifts into their lane. Why? Because they don’t have an ego that craves to express itself in some dramatic flash of anger.

If I had to sum up in one phrase how humanity would handle the annoyances we all endure in our daily lives, it would be this: Like water off a duck’s back.

No more countries?

What about governance? Would there be a need for countries anymore? People wouldn’t identify with their “Chinese-ness” or “Russian-ness” or “Brazilian-ness.” They’d identify with their consciousness. So what’s the need?

People would probably figure out a way that everybody could get enough to eat and have a roof over their head. Yikes, I’m sounding like a commie! But I honestly think that’s what would happen in a world populated by Eckharts. The world would not abide the suffering it does now.

How about wars? Let’s face it, most wars occur because a tiny slice of people (mostly men) impose their insatiable need for power on the people they govern. In other words, most wars emanate from the top down, not the bottom (the populace) up. Power is about ego. No ego, no thirst for power, no more wars.

One thing is certain: If Eckhart’s prediction of a global, conscious awakening did come true, it wouldn’t happen for quite some time. We’re probably talking several hundred, if not several thousand more years. If not longer.

The takeaway

To wind down, I know this all sounds very pie-in-the-sky, John Lennon/Imagine. And I don’t know what this all adds up to or what it means for any of you reading this. But try this on for size as an exercise: Take some time to imagine what your specific world would look like if a bunch of Eckharts populated it. Imagine how peaceful it would be.

Maybe that’s the point of this piece. To inspire all of us to do the heavy lifting required to shed our egos and become pioneers in goosing humanity to a higher consciousness. And by so doing, hasten the coming of that “Eckhart-like” world.

et’s face it, mindfulness is pretty simple. It’s about directing our attention to the moment in front of us. So if we’re in the shower, we place our attention on shampooing our hair, not on thinking through the five things we need to get done once we’re out of the shower. Or, as Thich Nhat Hanh famously said:

“If you’re doing the dishes, be mindful of doing the dishes.”

So why is it that something so simple is so difficult? [I don’t know about you, but when I’m in the shower, my mind is everywhere but the shower.]

Answer: The human mind loves to wander. And that’s not a good thing for our mental, physical or spiritual wellness.

Just do it!

So what can we do to improve our mindfulness practices? First, let’s state yet another obvious point: The key to practicing mindfulness is to just do it. It’s not the slightest bit complicated. Be here, now. The only reason we don’t do it is because we forget…when we’re in the shower, the car, brushing our teeth, etc.

How can we get ourselves to NOT forget to be present in our everyday moments? The answer came to me in the shower yesterday when I realized I’d been in the Bahamas for a couple minutes. My thought bubble was, “Gee, how can I get myself to not drift off into thought when I’m showering?”

Captain Obvious to the rescue

It was at that moment that I, just like Bruce Banner turning into the Incredible Hulk, metamorphosed into Captain Obvious, the only superhero whose superpower I possess.

“I’ve got it!” Captain Obvious (I) said. “I just need to put up notes in places where my mind usually drifts into pointless thoughts!”

Yes, that’s it. That’s my obvious suggestion. But think about it. This could really work.

What do you do? Make it easy and simple to start.

Step One: Think of the places where you normally go off to La-La Land. For most of us, that would be our bathroom sink, where we brush our teeth every morning, the shower, our car and our desk at work. If you cook a lot, put one on your refrigerator door. So let’s start with those five or, of course, add any more that apply to you. All you need to do is get a pad of post-it notes, or if you don’t have those, a simple piece of paper with tape will do. Then put a reminder note at each of those spots.

Step Two: What do we write on those notes? I put one up this morning on my bathroom mirror that reads “Here, now.” I put one on my desk that reads “Breathe.” Other ideas would be “Five breaths,” “Be present,” “Come back to the present.” Use whichever ones resonate most with you.

The key is to just do it! Again, the only reason most of us fail to live up to our mindfulness standards is that we forget when we get lost in thought. These notes will help keep us rooted in the moment.

Spruce things up later

Once you’ve gotten the simple post-it note thing done, consider spiffing things up a bit. Maybe print out a photo of a pastoral scene that is special to you — your favorite beach in Hawaii, a lake house setting from your childhood, a beautiful sunset…Put these up in those five (or more) spots where you most often travel to Thoughtlandia. And either write directly on that photo or simply put the post-it note on it.

That’s all for now. Until I come up with my next brilliantly obvious idea, this is Captain Obvious…out.

It was a Saturday in September of 1991. I drove from my apartment in Washington, D.C., to McLean, Virginia, to play tennis with Senator J. Bennett Johnston (D-Louisiana).

