Meditation

I was blessed in the dad lottery, something none of us have any control over. Mine was a hard-charging, ambitious man who, frankly, had far from perfect attendance at my basketball games, track meets or tennis matches.

But what he did give me, and my five older siblings, was invaluable. Some would say it’s the most important thing a parent can give their child: Values. (I wrote an article about my dad that you can find here.)

He was a Fortune 500 CEO who came from little who taught us to treat others, especially those with little, with respect and dignity.

Recollections of my dad’s driver

I’ll never forget at his retirement party when his longtime driver, Ed Reguero, recounted the many times he had to drag my dad away from talking to elevator operators and parking valets, most of them Hispanic immigrants, at the posh California Club in downtown Los Angeles, because he was late for another meeting. He had a big heart, old Walter B. Gerken.

But the value he pressed on us that towered over all others was personal integrity. I remember numerous times throughout my childhood him telling me that he’d never cheated on my mom and that the main reason was that he never could have lived with himself if he had.

Cheating if you won’t get caught

The notion so many have of, “I’m in Chicago. There’s no way in Hell she’ll ever find out about it, so why not? Let’s have some fun!” That way of thinking, and living, was complete anathema to my dad. He never understood how people like that could live with themselves.

I have to say that it worked, too. His six kids, ranging in age from 59 to 70, have all led lives of high integrity.

So what does any of this have to do with my favorite quote from the Teddy Roosevelt? Everything.

Because it’s no coincidence that my number one TR axiom is about integrity. Here it is:

“I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do!”

Bullseye. This is what character is all about.

Roosevelt was an aristocratic Republican raised in the lap of luxury. He had private tutors, then prep school at Groton, college at Harvard and law school at Columbia.

But throughout his political career, if he saw something he thought was wrong, he did something about it. Whether it was fighting corruption as Police Commissioner of New York City or taking down the rapacious trusts and inciting the ire of powerful titans like JP Morgan while President of the United States, Roosevelt’s integrity forced him to act.

Integrity in the face of angry opposition

And it came at great personal peril. The wealthy class he belonged to despised him for his efforts and fought him at every turn. But he didn’t care what they thought of him.

He only cared what he thought of himself.

If only our politicians today would do the same thing. Do what? Look in the mirror, ask themselves if they approve of the actions taken by the person they’re looking at, then act accordingly.

It may not result in, as Louis Armstrong wrote, a wonderful world. But it would certainly be a better world.

The takeaway

So what does it all mean? Just what it says. Turn everything on yourself, live in ways that you feel good about and forget what everybody else thinks.

Just as it was with my dad and his kids, my number one priority with my kids, beyond showering them with as much love as I can muster, is to instill them with Roosevelt’s, and my dad’s, advice.

It’s the healthiest path out there.

Many of you love Ram Dass. Anybody who’s read my stuff knows that I do. He was a gift to humanity.

What many of you probably don’t know is that he came close to not becoming the great being he became. This article tells that story.

First, some background. Ram Dass grew up as Richard Alpert in a well-to-do Boston family. His father was a successful railroad executive who, among other accomplishments, played a central role in creating Brandeis University.

A privileged upbringing

Alpert attended Tufts University then got his master’s in psychology at Wesleyan and his PhD at Stanford. This elite track didn’t stop with his education as he went on to become a professor at Stanford and then Harvard.

It was at Harvard that Alpert joined forces with his fellow professor Timothy Leary to research the potential therapeutic effects of psychedelic drugs like psilocybin and LSD. In 1963 Harvard fired Alpert for giving psilocybin to an undergraduate and let Leary go for blowing off his teaching responsibilities.

Leary and Alpert didn’t miss a beat, picking up and moving their psychedelics research endeavors to the Hitchcock Estate in Millbrook, New York, a massive mansion provided them by Mellon heiress Peggy Hitchcock. They set up a commune of sorts that revolved around studying the effects of psychedelics.

Can you imagine that? Sitting around in an enormous mansion getting high every day? That’s got movie, or HBO series, written all over it.

High highs followed by low lows

What were Alpert’s personal experiences like with these drugs? It came down to this: He loved the high that he achieved, but he always…always came back down to earth.

The high these psychedelics brought him manifested largely as a loss of ego which left nothing but a sense of pure consciousness. This was profoundly helpful. But…

Alpert could never sustain the high. He couldn’t figure out a way to extend that ego-less state into his regular, non-high existence.

Looking for sustained consciousness

To say that this troubled him would be a vast understatement. It threw him into an existential crisis. He had to figure out a way to maintain the deep levels of consciousness that psychedelics provided him.

After four years of this, fate intervened. A guy Alpert had guided through some psychedelic sessions had made a bundle of money after selling his company to Xerox. He retired at age 35 and became a Buddhist.

In 1967 he asked Alpert if he wanted to join him on a journey to India in search of higher beings. Alpert, highly dissatisfied with the temporary consciousness offered by psychedelics, accepted the invitation, thinking maybe these holy people could guide him to a more permanent state. And off they went.

