Meditation

As many of you know, I love to write about ways that we can simplify the living of our lives. It’s about reducing the amount of “Should I do this or that? Or something else? I’m so confused and overwhelmed!” that we have to deal with.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could reduce everything to one construct?

Today’s article seeks to do exactly that. And here it is. All we need to do is…

Relax and let the clouds pass.

We do that and we’re golden.

Let’s start with the quote by Eckhart Tolle that underlies this concept (something I wrote a separate article about — link here). That quote is:

“You are the sky. The clouds are what happens, what comes and goes.”

The key is that clouds are life. Things happen. Good, bad, and indifferent. Experiences come and then they go, just like clouds in the sky.

What are examples of the clouds as life? Literally, everything that happens to us, big and small.

– We back up in the parking lot and smash someone’s fender.

– We fall head over heels in love.

– Someone breaks up with us and we feel broken beyond repair.

– We get accepted to Harvard Law School.

– Our spouse accidentally takes both sets of car keys leaving us stranded at home when we have an important meeting to get to. [My wife did this to me when I had a meeting with Leonardo DiCaprio’s company about him playing Theodore Roosevelt in the movie I wrote. I had to wait a month for another appointment. Yes, I was livid, but it makes for a good story!]

So we could look at life as a long series of clouds passing by us. Great.

The problem is that we don’t simply act like the sky and watch the clouds come and go. We do for most things.

You look out your window and a car passes by. That’s it. We let that experience pass right on by. No problem.

Still tormented by divorce

But, to take a significant example, when you got divorced ten years ago, you didn’t let the experiences/clouds you had with your wife pass by. In fact, ten years later, you still ruminate about what an awful person she is.

That’s an example of clouds coming up and, instead of letting them pass, we hold onto them. And the problem with that is…

It ruins our lives.

Yes, the clouds that we hold onto and don’t let pass through just sit there, as energy, tormenting us for life.

So what do we do about that? We let them pass when they come up.

When you see your ex-wife out to dinner with her new boyfriend, yes, it stings. The key is what you do about it.

Do you skulk out of the restaurant, go home, and drink yourself into oblivion? Or go over to their table and pour water in her face? No.

What you do is…

Relax and let the clouds pass.

If the key to life is letting go of our stuff — the difficult clouds — then the key to letting those clouds pass is to RELAX.Why?

Think about it. Imagine something painful coming up and trying to deal with it from a place of tension and tightness. It’s impossible.

Relaxing, all over our body, especially in the head, chest, and stomach areas, is essential to letting go. I even wrote an article about why I think relax is the most important word in all of spirituality (article link here).

The takeaway

That’s all we have to do in life: Relax and let the clouds pass. All day long. Every day.

Experience life…then let it go. Experience the next thing that happens…then let it go.

It’s easy to visualize. We simply see ourselves as the big, blue sky (which is our deep ‘I’ consciousness) and everything that happens as a cloud passing by.

And we practice relaxing. So we can let those difficult clouds, like seeing our ex-wife out to dinner with her new beau, move past.

And unload some psychic baggage in the process.

I can’t believe it’s taken me over four years to write this piece. Why? Because competition has been central in my life from day one.

As far back as I can remember, I have been a competitive little bugger. I have a clear recollection of playing kickball in first grade and wanting so badly to kick a home run every time I got up to the plate.

Then when I was ten or so ping-pong was the big thing and I had to kick my friends’ butts every time. Ditto playing one-on-one in basketball and football in the street.

In high school and college it was about being a fierce competitor on the tennis court. Adulthood followed where competition was about, among other things, tennis, golf, mini-golf and playing Jeopardy and Scrabble against my wife; not-to-mention duking it out professionally in the ultra-competitive worlds of Washington, D.C. politics and the Hollywood writing scene.

The issue isn’t clear cut

So here’s where I come down on the subject of competition and spirituality. Not surprisingly, it’s complicated.

First, let’s define competition. For the sake of simplicity, let’s call it any endeavor where we are pitted against one or more persons.

Classic examples would be two boxers duking it out for the heavyweight championship, two tennis players running each other ragged at the French Open and two candidates running against each other to be president of the United States.

Pure competition is where it’s at

My take is that pure competition is fantastic, exhilarating and, yes, spiritual. My definition of pure competition is when someone does everything in their power to get the most out of themselves…in the boxing ring, the tennis court, the office or the campaign trail.

As someone who has played the sport since I was five, I’ll describe what that means for a tennis player. Competing at one’s highest level means working out hard, not just on the court but in the weight room and the track as well. It also involves eating healthy and doing things like meditation to help calm your nerves when you’re in the thick of battle.

During matches, you need to play hard and concentrate on every point. And if a match goes three hours in the searing heat, you need to dig deep, stave off the pain and muster every last drop of energy in your being. All in the service of winning the match.