I had moved to Washington after graduating from Princeton where I’d been a four-year varsity letterman and co-captain my senior year of the tennis team. A year earlier, during the summer of 1986, I’d interned for Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Maine) who happened to be an avid tennis player. We played several times that summer so when I moved back for good in 1987, Senator Mitchell did me a huge solid by introducing me to the other Senate tennis fanatics, namely John Kerry (D-MASS), John Breaux (D-Louisiana) and Senator Johnston.

Capitol button pusher

Right off the bat, Sen. Mitchell got me a job as an elevator operator on the Senate side of the Capitol building. Though the job had a lot of ups and downs (sorry, couldn’t resist), it put me in the thick of meeting many important people who suffered the bad fortune of being accosted by me, resume in hand, as they headed to the Senate floor to vote. I eventually landed a legislative assistant position with current Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who, incidentally, remains one of the most impressive people I’ve ever met.

So back to that September day in 1991. As I walked up to Senator Johnston’s front door, he appeared before I could knock.

“David. Get back in the car. The President just called. We’re going to the White House.”

So the two of us got into my white Honda Accord, hit the George Washington Parkway and minutes later found ourselves at the south entrance to the White House. They asked for my social security number to do a background check on me, ostensibly to make sure I wasn’t on the FBI’s ten most wanted list. After my spotless criminal record was confirmed, the gate opened and we drove onto the White House grounds.

Once a smart-ass, always a smart-ass

As we warmed up on the White House tennis court, which is roughly fifty yards below the Oval Office, President Bush asked me how the Princeton team fared when I was there. My response:

“We finished second in the Ivy League most of my years…But we always beat Yale.”

Yale, of course, being where Bush went to college. My smartassiness, even to the President of the United States, knew no bounds, then or now.

After playing three sets of doubles we sat on a patio off the court where we drank water and chatted. From there we headed to the White House putting green and hit some golf balls. Then President Bush and I went swimming in the pool, while Senator Johnston hung out poolside. Then I drove Senator Johnston back to Virginia and headed home. What a day.

So. What lessons did I learn from that once-in-a-lifetime experience?

1. Kindness trumps all

President Bush is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. And that’s coming from a Democrat talking about a Republican. I don’t care. He was a genuinely good guy.

I had already heard that about him. And I also knew it from his daughter, Doro Bush Koch, who was and is a friend of mine. In fact…

DIGRESSION ALERT!

…Doro told me later that day when I called to tell her I’d played with her dad that she had just missed me, having arrived at the White House just after I left. She told me that had she seen us she would have made me do my impression of her dad…in front of her dad. I used to call her and talk to her in her dad’s voice, which, as she told me, sounded more like me impersonating Dana Carvey doing GHW Bush. By the way, woulda done the impersonation in front of him. Wouldn’ta been prudent, but woulda done it.

Doro married my friend, Bobby Koch, a year later at a small ceremony at Camp David. I’m sure I was the only person to check the regret box on the invitation. Why? My brother got married on the exact same day in Stockholm, Sweden. Family first.

End of digression.

So, how did President Bush show kindness toward me, a guy in his mid-20’s with precisely zero power and no way of helping him in any way, shape or form?

Example #1: As we were screwing around on the putting green, I quietly asked Sen. Johnston if there wasn’t some way we could get a picture taken. Sen. Johnston asked the President who then asked the Secret Service guys around us if they had a camera. No luck. So the President sent somebody up to the residence to get Mrs. Bush’s camera! A few minutes later, we got the shot taken you see above, arguably the coolest photo I’ve ever been in.

Example #2: As we chatted on the patio after the match, I told President Bush that my dad would kill me if I didn’t mention that he pitched against him in a baseball game when my dad’s alma mater, Wesleyan, played Yale. He asked what his name was. I told him and the President said he didn’t remember him.

End of story? Far from it. Two weeks later I get a signed photo from the President of the three of us on the putting green. Enclosed was a short note thanking me for the tennis match with a newspaper clipping from the Yale newspaper…From 1948! It was the story of that game, which showed that the President went 0 for 5 from the plate, but also stated that:

“Some convenient wildness on the part of relief twirler Walt Gerken set the stage for a three-run splurge in the seventh.”

Bush ended the note by writing:

“OK, so I went 0 for 5, but here’s a clipping that says it was not big Walt’s best day.”

My dad was ecstatic when he saw this, showing it to everybody he knew. My brother and I used to joke that it wasn’t past my dad to go into a public restroom and shove a copy of the note and the article under the stall to some perfect stranger, asking them to bask in his presidential glory.

In all seriousness, President Bush was a busy man, to say the least. The fact that he took the time to do this for me, and my dad, showed great kindness. It made a strong impression on me and deepened my desire to show that level of kindness to others.