A chance meeting in Nepal

After three months traveling around in a souped up Land Rover, smoking hash, meeting the Dalai Lama and having a relatively comfortable, westerner’s experience of the East, the two found themselves in Katmandu, Nepal. It was their final stop before heading to Japan and, finally, home.

Alpert found himself deeply depressed. That deeper, more permanent state of consciousness he’d searched for was nowhere to be found.

One day in Katmandu they went to a hippie hangout called the Blue Tibetan, with Alpert in total despair. Then in walked an extraordinarily tall (6’ 7”), young (23), barefoot blonde American kid named Bhagwan Dass who’d been traveling around India the past five years.

Entranced by a 23 year old

After chatting with him for a while, it hit Alpert like a ton of bricks that this kid “knew.” He had “it.” He didn’t know exactly what that was or what it meant, but he knew he had to get to know this guy.

So for the next five days they spirited Bhagwan Dass to their swank suite in the Sewalti Hotel and pelted him with questions about all matters spiritual. At the end of it, Alpert was gobsmacked. This Bhagwan Dass guy was the real deal.

Which brings us to Alpert’s fateful decision. A decision that altered the course of his life forever.

The big decision: comfort or discomfort

It was time to leave for Japan for a final stop before heading home. Alpert had to decide: Do I continue my first-class journey or do I head off with this 23 year-old California kid who happens to be the wisest person I’ve ever met? The kid had no money and no possessions.

Alpert was so distraught at not realizing any kind of spiritual growth thus far on the trip that he said, “Screw it,” threw caution to the wind and headed off with Bhagwan Dass.

The succeeding months found him walking around India barefoot, developing painful blisters on his feet, sleeping on the ground or on wood tables and contracting dysentery. All the while, Bhagwan Dass taught him the basics of yoga.

Things like not thinking about the future or the past, but simply being here now. Letting emotions come and go, like waves in the ocean. Meditating.

A word with his mom under a starry sky

Three months into his journey with Bhagwan Dass, something magical happened. Alpert awoke in the middle of the night to go outside and pee.

While doing so, he looked up into the bright, starry sky and felt the presence of his mother who had died the previous year of spleen failure. In those moments he felt a powerful rush of love for her. Not thinking much of it, he went back to bed.

The next day Bhagwan Dass told him they had to drive to the mountains to see his guru for help getting his visa renewed. A hundred miles into their drive they came to a tiny temple by the side of the road in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Bhagwan Dass exited the car and started running up a hill. Alpert, surprised and perplexed, followed him.

Dick Alpert meets his guru

Eventually, they reached a field where a man, around 65 years old, was lying down, with a blanket around him, surrounded by eight or nine people. Bhagwan Dass burst into tears as he finally arrived at the man, Neem Karoli Baba, and bowed and touched his feet.

Alpert said he was thinking, “I’m not doing that. I don’t have to. I don’t even know who this guy is.”

After a brief introduction and chat, the guru told his people to take the two Americans away and feed them. Later that day Neem Karoli Baba summoned Alpert to come see him.

Ram Dass recounted their conversation in his classic book Be Here Now:

Neem Karoli Baba: “You were out under the stars last night.”

Alpert: “Um-hum.”

Neem Karoli Baba: “You were thinking about your mother.”

Alpert: “Yes.”

Neem Karoli Baba: “She died last year.”

Alpert: “Um-hum.”

Neem Karoli Baba: “She got very big in the stomach before she died…Spleen. She died of spleen.”

Alpert swears that he didn’t tell anybody, including Bhagwan Dass, about his experience the previous night under the stars. Not one person.

Alpert said that when Neem Karoli Baba had finished talking he looked at him in a certain way. He described it as being in the presence of pure love.

Alpert finds his home

After a few moments of this, Alpert burst into tears. Not because of the poignancy of dealing with his mother’s death in such a profound, mysterious way. Rather, he said he cried so hard because:

“It felt like I was home. Like the journey was over…”

And in a sense, his journey was over. From that moment on, he dedicated his life to Neem Karoli Baba who, shortly thereafter, gave Richard Alpert his new name: Ram Dass.

The takeaway

None of this would have happened had Richard Alpert decided to take the easy path and head to Japan. He knew that following this strange 23-year-old kid was going to be uncomfortable and and completely unpredictable.

But he chose, as Robert Frost immortalized in his iconic poem, to take the road less traveled. And that made all the difference, to Ram Dass and, even more important, to the millions of people like me and many of you whose lives he has touched so deeply.

What’s the point of all this? Don’t be afraid to get out of your comfort zone. Doing so may take you to heights you never could have imagined.

I came out of the womb an impatient little bugger. Hated waiting for anything or anybody.

I’ll never forget combing through a box of memorabilia a few years ago and coming across a letter my counselor wrote to my parents at the conclusion of my three-week stint at Camp Manitowish in Boulder Junction, Wisconsin, the summer between sixth and seventh grade.