Competing the right way is invigorating

That is pure competition. It’s getting the absolute most out of yourself in whatever competition you’re in. I’ve done this many times and it feels gratifying and invigorating.

But here’s the problem. Most people, myself included, allow pure competition to cross over into unhealthy areas.

Like what? Staying with tennis, let’s say I’ve done all the training and playing matches for many years. And I’ve won a lot. And many people now know me as a successful tennis player. And I took that praise and allowed it to buttress my feelings of self-worth.

So now when I get into a competitive tennis match, it’s no longer simply about the pure competition of getting the most out of myself. A huge part of my being is invested in winning, because if I lose, I’m now David Gerken the tennis loser.

And what does that lead people to do? They smash their rackets to smithereens if they lose a big point, yell and scream on the court and feel sick to their stomach the day of the match.

Allowing competition to become personal

Competition can also veer into the personal. It becomes more about “I just beat you so I’m better than you,” than extracting the very best from yourself.

None of this is healthy, and I mean mostly for the winner. It’s no coincidence that some of the most successful and competitive people in sports are also miserable people.

I think of Jimmy Connors who had a “Me against the world” mentality. Much as I love them, I’d put Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods in this category as well. They were extraordinary athletes with a competitive side that more than borders on the vicious.

Not all of the greats have been like that. Those who I see more as pure competitors who mostly just went out and tried to get the best out of themselves would be people like tennis players Chris Evert, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.

The ego is the culprit, yet again

What entity plays the central role in pulling us from pure competition to the uglier sides of competing? It’s our usual culprit: The ego.

It was my ego that built up this false sense of myself as a “winner,” whether on the tennis court or other activities I’ve competed well in. And it’s my ego that desperately wants and needs that “winner” thing to keep on going.

I’ve written before about my inexplicable (and embarrassing) nervousness I get before playing in senior tennis tournaments. I know. It’s crazy. But it happens because of this “tough competitor” moniker I fought so hard to attain and that resulted in people admiring me. My fragile ego is terrified of what people may think if I started losing that competitive edge.

I have started losing much more in recent years and I think it’s because of all this spiritual work I’ve done (the fact that I’ve gotten older hasn’t helped!). I’ve been working hard on letting go of my egoic baggage and the more I let go of, the more I get out on the court and I simply don’t care as much as I used to.

I’m happier the more I lose

And by the way, I think that’s a good thing. I think it’s a sign of progress that I’m less and less a vicious tiger when competing. I’m definitely a happier camper being this way.

Which gets to the heart of the matter. I feel like being a vicious competitor who prides himself on vanquishing every foe, as I did for so many years, is antithetical to spiritual growth.

And the reason is that the ego is the entity providing the fuel for that competitive fire. Needless to say, feeding the ego is counterproductive to spiritual growth.

The takeaway

What does this mean for you? Next time you find yourself in a competitive situation, consider surveying your inner landscape. See what you find.

Hopefully, you’ll find that you’re just trying to do your best. End of story.

If not, are you trying to win to bolster your sense of self? Or to make yourself feel superior to your opponent? Do you have feelings of fear that your opponent will think you dumb, inferior or somehow “less than” if you lose badly?

The key at first, as always, is to simply become aware of what’s going on inside. Try to watch from a disinterested position.

If you are experiencing any of the above, consider doing what I’ve been doing: Let go of that egoic baggage.

Treat competition as just another opportunity to let go.

Today I have a visual metaphor to explain the fundamental problem most humans face. It’s about the sun, the clouds and us.

Here’s how it works. The sun is always shining. Always. From the time it was created, the sun has always shone.

But sometimes we here on Earth can’t tell. Why? Because clouds come between us and the sun. They get in the way. But we still know the sun is there.

Our consciousness is like the sun

It’s similar with our inner worlds. In this case, the sun is like our consciousness, which is the essence of who we are. It is timeless and eternal.

But most of us, most of the time, don’t realize that. Why?

Because we have clouds obscuring our contact with that consciousness. If the sun is our consciousness, what’s analogous to the clouds?

Our EGOS.

Yes, those pesky egos. They prevent us from realizing who we truly are.

What are those ego clouds made of? All the experiences we had in life that we did not allow to pass through us. They’re composed of all the things we held onto.

Experiences we held onto

Like what? Like being made fun of frequently as a kid because you were chubby. Or slow. Or had a lisp. Or your girlfriend broke up with you in tenth grade because she found somebody more popular. Or your parents split up when you were ten and you developed abandonment issues that plagued you for the next forty years.

Here’s a highly personal one. We had a share day in fourth grade where we were supposed to bring in something that meant a lot to us. I had just won a tennis tournament so I brought in the trophy I’d won.

When I shared that with the class, a kid named Dave Truesdell blurted out, “Tennis is a sissy sport!” I was devastated. His comment verbally decked me.