2. Don’t be shy in big moments

As we stood there on the White House putting green, it occurred to me that our day with the President could quickly be ending. And it didn’t seem like any pictures were going to be taken. So I said, screw it, I’m going to ask Sen. Johnston if we could get a picture going. Worst thing that can happen is the senator says, “No, that wouldn’t be appropriate.” Fine.

But I did it. And now I have this cool picture that I can show my grandkids someday. Moral of the story: Don’t be shy when a big opportunity presents itself.

3. Stick your neck out for family and friends

As we were sitting there on the patio after playing, a big part of me said, “You’re a young idiot sitting with the President of the United States and a very powerful U.S. senator. Let them talk and shut your trap unless spoken to.” But I knew my dad would love it if I could tell him that I mentioned the whole Yale-Wesleyan baseball thing. So I threw caution to the wind and brought it up.

The result? My retired dad, who was a former Fortune 500 CEO with tons of accomplishments already, got a story he could tell for years to come. The lesson: Go to bat for those you love.

What a day. What a guy. Mr. President, wherever you are, thanks again for your kindness and hospitality. I’ll never forget it.

Meher Baba was one of the most influential Indian spiritual masters of the twentieth century.

One of his most ardent followers is my favorite teacher, Mickey Singer, who brought Baba to my attention.

I could give a rough history of Baba, what he did in life and what his main teachings were, but I’ve found that the best way to convey the wisdom of these great masters is to relate the simple words they offered the world.

With that in mind, the following are my favorite words of wisdom that Baba gave humanity.

1. No amount of prayer or meditation can do what helping others can do.

For me, this gets to the heart of what spiritual work is all about. For many, spirituality seems to devolve into a self-indulgent exercise that centers on me, me, me. Meditating 24/7 so you can escape from your kids, people or the world in general.

I agree with Meher Baba, and most of the other sages, who believe that the ultimate goal of self-realization is to strengthen our inner world SO THAT WE CAN HELP OTHERS. Ultimately what this quote is about is that the state created when we help others, love, is a force more powerful than anything that exists in the universe.

2. There is no difference in the realization of the Truth either by a Muslim, Hindu, Zoroastrian, or a Christian. The difference is only in words and terms. Truth is not the monopoly of a particular race or religion.

I couldn’t agree more. Truth is truth. Imagine the world we’d live in if everybody around the globe adhered to these wise words.

One way or another, all of these religions teach us the same thing: To clean up our inner houses in order to become closer to, or actually become, the god that we all are inside.

The hopeful optimist in me senses that humanity is moving, ever so slowly, in the direction of less religion and more focus on universal truths. Or, as Eckhart Tolle describes it, an evolution towards the conscious awakening of humankind.

3. The best way to cleanse the heart and prepare for the stilling of the mind is to lead a normal, worldly life.Living in the midst of your day-to-day duties, responsibilities, likes, dislikes, etc., will help you.All these become the very means for the purification of your heart.

Love this. It reminds me of Ram Dass’s famous description of how to travel the spiritual path: by chopping wood and carrying water. Just using the myriad daily events of our lives to practice being present and letting go of ourselves.

What Meher Baba, and Eckhart, Michael Singer and many other spiritual teachers, advises here also has to do with what we don’t need to do, which is to flee the world and go live in a cave in the mountains. There’s no need for that. Everyday life offers the best setting for becoming more conscious.

4. A mind that is fast is sick. A mind that is slow is sound. A mind that is still is divine.

In my years working in politics in Washington, D.C., and in Hollywood as a writer, I used to think that lightning quick thinking was a necessary skill for success. Always trying to outsmart the next guy. I was wrong. It didn’t work.

Why? Because the master of the fast mind, the puppeteer so-to-speak, is our illusory, egoic self. And as a general rule, when the ego is in charge, our inner world is ill-served.

Not until I started slowing my mind by practicing regular meditation did I realize, as Baba does in this quote, the divinity of the still mind. There are many ways to describe the endpoint of the spiritual journey, but stilling the mind captures it perfectly.

5. Don’t Worry Be Happy

I would be remiss if I didn’t include this one. Why? Remember that great song by Bobby McFerrin in the 1980s called Don’t Worry Be Happy? Guess where he got that? Meher Baba!

Baba was known to communicate this particular line to his followers in the West. Its simplicity captures the essence of most of the great Indian teachings. Don’t overthink things. Just go inside, find the divine beauty within and happiness is yours.

The takeaway

Meher Baba truly was one of the great beings in all of history. We would all do well to heed his sage words and do our best to embody them in our lives.