The gist of the letter was, “David was a good kid and excelled at many of our activities, though he could have been a bit more patient with his fellow campers.”

My kids force patience upon me

My impatience followed me into adulthood. But a few years after getting married, I finally came face to face with the greatest enemy an impatient person can face: Kids! In all seriousness, having kids was the best thing that could have happened to me in terms of getting my impatience under control.

Why? Any of you parents out there know the answer, but for those of you who aren’t, the answer is simple: To keep one’s sanity, any parent MUST develop patience.

Quick example. You’ve got a big meeting at nine a.m. It’s 8:20 and your four-year-old daughter refuses to cooperate in getting herself ready for school. You try to put on her shoes, socks, pants and shirt and she kicks wildly, saying she doesn’t want to go to school. But you and your wife have to be at work and simply can’t have her stay home.

To explode or not to explode…

Your options? Blow your stack and try to force the clothes onto her. Problem is that this will often take longer because of the fighting and running away from you and yada, yada, yada.

The better choice? PATIENCE. Breathe…Deeply…Slowly…

Then think. Calmly. Rationally. What will work?

She likes to have her back tickled. So you start doing that. Patiently. After a minute, she’s calmed down a bit. Without saying a word, you slowly start putting her shirt on. She doesn’t resist. Eureka!

The choice: Insanity or patience

You get the drift. The point is, you have to stop, calm down and be patient as a parent. This has forced me to become more patient. Again, and I’m not even exaggerating much, when I became a parent, the choice was to either go insane or work on becoming more patient.

When it comes to traveling the spiritual path, patience is even more indispensable. How so? I’ll relate my experience of late to illustrate.

As many of you know, I’ve been trekking the spiritual path for many years now. That has included regularly meditating and practicing mindfulness and working hard to relax and let go when my ego rears its “Me, Me, Me!” head.

Challenging times of late

The past several weeks have been challenging on the spiritual front. How? Nothing awful. No cancer diagnoses or major problems with my family.

Part of it has been a general malaise on the work front which, for me, is largely about writing these articles. The combination of four years of regularly writing articles on spirituality and a nosedive on every conceivable metric on my Medium numbers has me feeling a bit lackluster of late.

A malaise phase

How does that manifest? Mostly as a low-level feeling of angst and mental enervation.

This state leads me to think lots of thoughts. About what? “What am I doing? Should I keep on writing? Do YouTube videos? Switch to Substack?” Etc, etc, etc.

The wiser, deeper part of me knows that is mostly my ego acting up. Fear. Pride. Insecurity. They’re all ego and they’re all at the heart of most of these thoughts.

Patience and spiritual growth

And that gets us, finally!, to the subject at hand: Patience and spiritual growth. Because as I’ve encountered these challenging past several weeks, it has occurred to me time and again that patience is the whole ballgame.

How? Let me start with a simple, relatable scenario where every day patience is absolutely necessary for success.

The Ikea challenge

You buy a chair from Ikea that needs assembling. You unpack and lay out all the parts then get to work. Everything’s fine until you hit one area that just won’t fit. You’ve followed the directions, but it just won’t fit. You tinker. Then tinker some more. Still no luck.

At this point, you have two options. One, you can throw in the towel, say screw it and return the damn chair. Second, you can step back, take a few breaths, go back a few steps and inspect what you’ve already done, and see if you’ve made a mistake along the way.

In other words, you can be PATIENT. And I don’t know about you, but most of the time, when I take this route, I figure out the problem, fix it and all is well.

Spiritual patience

The spiritual predicament is similar. The patience involved isn’t about figuring something out and fixing it, as with the chair. It’s much simpler.

It’s about repeatedly, many times a day, day after day, reminding myself that I am the sky and the clouds are simply things that are happening, that come and then go. The clouds, in this case, are those feelings and thoughts of malaise, fear and insecurity.

In other words, my work is to simply watching those thoughts and feelings arise and then pass, without engaging with them. Or being frustrated by them.

And what does that take?

PATIENCE.

A whole heck of a lot of it. And it can be exhausting. It involves the near constant reminding of:

“I hear it. I feel it. It’s okay. Just relax and let it pass…”

What’s the analogous spiritual response to throwing up our hands and giving up on the Ikea chair? It’s getting so frustrated with traveling the path that we give up. We stop meditating. Stop trying to let go of ourselves. The whole schmear.

The takeaway

And that is why patience is so indispensable to spiritual growth. We have to withstand these periods where storm clouds come up and challenge us.

Because these difficult periods are inevitable. More important, they’re absolutely necessary. It’s the challenging times that provide us the opportunity to let go of our stuff.

We just need to be patient.

Relax.

Breathe.

Let go.

Over and over and over…

Until the clouds pass…

And we can enjoy the bright, blue, beautiful skies again.

In traveling the spiritual path these past many years I’ve noticed that my favorite teachers consistently place compassion at the top of the pyramid of human behaviors. Everything they teach seems to culminate with showing compassion for others.