Dave was a football player, the tough guy’s sport. And guess what? He was one of my best friends, and actually didn’t mean any harm by the comment.

But that was an experience I held onto. That I did not let go of…For many years. And I’m not exaggerating.

All the way into high school, I was embarrassed to talk about my tennis or be seen in tennis clothes. I was also afraid to go to the beach in the summer because I had a tennis/farmer’s tan!

Princeton cures my tennis image problem.

It wasn’t until I got to Princeton University that I felt comfortable about being known as a tennis player. Why? Because it was considered a “cool” sport among the prepsters that dominated Princeton.

And I swear to you, had Dave never said that, I’m confident I wouldn’t have cowered in the darkness about my tennis for all those years.

We all have examples of these experiences that we held onto that, collectively, created a thick cloud that blocked us from accessing our conscious selves.

The world’s biggest problem

And as the title says, it is those clouds that, together, serve as the main problem plaguing humanity. Get rid of these clouds and the world would be a radically different, infinitely better place to live.

How do we dissolve these ever so damaging clouds within us? First and foremost, we have to become aware of their existence. That’s the main point of this, and many other of my articles.

If you are more than a few French fries short of a Happy Meal, and most people are, it is those clouds that are the reason.

We can dissolve the clouds

And the good news is, you don’t have to live with those clouds. Just about everyone on Earth believes that not feeling very good is inevitable. It’s life. It’s the way it is. So you just deal with it as best you can.

NO!

It’s not inevitable. Why? Because you can dissolve those clouds.

How? By letting go of them when they come up. Don’t fight with them. Let go of them.

Getting quiet inside through meditation and mindfulness helps that letting go process immensely. I know I’m a broken record in saying that, but I do it because it is so central to attaining well-being.

The takeaway

So use that image. Your consciousness, your fully realized being, is deep within you. It’s there. Right now. It’s always been there. Just like the sun. But you developed these ego clouds over the years that prevent you from realizing that.

Get quiet and let go.

Dissolve the clouds.

Let the shine through.

So you can be a source of warmth for the world.

Most of the conventional wisdom about spiritual growth focuses on the many things we need to add to ourselves. We read the great books to add to our spiritual knowledge. Repeat positive affirmations to add to our ability to win the war against negative thinking. Eat the right foods to add to our body’s ability to enhance spiritual growth.

But spiritual growth doesn’t come from adding to ourselves. It comes from ridding ourselves of the “stuff” we’ve accumulated over our lives. In other words, it’s about subtracting, not adding.

That’s not to say that reading, being positive, eating well and all the rest, are bad for you. It’s to say that if they’re not helping you shed, they’re not doing their job.

Examples of egoic baggage

Shed what, you ask? All of the hurts, the slights, the “I’m not good enough”, the “I’m right, you’re wrong”, the judgments about people. All the roles we assume — mom, dad, executive, teacher, etc.

Essentially, everything we think about ourselves and everybody and anything else. We need to let it all go.

And what is one left with after doing that? The beautiful, peaceful, radiant consciousness deep inside you, aka, the real you.

Sculpt Like Michelangelo

I’ll use a visual metaphor I’ve used before to illustrate the point. Imagine that you are Michelangelo, the most talented sculptor who ever lived.

For his greatest work, Michelangelo took a massive block of marble and started chiseling away, day after day, for over two years, at the end of which he gave the world the sublime statue of David. His process consisted of chiseling/subtracting small pieces of marble, by the thousands, in a quest to unearth the divinity that lay deep within the originally massive block.

Similarly, our block of marble is our entire psyche, within which exists a David-like masterpiece. The chiseling required to access that masterpiece consists of thousands of instances of subtracting, or letting go of, the egoic junk I mentioned above.

There is no adding to be done — just letting go. And letting go. And letting go. Chisel, chisel, chisel…

Now if I’m you, I’m asking the $64,000 question: “That all sounds great, but how the heck do I just subtract and ‘let go’ of all my inner junk?” I’ve written about this several times before, but because it is so critical for growth, I’ll explain it again.

How to let go

As Mickey Singer teaches, when something happens that stirs up our stuff, we first become aware that that has happened. Then we immediately relax. Everywhere, but especially in our head, chest and stomach areas. Then we simply watch and let go.

We don’t engage with the feeling, whether it’s anger, fear, sadness or anything else. And we don’t think about it and pinpoint it and try to figure out where it came from, etc. We simply feel it. Then relax and let it go. And we do this over and over and over again.

If that sounds daunting, remember this: There is nothing more important that we can do with our time and attention than letting go. Why? Because this is the path leading you to your inner David, the path leading you to that calm, beautiful presence that is your natural state, which is blocked by your egoic stuff.

Everybody’s got stuff. No one is immune. What’s yours?