Over many years of practice, we quiet our minds, let go of our egoic baggage/attachments and inner peace builds. But, according to all the teachers I’ve studied, that’s not where it ends. It ends with what we DO with that peace.

Who are these teachers?

The Dalai Lama

Probably the most influential spiritual leader in the world for the past fifty years, the Dalai Lama places compassion at the center of his teachings. He has famously said:

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

And…

“The topic of compassion is not at all religious business; it is important to know it is human business, it is a question of human survival.”

How does he describe compassion? He says it is “love, affection, kindness, gentleness, generosity of spirit and warm-heartedness.”

People with these traits don’t go into a personal encounter seeking something for themselves. They go in with the intention of serving that person in some way, especially if that person is suffering.

Thich Nhat Hanh

The other teacher who made a lasting mark since the 1960s was the late Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. Here again, in the many interviews and talks I’ve heard him give, Thich Nhat Hanh consistently mentions the importance of compassion over everything else. Here are my two favorites:

“I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.”

“Look at flowers, butterflies, trees, and children with the eyes of compassion. Compassion will change your life and make it wonderful.”

Eckhart Tolle

While Eckhart doesn’t often use the word compassion, his central teachings are synonymous with it. He teaches that we are not our thoughts but the consciousness that can only be present in the absence of thinking.

He states that only when we are conscious like this can we be there for and with another human. In other words, the purpose of presence is to exhibit compassion toward others.

Neem Karoli Baba

The highest human being I’ve come across in my years studying this spiritual stuff, Neem Karoli Baba was Ram Dass’s guru. In fact, he’s the one who gave the former Harvard professor and psychedelic revolutionary Richard Alpert the new name of Ram Dass.

As I wrote in this article (link here), Baba taught his devotees only this: Love everyone, serve everyone and remember God. Underlying that teaching is compassion. It’s all the same.

Mickey Singer

Mickey also doesn’t use the word compassion very much, but he too teaches concepts that describe the same thing. He teaches that we all have a beautiful, loving energy inside us that is blocked by the emotional scars (samskaras) we’ve trapped inside ourselves. Remove those scars and the energy will flow. He describes that energy as pure love for others, i.e., compassion.

Jesus Christ

While I’m not a practicing Christian, I do subscribe to the core teaching of Christ: Treat others the way you’d like to be treated, especially the less fortunate. You don’t need to be the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury or the president of the Southern Baptist Convention to conclude that compassion for others towers over Christ’s other teachings.

Great. So the central teaching of these master spiritual beings was for we humans to show compassion toward one another. What can we take from that?

The endpoint isn’t bliss

That the endpoint of the spiritual path is not our own self-realization or some blissful state of nirvana. Yes, that happens to the realized human.

But the endpoint is what we do with that self-realized bliss. And the answer is, we use it to shower compassion on others.

Personally, the best I feel in life isn’t when I’ve won an athletic contest or achieved some professional advancement. Those things give me a rush of upward energy, but it all derived from ego and, by definition, no authentically good feeling comes from that.

Compassion produces the highest feelings

The best feelings I’ve ever experienced have always come from offering compassion to another. Like helping an elderly woman stow her bag in the overhead bin on an airplane. Or talking a friend down from the ledge. Or calming my six-year-old daughter when she’s in the middle of a meltdown.

Those things actually make me feel good. And I don’t think I’m alone. I think it’s universal that people feel their best when they’ve shown compassion to another.

Why is this so? Is it some Darwinian, evolutionary dynamic where we have some inner, genetic impulse to help each other because that will perpetuate the human species?

I don’t know. And I don’t think it matters.

The takeaway

What does matter? In this time of political insanity, wars in the Gaza Strip and Ukraine and global warming wreaking havoc across the globe, it behooves all of us to remember the aforementioned great masters who all taught the same thing:

Compassion is the answer.

Most people, including me, get confused on the subject of what the ego is and how it manifests. We think it’s restricted to the “bad” things we do.

Like what? Like blowing up at your kids when they fight with each other or dance on your last available nerve. Or those with weight issues getting thrown into a mini-depression when someone suggests they opt for the mixed berries rather than the chocolate mousse for dessert.

Yes, those are examples of the ego rearing its susceptible head. But the ego’s reach is far broader than most of us think.

The “I, me, mine” ego

Mickey Singer has an apt, pithy description of the ego. He says it’s the voice in the head constantly spitting out thoughts of “I, I, I, me, me, me, mine, mine, mine…” Sound familiar to any of you? It does to me.

One area where almost all of us do this is in conversation. Whether talking with an acquaintance, friend, spouse, your mom or your kid, most of us drift away at some point from listening to them to focusing on what WE are going to say in response.

Who’s going to pick up your kid at practice

The negative version would be an argument with your spouse where she lists the reasons you should pick up junior from soccer practice. You check out at the outset, knowing that whatever she says and for however long she says it, you’re going to say the same thing: “I pay our bills. I’m exhausted from a long day at work. You pick him up.”

But the ego worms its way into positive situations, too. You ever been chatting with a friend who’s struggling and something like this plays out?

Friend: “I find that I get so wound up at work that I can’t even concentrate. It’s just this low level of anxiety that plagues me throughout the day.”

You hear that and immediate get the “I” thought of,

“I know exactly what I want to tell him. When he first feels that swarm of thoughts invading his head, he needs to catch it right then. Stop. Close his eyes and then take five deep, long, slow breaths. Also, be sure to exercise before work. Those endorphins take us a long way.”

Right after your friend says what he says, you check out. All you can think about is what you’re going to say when he stops talking. And you might even get annoyed with him, this friend who is suffering to some degree, because he won’t shut up and let you shower him with your brilliant ideas!

Most of us have done it. I know I have.

Try this practice

So here’s the practice. Next time you’re in a conversation and you find yourself tuning out because you know what you’re going to say next, first, just become aware of it. Say to yourself, “Bob just told me X and I’m going to respond with Y when he stops.”

This in itself is hugely important. As I’ve quoted many times before, my favorite Eckhart Tolle teaching is:

“Awareness is the greatest agent for change.”

Once you’re aware, take one or two deep breaths to re-center yourself in the moment.

Park your suggestions

Then see if you can redirect one hundred percent of your attention to your friend and what he’s saying. Park whatever brilliant suggestion you have on your mind’s sidewalk.

And then…simply listen. With no thoughts. No agenda. Just total presence.

This gets to a central point of this piece. It’s something that ALL of my favorite teachers have emphasized. I’m talking Ram Dass, Mickey Singer, Eckhart Tolle, Yogananda, Jon Kabat-Zinn and Thich Nhat Hanh. The whole lot of them.

It’s this:

The greatest gift we can give somebody is our presence.

Put another way, it means giving our full attention. There’s great strength and power in our presence.

Not that our advice isn’t valuable, too. But it pales in comparison to simply offering presence.

Truth be told, our presence is what most people want. They want to be seen. And heard.

Because our consciousness is the best salve the universe has to offer.

The takeaway

So give this a try. When in a conversation, be aware when you get all excited knowing what you’re going to say next, then stop.

Breathe. Park your thoughts. Tune in.

Listen.

I live a stone’s throw from one of the top birding sites in America, the Back Bay in Newport Beach, California. It’s an important rest stop and winter home for birds migrating from Canada and Alaska. Upwards of 30,000 birds can be seen there, on a single day, in the winter months.

When writing, I’ll often take a break and walk over to the Back Bay. I walk to a tree with lots of branches that birds usually perch on. Why? Because I absolutely love to stand there and watch and listen to them. I find it incredibly peaceful and relaxing.

Birds pull us into the moment

I also find it to be a beautiful, spiritual and meditative experience. Why? For one, it pulls me into the present moment.

The birds I’m listening to are singing right now. And the sounds are so mesmerizing that my mind (for once!) doesn’t want to drift off. My focus wants to stay right there, on the sublime songs.

The innocence of birds

Second, there is something so sweet and innocent about birds and the sounds they make. When you look at them chirp away, it is so obvious that they have no idea what they’re doing. They’re just doing it. By instinct.

And not to get too “out there” about it, but it’s like God/Nature/The Universe is expressing itself through these tiny, cute creatures. They’re vessels of God.

Which is why birds are so inspiring to me — because I believe we humans are at our best when we “just do it,” and don’t get caught up in all the crazy thoughts and emotions that block us from being vessels of God/The Universe or whoever you think is in charge of the cosmic show.

Why birds sing

If you’re wondering why birds sing, the scientists aren’t exactly sure. They think it is mostly for two reasons.

First, a strong male singing “voice,” (and yes, it’s mostly males who do the singing) is a signal to the females out there that the dude has strong genes, giving her offspring the best chance at surviving. It’s classic Darwinian survival of the fittest.

Second, they sing to mark their territories and ward off competitors. The stronger the call, the better chance that the other birds stay out of your area.

Actual health benefits of listening to birds

To get you enthused about actually trying this, you should know that there is scientific evidence that listening to birds reduces stress. Scientists at the University of Surrey in England have been studying the “restorative benefits of birdsong,” testing whether it really does improve our mood.

They discovered that, of all the natural sounds, bird songs and calls were those most often cited as helping people recover from stress, and allowing them to restore and refocus their attention. (Stephen Moss, “Natural high: why birdsong is the best antidote to our stressful lives,”The Guardian 5/4/19).

What to do

So how do you do this bird listening thing? That’s pretty self-evident. You go outside and listen. And watch.

Couple other suggestions, though. First, bird singing is obviously most pronounced in the morning. So one thing to try is getting your coffee, going outside in your bathrobe and slippers and just sitting and listening.

It doesn’t have to be an hours long deal. Even a few minutes will put you in a better place.