What’s your “stuff?”

Maybe you’ve battled with your weight your entire life. And you’re out to lunch with your mom. You order a cheeseburger. And she gives you “the look.” Or worse, she says, “What about the veggie burger? It’s so much healthier.” At which point lava explodes through the top of your head and you let your mom have it.

Or maybe you grew up with a father who didn’t listen to you, so after your husband tells you he doesn’t remember you telling him something (which you told him three times), that latent anger from your childhood surges up and you scream at him.

The letting go process

Well, next time something like this happens, the very first thing to do is STOP. Catch yourself. Don’t react. Just notice the anger. Then close your eyes and relax. Take a few deep breaths. Then let go.

The key to the whole process is practicing the act of noticing when your stuff gets stirred up. You can’t relax and let it go unless you first get yourself to notice that it’s there.

And in the beginning, that’s hard. Why? Because all of your life this stuff has come up and you’ve been in the habit of just reacting to it. So it will take a lot of practice. And vigilance.

Meditation Will Strengthen Your Ability to Notice

The absolute best way to strengthen the noticer inside you is to develop a meditation practice. All meditation consists of is sitting quietly and following something happening in the present moment, like your breath.

Then, when your mind wanders, and it will, you simply notice what has happened and bring your attention back to your breath. That’s all it is. When you practice this on a regular basis your noticer “muscle” inside will strengthen.

How does this manifest in your everyday life? You’re at a red light and you notice that you’re getting annoyed, just the way you notice when your mind has wandered off during meditation. But now you cut it off at the pass. You notice the feelings of impatience and frustration, then relax, then let it go.

How do you get started with meditation? When I started meditating 11 years ago I created my own program. I made it simple, doable and designed it so that a regular person, like me, would be successful in developing a long-term practice. Click on the link at the bottom to get started.

The takeaway

Spiritual growth comes from subtracting. From shedding. From letting go.

We don’t need to add anything! We simply need to do the things that aid in that letting go process; like meditating, practicing mindfulness, praying and other activities that still our insides.

This “stuff” has been inside us for most of our lives and is lodged in there nice and tight. So it will take work to dislodge it and let it go.

But no work produces a more valuable and profound benefit, which is the emergence of the real, natural, calm, compassionate, beautiful being that resides inside every one of us.

We’ve talked about adding and subtracting so I’ll send you off with the most beautiful mathematical equation ever created. It comes from the 20th century Indian saint, Meher Baba, who captured the subtraction concept perfectly with this equation:

“Man minus mind equals God.”

Most people on this planet are stuck in their heads most of the time. Thoughts about the past, worries about the future, and just plain trivial nonsense dominate most peoples’ moments. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that past years have seen an upsurge in public awareness that this state of affairs is not a good thing. For millennia before this, people accepted that their minds were who they were and didn’t see this as particularly concerning. The boom in meditation and mindfulness has the world trending in the right direction.

The faulty understanding of dealing with the mind

But many wading into the incipient stages of these practices have a faulty understanding of what the true game plan is. They identify, correctly, that the mind and all of its injurious, involuntary thinking, is the main culprit. They then deduce, logically, that the way to approach this problem is to try and conquer or control this mind that has caused them so much grief throughout their lives.

How does this strategy manifest? In meditation, people say to themselves, “Okay, let’s focus on stopping my crazy mind from thinking…” This may work for a short while, but then the thoughts inevitably come charging back with a vengeance.

How we go wrong in mindfulness practice

In practicing mindfulness, it comes out when, for example, someone is out in nature and says, “Wow. What a beautiful sunset. Let’s just stop thinking and be present with it…” This also ends in frustration and increased thought traffic.

Or when their spouse says something that infuriates them, they stop, close their eyes, and say to themselves,

“Okay. I’m not going to let that incredibly stupid and insensitive comment rile me up. He/she probably didn’t mean it the way I’m taking it. Just chill out…”

That’s not mindfulness. It’s suppression.

Observe, don’t conquer

The point is that the human mind cannot be wrestled into submission by direct action. So what is the best strategy for slaying our noggin dragons?

It is to simply observe your thinking mind. That’s it. Don’t conquer it, observe it.

What that requires is self-evident: You need to separate the real, conscious you from the egoic, thought machine you (i.e., the mind). You to need separate the subject (real you) from the object (not real you thinking mind).

Unfortunately, doing this is difficult. Why? Because we’ve been stuck in our heads believing we are our thoughts for as long as we can remember. It happens so automatically for most of us that it’s hard to notice and therefore hard to prevent.

Our minds have a method to their madness

It’s important to acknowledge that the mind produces all these thoughts for a reason. It is desperately trying to make things “okay” for us. It uses all of our past experiences as data points in determining what thoughts will result in an okay you. The problem is that the mind is almost always wrong.