Second, it’s best if you can actually see the birds as they sing. Watching them allows us to truly soak in their zen-like innocence.

No need to identify the birds

Finally, I wouldn’t concern yourself with identifying the birds and making lists of them, etc. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you get into all the facts about birds and species, it will tend to divert your attention from the main intention: Experiencing the birds and their ethereal, majestic presence.

As Eckhart Tolle says, someone who knows absolutely nothing about honey but who has tasted it knows far more about honey than a guy who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on honey but has never tasted it.

A great book

Your best bet is to get a book my birding fanatic sister-in-law gave me called Ornitherapy: For Your Mind, Body and Soul. It offers myriad ways to use birds for your mindfulness practice. I recommend it highly.

Trust me, watching and listening to these adorable creatures that weigh all of one ounce will put you in a better mood.

This is another one of those articles where I’m taking on a commonly accepted behavior and turning it on its head. Of course, this sometimes results in readers wanting to tar and feather me, but that’s the risk I have to take.

What’s the behavior that everybody says is so healthy and fabulous?

Venting.

Let’s start with what I mean by venting. In brief, it’s when we get something off our chest. Something that’s bugging us, tormenting us, aggravating us. Like what?

– You’re passive-aggressive colleague at work weasels his way, yet again, into getting the better assignment. You get home from work and vent to your wife that you’d love nothing more than to knock his block off.

– A mom at your kid’s school acts as if she hasn’t met you when you’ve met her at least five times. You vent about this to another mom friend of yours at school pick up.

– Your mom blows off babysitting your kid, her grandkid, forcing you to cancel dinner plans at your favorite restaurant. You vent to your husband, for the 1,568th time, about how awful and selfish your mom is.

– You see an Instagram post with your ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend looking annoyingly happy, even though she broke up with you only three months ago. You call your buddy up and vent about what a shallow person she is, and was.

There’s nothing wrong with any of these reactions. It’s just unloading a pile of frustration and tension. Great.

Mickey Singer’s three responses

Before moving further, though, let’s take a page from the Mickey Singer playbook on the three ways we can respond in a stressful situation. They are: Suppress, express and watch. (I wrote an entire article on this subject, link here.)

I’ll explain using the grandma who blows off babysitting her grandson. Suppressing would be if the daughter tells her husband, “It’s alright. Maybe she just isn’t feeling well. I didn’t really want to go out for dinner anyway.” In other words, she’s taking her anger and pushing it back down.

Doing that over and over normally results in a volcanic explosion down the road. This is the least healthy option.

Second, she could do what she did, which is vent. “Man, I can’t stand her! She’s just awful. Always has been. No wonder my dad kicked her to the curb!” This is expressing. Yes, it’s healthier than suppressing because we at least release some of that angry energy. But it’s only a temporary release. The underlying problematic energy remains.

Watch and let go

But the third option, watching, is the charm. This is where the daughter allows the angry feelings to surface, but instead of engaging with them, by telling off her mom or venting to her husband, she would relax, lean away, and watch those feelings…And then let them go.

What’s the benefit garnered by doing this? She actually releases some of the stuck energy inside her. In this case, it’s energy she has held onto for most of her life concerning her feelings for her mom.

Why is that healthy? Because those feelings/that energy is just sitting in her lower self. Every single moment of every day. And that energy is toxic. It’s what prevents us from feeling peaceful inside.

We vent when the ego gets poked

Which brings us back full circle to venting, the subject at hand. In many circumstances, venting is fine. But we would all do well to be aware that almost all venting derives from someone poking our ego.

The mom who doesn’t remember meeting you, the mom who bails on babysitting your kid and the guy who weasels his way to the better job assignment are causing us to vent because our egos got stirred.

So try to remember that the next time you find yourself venting. See if you can add the relax, lean away and watch component to your vent session.

Even more important, and the main reason for writing this article, is to be aware of what you’re venting about. Is it something you vent about a lot?

Because I see this all the time with friends and family. See what?

People venting about the same damn thing over and over and over. Year after year.

An example from way back when, in the late 1980s, was a girlfriend of mine who vented about her mom every time I was with her. It was constant. And always about the same few issues. Over and over.

Venting about bad bosses

I’ve also experienced several examples of this in relation to venting about one’s boss. Again, an almost identical venting session repeated over and over, not for weeks or months, but for many years.

It’s this type of venting that we need to take a look at. Yes, it’s better to “get it out” and talk about it rather than suppress it until we explode.

Two proactive actions we can take

But why not go a step further? See if we can’t:

1. Let go of that bag full of angry energy by relaxing and watching it rather than engaging with it; and/or,
2. Dive in and see if we can’t come to a healthy inner resolution on the matter.

With the bad boss example, maybe we try simply acknowledging to ourselves that Mr. Boss is just a jerk. Plain and simple. For reasons you probably know. He’s incredibly insecure. He’s a narcissist. Whatever it is.

You ain’t going to change him

And you acknowledge that nothing you or anybody else does is going to change him. Which means that his behavior toward you and others probably isn’t going to change much, either.

So what you do is resolve to accept this person as he is. Which doesn’t mean you have to like it, or him. But accepting that he’s a jerk will result in you not constantly resisting his jerkiness. And the result of that will be that, eventually, you won’t feel the need to blow up and vent to your spouse every night when you get home from work.

That’s an example of being proactive in handling the situation for yourself rather than venting on and on for years about the guy.

The takeaway

Ultimately, that’s the point of this article. I hear people talk so much about how good they feel after a good vent session. And again, that’s fine most of the time.

But wouldn’t it be better if you took it a step further by doing some inner work, to the point that you didn’t feel the need to vent in the first place?

Any of you who’ve read my stuff these past four years knows that I’m a major fan of Eckhart Tolle. So much so that I’ve paid 200 dollars a year for the past twelve years for access to his paid website, Eckharttolle.com.

What’s on his site? Mainly recordings of his talks, most of which come from the retreats he and his wife, Kim Eng, put on around the world.

How I use Eckhart’s site

My main “use” for Eckhart’s talks is to listen to them for around fifteen minutes right before meditating in the morning. Experiencing his presence smooths my transition into attaining presence in my meditation sessions.

Yes, I loved his iconic book The Power of Now. And yes, I value his basic teaching that we are not our thoughts, but rather the deep, spacious presence that is aware of those thoughts.

But I find that listening to and watching Eckhart is a spiritual practice in itself. People like Eckhart, and there aren’t many, who are so conscious — i.e., they project almost no ego — have the ability to tap into that deep essence awareness that all of us possess…but that is mostly buried by our egoic baggage.

Why Eckhart makes me feel better

So every time I listen to Eckhart or, more accurately, experience him, I just feel better. Calmer. It’s as if his awakened self-talks to my awakened self. And that feels good.

Truth be told, most of his talks sound the same. There’s little variety in his subject matter.

But it doesn’t matter to me because, again, it’s about his consciousness, not his teachings. Bottom line: I just love the guy.

Eckhart is like Ram Dass’s guru

He’s like a modern-day guru in that people learn by simply experiencing him. Much like Ram Dass’s relationship with his guru, Neem Karoli Baba (Baba) who apparently taught very little, but whose mere presence was enough to literally transform people’s lives.

There are countless instances, many of them recounted in Ram Dass’s book Miracle of Love, of people crumbling into a pile of tears merely by looking into Baba’s face. It’s almost eerie how they all describe the “why” of it in the same way: The look on Baba’s face was one of pure love, and that look melted their hearts.

In a good way, of course. For many, including Ram Dass, that look and the subsequent opening of the heart, was a moment that changed their lives forever. In Ram Dass’s case, he devoted the rest of his life to serving Baba.

Sitting with Ramana Maharshi

In the case of one of my other favorite gurus, Ramana Maharshi, he said that the highest teaching he could offer anybody was to simply have someone sit beside him and experience the silence. He would not utter a word. It was a form of spiritual osmosis. It was all about simply being in his presence.

No words. That concept was so central to Lao Tzu that he opened my favorite book of wisdom, the Tao te Ching, with this line:

“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.”

(I wrote an entire article about this — link here.)

The takeaway

So what does all this mean for you? There’s a goldmine to be learned from why I pay to simply be in the presence of somebody, Eckhart Tolle, who exudes presence itself.

The lesson is that the deepest spiritual experiences and teachings come not from the written or spoken word. Yes, there is a place for those teachings…like this article!

But connecting with and accessing that deep “I” within you, your eternal consciousness, is a thousand times more important than anything you’ll read in a book or article.

We can achieve that connection through getting quiet inside, via meditation and other spiritual practices.

And also through simply being in the presence of those, like Eckhart Tolle, who’ve shed so much ego that the eternal consciousness they exude mingles with our own.

Which is why so many broke down in tears being in the presence of Neem Karoli Baba.

And why I’ve subscribed to Eckhart’s site for twelve years.

Today’s article is going to be like one of those weight-loss ads where they show a photo of someone looking fat next to one of them looking trim. All due to the particular diet, pills or workout regimen they’re hawking.

The difference is, I’m not selling anything. My “product” is free.

And the benefit of this product, acceptance/non-resistance, is infinitely more salutary than slimming down. What is that benefit?

Greater ease and peace inside.

Not total peace and ease. Just more of it more of the time.

I wrote an article recently (link here) about how this work on accepting and not resisting was the spiritual practice that produced the greatest benefits for me.

Let me give you an idea of what I mean by this work paying off. Here are a few examples.

1. MORNING THOUGHT STORMS

A big one would be the early morning rumination thing. You know what I mean. It’s that awful scenario where you find yourself, at four or five in the morning, stuck in a stream of anxious thoughts.