Fine. So we’ve concluded that the chattering mind is injurious to our well-being, that trying to conquer it is futile, and that the best solution is to observe it.

That leads to the inevitable question: How do we teach ourselves to detach from and observe our minds?

Answer: We do it by practicing meditation and mindfulness correctly.

The key is nonjudgmental observance

Both of these practices are, at their essence, about nonjudgmentally observing what is happening in the present moment.

In meditation that means following your breath, listening to that truck that just drove by, and, most important for our purposes, noticing the thought I just had about my tennis match yesterday. The tennis thought is no different than the truck sound or the breathing. It’s just something that isn’t me appearing in my field of awareness, so I treat it as such.

In mindfulness, this manifests similarly. If we’re waiting in an interminably long line at the grocery store checkout and we notice that feeling of annoyance stirring in our gut, what we don’t do is say to ourselves,

“There’s that annoying feeling. Let’s be mindful and stop that. We’ll get through the line when we get through the line.”

What we do is say,

“I’m in a long line and I’ve just noticed feelings of annoyance and anger because of it…”

And that’s it. No commentary or judgment or about those feelings. Just observing the feelings.

Fortunately, the more we meditate and simply observe our thoughts as something that is separate from who we are as a speeding truck, the quieter the mind becomes. It takes a while, but slowly, surely, and gradually, it happens.

And as it does, we become calmer, less anxious, more focused, and, best of all, more content.

The takeaway

Bottom line: Don’t try to defeat your mind. It’s a frustrating and unwinnable battle.

Instead, do something much easier: Observe your mind, without judgment.

Let’s start by defining what I mean by a funk. It’s when some adverse event or events happen which leads to telling ourselves, “Dang. I’m in a funk.” It isn’t something that puts you in a bad mood for a morning or a day, but something that puts you out for days on end.

It’s a capitulation to being in a ‘bad time.’ To the point that a friend asks how you’re doing and you respond, “Actually, I’m in a bit of a funk.”

I’m writing this because I’ve been staving off my own funk these past few weeks. What happened? The biggest culprit has been a low-level, annoying, lingering cold for the past ten days or so, the hallmarks of which are an on and off headache, on and off low energy and a light cough.

There’s a chance it could be allergy related. I’ve done the COVID tests so pretty sure that’s not it. Whatever it is, it’s bugging the hell out of me.

The Gerkens go to Washington

But what really put it to the test was taking the whole family — fifteen, thirteen and seven year old kids and my wife — to Washington, D.C., for five days. We love our family trips but, truth be told, they are always challenging. Planes, rental cars, hotel rooms, museums, kids fighting…You know, the usual family trip stuff.

Not to mention the usual mom and dad family trip bickering. Like what? We spent several cool, educational, but exhausting hours touring the African American Museum and then my wife, knowing I’m under the weather…

My Wife: “Why don’t we go walk around the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial?”

Me: “I’m exhausted. And feeling awful.”

My Wife: “Ohhh. So we’re gonna play the sick card, are we? Poor thing.”

Me: (in my head) “F*&K OFF!!!!!”

What I actually did was say nothing and head for the Washington Monument which was only a couple hundred yards away so doable. Then we headed for the car.

Retrieving PupCheeks

The annoyance level ticked up to DEFCON 50 when my wife chimed in with, “Can we head over to Georgetown to pick up Violet’s stuffed dog from Martin’s (the restaurant where we ate the previous night where my youngest left her treasured toy dog, nicknamed PupCheeks, under the table)?”

Mind you, it’s Friday at five o’clock, the absolute worst traffic of the week in DC, nowhere more so than in Georgetown. In order to avoid a 120-decibel cry-athon erupting from my seven year old’s stentorian vocal cords, we plowed our way over there, scooped up PupCheeks and peace returned to the land.

But enough of my kvetch-fest. Back to the story at hand: Funk prevention.

Staving off my funk

So, what have I been doing to prevent myself from entering the Funk Zone? I have done my level best to keep telling myself, anytime I feel miserable from the cold and its energy-sapping, headache causing ways, some version of:

“Okay. I feel rotten right now. But it’s right now. And that’s it.”

Bottom line is that I cut myself from thinking about and catastrophizing about the future.

And that is the point of this piece. Because that is what being in a funk is about. It’s about literally anointing yourself with the moniker: “I am in a funk.” And when we do that we vastly increases the odds of our funk lingering far longer.

The ego foments funk-dom

Why is that? Because when we declare ourselves to be in a “rough time,” our psyche starts looking for ways to buttress that. I know that sounds crazy, and it is, but we do it.

Often times it’s picayune things like missing an easy three-foot putt on the golf course. “Guess that’s just my luck. That’s just the way things seem to be going for me…”

We literally create a new identity for ourselves of “Person Going Through a Bad Time.”

So, what should we do?

NOT THAT!

Stay present during tough episodes

No. We simply take each thing as it comes. And when does each of life’s little adversities come to us? Only and always at the same time: The present moment.

In order to not fall into that self-identification as “Person in a Funk,” we simply need to take everything that comes our way and say, “That’s what’s happening right now. Period.”

Whether it’s a missed putt, a headache, a speeding ticket, a fender bender, a fight with the spouse, an ugly comment leveled at you on Twitter or any of a million other adverse situations we experience, we respond to it like the individual event it is. Then we let it go and move on to the next moments we experience.

I hope this makes sense. It’s about not letting events accumulate in your head in such a way that the ego burrows in and announces to you and the world that you are officially in a funk.

Mindfulness at its best

What this is is the quintessence of mindfulness. It’s staying present for the moments of our lives and not letting our egos intervene with thoughts of, “Man, this a bad time for me. I have a headache and I just stubbed the heck out of my toe. Looks like the funk continues…”

No. Just one thing at a time. One experience at a time. One moment at a time.

Patience is required

Doing this sometimes require a boatload of patience and persistence. The ego desperately wants us to capitulate and start complaining about what a bad time we’re having.

I can’t tell you how many times I felt lousy on the DC trip and said to myself, “I feel bad right now. That’s how I feel now.” But I left it at that.

In so doing, I know I’ve made what could have been a truly awful period not that bad.

File this one in the “Benefits of Mindfulness” folder.

The collective emotions of the world have heightened recently due to the war in Gaza and continuing conflict in Ukraine. Even in our sleepy beach town in Southern California, about half the students at my kids’ high school stayed home the other day for fear of violence due to the suspension of a Muslim student for harassing a Jewish girl.

It seems that everybody’s talking about this stuff, in the news, online and at the dinner table. And we all have an opinion, some siding more with the Israelis, others with the Palestinians. I’m not going to tell you my position because it’s irrelevant to this piece.

What is relevant? What I’ve learned over these past many years studying the great spiritual masters. People like Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna, Ram Dass, Eckhart Tolle and Mickey Singer. And texts like The Bhagavad Gita and the Tao te Ching.

The heavyweights all agree

What’s fascinating is that they are all on the same page on this subject of what to do about conflict and suffering in the world or, put another way, righting the wrongs plaguing humanity.

So what is it that they teach us to do? Is it to fly to Israel and join the Israeli Defense Force or the Hamas militia? Is it getting in the face of your adversary and shouting them down with epithets? Is it firing off an angry letter-to-the-editor of your local newspaper promulgating the righteousness of your position?

No. It’s none of those things.

Sri Ramana spells it out

What they do teach is captured beautifully in an anecdote about Ramana Maharshi, who is in the Pantheon of Indian saints.

In the mid 1930s, a particularly turbulent period with Hitler and other fascists on the rise, Sri Ramana was pressed on the question of where the world was headed and what could be done to avoid war. Here’s how he responded:

“Without understanding yourself, what is the use of trying to understand the world? This is a question that seekers after truth need not consider. People waste their energies over all such questions. First, find out the truth behind yourself; then you will be in a better position to understand the truth behind the world, of which yourself is a part.”

And that’s the answer to what Sri Ramana and Ram Dass and Eckhart and all the rest believe is the optimal response to dealing with the world’s ills.

START by going inside and working on becoming more conscious, i.e., ‘finding the truth behind yourself.’

That is job number one, two and three.

After that, if you want to get involved as an advocate/activist, by all means, go for it. Neither I, nor any of the aforementioned spiritual heavyweights, is saying it’s bad to get involved in the issues facing the world. Far from it.

Advocate from conscious presence

The key is to do so from a place of conscious presence and not at the direction of the ego. As I’ve heard Mickey, Eckhart and Ram Dass state many times, if all you’re doing is spewing your egoic anger on your adversaries then you’re not helping matters. You’re making things worse.

You know who advocated from a place of conscious presence? Gandhi. He didn’t lash out at the British colonial powers ruling India. He didn’t operate through anger. He was measured. Patient. Nonviolent.

Ditto with Martin Luther King, Jr., who was also nonviolent. But firm. And unyielding. He was a minister who walked the walk of Christ’s pronouncement: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers…’

MLK and Gandhi had great success

You know what else Gandhi and MLK had in common? They were the most successful advocates of the past hundred years. They got results.

India eventually gained its independence from Great Britain and nobody played a more vital role than MLK in advancing the rights of African-Americans.

These were two deep, highly evolved human beings. They had, between them, spent countless hours going inside and becoming conscious. At their core they were spiritual people and everything flowed from that center.

That was the work that enabled them to accomplish so much in India and America.

The takeaway

What this all boils down to is asking people to consider redirecting their energies with respect to any response to this latest Gaza tragedy. At least try to be aware that when we blow up at somebody over this or lash out in some way, whether in a Twitter or TikTok post or at the office or at the dinner table, we’re not helping the situation.

We’re just capitulating to our lower selves, AKA our egos. We’re turning on the spigot and spewing bile.

Next time you feel your ego tugging at you to “let it rip,” consider stopping. And taking five deep, cleansing breaths. Better yet, find a quiet place and meditate for ten minutes.

Because Eckhart, Sri Ramana, Mickey, Ram Dass, et al got it right. Going inside and becoming more conscious is the answer.

And I know that sounds holier than thou and like a cop out. But it isn’t.

It’s the long-term answer to curing what ails humanity.

One of the best, yet most vicious, scenes in movie history comes in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross. The scene features Alec Baldwin, a higher-up at a real estate sales company.

Baldwin’s character comes to one of the firm’s satellite offices to strike the fear of God into its underperforming sales staff, played by the likes of Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin and Ed Harris. Here’s but one example from the scene.

Baldwin removes a gold watch from his wrist and lays it before Harris’s meek character. Then —

“That watch costs more than your car. I made 970,000 dollars last year, how much you make? You see pal, that’s who I am, and you’re nothing. Nice guy? I don’t give a shit. Good father? Fuck you, go home and play with your kids. You want to work here, close.”

I told you it was vicious.

Always Be Closing

And it brings us in a roundabout way to the subject at hand. Because what Mamet made famous in this monologue was the acronym ABC, which stands for Always Be Closing.

It means to never let up when selling. Always be trying to close the sale.

If ABC is the key to sales, then ABF is the key to living a good life. What is ABF?

Always Be Flowing.

Most of you have an idea what flow is. It’s being in tune with what is. It’s being in harmony with the present moment.

It’s easier to describe being in flow by relating its opposite, which is resistance. People who constantly reject and resist what’s happening in the present moment are not in flow.

We live in flow when we accept what life brings our way. When we don’t resist what life brings our way.

Why we resist

Why do we resist so much? Because our egos want us to. It rains on your wedding day. Resist. You hit five red lights in a row. Resist. Your kid won’t put on his sweatshirt even though it’s freezing outside. Resist.

But realize that being in flow doesn’t mean we jump for joy that it rained on our big day. Or that we love sitting at red lights. Or that we give up on getting our kid to put on the sweatshirt.

Not at all. It simply means that we flow with the reality of life instead of resisting it…And then we respond to it from a place of acceptance and presence, not ego.

Some of you might be saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. I’ve heard this before. Flowing with life is a great thing. Being in flow is where it’s at. What’s new here?”

ALWAYS be flowing

Fair enough. The one thing I’d like to put a fine point on is the ‘A’ in ABF. Always.

Why? Because some of you might think, “Sure. I love being in the flow with a beautiful sunset. Or a relaxing walk with my husband. Or listening to a Puccini aria.”

The key, though, is to work on ALWAYS being in flow. Even during the challenging times. In fact, especially during the challenging times.

It’s about accepting reality

Remember, flow is about accepting whatever reality life brings our way. Good or bad. It’s reality. So flow with it.

It never makes sense to resist reality. It always makes sense to flow with it.

How do we do that? We whittle away at the little bugger that prevents us from flowing — the ego.

When we do that, we’re able to let life unfold by itself, without us (the ego) getting in the way.

The leaf and the wind

As Mickey Singer said in a recent talk, we want to be the leaf and let the wind (life, the Tao, nature, the Universe, God) blow us where it will.

We continually let go of anything that gets between the wind and the leaf. Any egoic thoughts or emotions…let them go.

Just keep letting go.

Be the leaf that flows with the wind of life.

Because life’s greatest treasures come to us when we flow with it.

Flow.

Always be flowing.

I love to write about ideas that simplify life. Ideas that set up an “Oh, that’s all I have to do?” scenario. Today’s article is one of those.

I’ve heard this idea from Eckhart Tolle before, but when I heard it in one of his talks yesterday it struck a chord. What’s this fantastic, life-simplifying idea?

The conscious and the personal

We live our lives on two tracks. One track involves becoming more conscious. The other is our personal, “in the world” life. Take a wild guess as to which one Eckhart deems infinitely more important.

What is the consciousness track? It’s all the practices and techniques we employ to become more conscious.

What does it mean to become more conscious? There are myriad ways to express this, but I’ll go with: Chipping away at our fearful, insecure, grandiose, anxious, thought-factory egos (otherwise known as our false selves). The more we chip away, the closer we get to our authentic, conscious selves.

How to become more conscious

What does that chipping away involve? Regular meditation, practicing mindfulness, letting go of our ego when it rears its head and any other spiritual practices that liberate us from our minds.

Not surprisingly, Eckhart, and most spiritual teachers and traditions, teach that this consciousness work, what Ramana Maharshi and Yogananda called self-realization, is where we need to put most of our energy.

Consciousness is where it’s at

So if you take anything away from this article, I hope it’s the idea that working on becoming more conscious needs the overwhelming bulk of our attention.

And for any of you thinking that doing so is a big gamble and that you may come out with “nothing” if you put your life’s work there, worry not. Because greater consciousness yields the best that life has to offer. More peace. Less anxiety.

Better at everything

And let’s not forget that it also makes us better at everything we do. Like what? Like selling real estate. Playing golf. Running our flower shop. Writing articles. Parenting our kids. You name it. Higher consciousness makes us better.

It’s also the best thing we can do for humanity. As Ramana Maharshi said:

“Your own self-realization is the greatest service you can render to the world.”

Now let’s pivot to that second track of our lives — the personal one. It’s what we do in the world every day. It’s what most of us, incorrectly, think of as the only life we have.

It’s this part of our lives that most trips us up. How? Because most people perpetually struggle with that vexing, existential question: “What should I do with my life?”

What Eckhart recommends is that we meditate on the question. Or pray, if that’s your practice.

But here’s the key. We don’t ask for what I want to do in the world.That is, we don’t ask for riches or to be a lawyer or a Wall Street mogul.

Ask what’s wanted from you

No. What we do is ask the Universe/God/Nature what it wants from US.Then we do what Ralph Waldo Emerson called accepting the place the divine providence has found for us.

We become instruments, like radios, that allow the Universe to express itself through us. The master Persian poet, Rumi, describes how this works:

“When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of distress and anxiety. If I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me, and without any pain. From this I understand that what I want also wants me, is looking for me and attracting me.”

Now, if I’m you, I’m asking, “I love all the spiritual mumbo-jumbo, but how does this actually work in practice?”

Eckhart as an example

Eckhart Tolle’s life provides a perfect example. The quick background is that he had a massive breakthrough in consciousness at age 29 after many miserable years. This was followed by a few years of living in bliss on park benches in London.

Eventually, he began counseling people on spiritual matters. After several years of seeing people on a small scale, it occurred to him that he could do more to help. So he went to a small church and prayed/meditated on this, asking for “acceleration.”

Precisely nothing changed in the following four months. Zip.

A message to move to North America

Then one day he got up in the morning and had this strange feeling/thought/sensation telling him to move to the west coast of North America. Which he then did, settling in Vancouver.

It was in Vancouver that he had another sensation, that there was a book that wanted to be written through him. Out of that came The Power of Now.

He was fortunate enough to get a small publisher that printed 1,000 copies of the book. Eckhart would walk around to different bookstores and ask if they wanted three or four copies. If they didn’t sell, he’d take them back. Some stores said yes, others said no.

Oprah swoops in

After a few years of this, Oprah got wind of the book and the rest is history.

But look at what Eckhart did. He just listened. And then acted. “I can do more…I need to move to North America…A book wants to be written…”

What’s far more important for our purposes is what Eckhart didn’t do. He didn’t get in the way. What “he” didn’t get in the way? His ego.

What would “getting in the way” have looked like? Immediately after meditating/praying for acceleration, he would have gone into fifth gear.

“I need to up my counseling marketing campaign! Put flyers all around London about my awesome counseling services. Then I’ll pester people at BBC to see if I can somehow get interviewed on TV. It’s a longshot, but nothing ventured, nothing gained!”

When the book thing happened, he would have gotten to thinking, “How can I write this in a way that will sell the most copies?” Which, had he done so, I can say with 100 percent certainty that The Power of Now would have been a mediocre book that went nowhere.

What he did do was take a page from Rumi. He “…sat in his own place of patience, then what he needed flowed to him…”

It’s not easy

Is this hard to pull off? Yes. Why? Because our egos are incredibly strong! They constantly want to worry about what path we’re on, or not on. Are we making something of our life? Are we clueless? Drifting? We worry. Criticize. Question. That’s what egos do.

But there is this other way to lead that personal life track. Keep asking what the Universe wants from you. Then be patient. And let it happen.

Again, it’s hard. I know. I’ve struggled with the whole “Hustle, hustle, hustle. Make things happen…Do something with your life…” ego noise for decades.

But the best years of my life have been the last ones where I’ve gotten better at getting out of my way. In fact, that could be one’s entire life mantra:

Get out of the way.

That’s it. Every day, just keep telling yourself to get out of the way and let nature, the Tao, the Universe, God…take over your steering wheel.

The takeaway

So hone your life down to those two things. Keep it simple.

It reminds me of writer Michael Pollan’s pithy dictum on nutrition: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

Here’s the living life version:

Devote most of your attention to becoming conscious; allot the rest to getting out of your way as you navigate your ship through the oceans of life.

You, those around you and the world will be better off for it.