This one seems to affect everyone I know to some degree. Luckily it hasn’t been a debilitating problem for me, but it does happen periodically. And it ain’t fun.

How have I handled this in the recent past? I’ve simply trained myself, when this arises, to 1. Immediately relax, mostly by taking a few deep, conscious breaths, then 2. I just tell myself to accept that those thoughts are happening. They’re there. That’s reality.

But just because they’re there doesn’t mean I have to get involved in them. I just stay relaxed, breathe and watch the thoughts rather than diving in and engaging with them.

What happens? They drift away, like clouds passing through the sky. Then I drift away, back to sleep.

Some of you might be thinking, “Well, that’s just avoidance. Or suppression. All you’re doing is pushing away your problems.”

Not so. When has anyone solved anything at four in the morning as they writhe in bed, tortured by a cyclone of thoughts? If you want to figure out your marriage or your son’s troubles in school, you do it most effectively from a place of conscious presence. From a place of lucidity.

2. AIRPORT ANXIETY

I took a trip last month to the East coast and missed my connection on the way back. They put me on the standby list for the last flight out of Dallas and told me it would be touch and go whether I made the cut.

Years ago this would have resulted in me fuming about how awful American Airlines is. Then my anger would have turned to having to spend the night at some depressing airport hotel. Bottom line: It would have completely thrown me off.

But this time I did none of that. I accepted the fact that I missed the connection and may have to spend the night in Dallas. I didn’t have any big appointments the next day at home so it wouldn’t have killed me to stay the night.

In conjunction with accepting my circumstances, I focused on relaxing and breathing deeply. Luckily, I made the flight.

3. MEDIUM MELTDOWN

This latest Medium rejigger has resulted in a huge nosedive for every one of my numbers. Followers, engagement, earnings. The whole ball of wax is down precipitously.

Years back this would have hit me hard. Not now.

What did I do? I handled it like any of the other challenges sent my way of late. First, I accepted the reality of it. What good does it do to resist reality? It’s actually insane if you think about it.

Second, there’s nothing I can do about it so why get all spun up? After reading several articles about Medium and its changing algorithms over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s futile to bitch and moan and waste energy on it.

Medium does what they want to do. I don’t understand any of it. But if I, or anybody else, thinks things have gotten bad enough, we can leave. Which I might do. But while I’m here, I refuse to waste psychic energy resisting what they do. Because I’ve learned there are two entities we can’t beat: City Hall and Medium.

4. SMACKED DOWN BY A SIX YEAR OLD

After watching my six-year-old daughter acting particularly cute a few days ago, I engaged her in the following conversation:

ME: Is there any chance you could give me some tips on how I could be as cute as you?

VIOLET: Stop being so fat.

ME: (Absorbing the blow, then…) Okay. Anything else?

VIOLET: Brush your teeth more. Your teeth are yellow.

ME: Is that it?

VIOLET: Grow some hair on your head.

At which point I chased after her. Unfortunately, she got away as she is faster than a cheetah. Thus ended my quest for cuteness advice.

All I had to do on this one was accept that my daughter is funny. Cruel, but funny.

I have more work to do

I still have areas that need work on the acceptance/non-resistance front, mostly on the kid front.

The other day I picked up my teenage daughter from tennis at around six and on the way home her friend invited her over for dinner. A friend who lives a relatively long drive away. I was absolutely dead tired as it was a Friday and I’d both written and played a brutal tennis tournament match earlier in the day.

Exhaustion leads to dad meltdown

All I wanted to do was go home and vegetate. Bottom line: I absolutely lost it with my daughter. I did take her to her friend’s, but I was a complete jerk about it. So I still have work to do.

But in a whole host of other areas, I’ve made big strides. And the thing is, it’s starting to happen automatically.

Like on the rumination front. Once I find myself in one of those early morning thought loops, I don’t even need to think about it. I just go to relaxing and breathing. I don’t have to summon gobs of will anymore.

The takeaway — How this affects you

Which is a long way of coming back to the only thing in this article that matters: How it affects you. Because this automatic acceptance and non-resistance that’s been happening is 100 percent the result of my just practicing over these last years. That’s it.

And YOU can do it, too. If impatient, irascible me can do it, anybody can.

That’s the whole point of this piece. It’s not that tough. You just need to practice it.

The how-to of it all

How? When stuff comes up that irritates you or hits your stuff, relax and accept that it has happened. Don’t resist. Gather yourself, then respond from a place of presence.

Doing so will, over time, yield the profound benefit I stated at the outset: Greater ease and peace inside.

NOTHING is better than that. NOTHING. Not Lamborghinis, yachts, Romanee Conti, vacations in Hawaii or anything else.

So do yourself the biggest favor you can bestow on yourself.

Practice accepting and not resisting.

I listened a few days ago to yet another fantastic golden oldie Ram Dass talk. It was from 1976 when he was at the height of his spiritual influence. I sensed the masterful force of his being permeating what I presume was a huge audience at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

By the way, if you’re somebody with even a scintilla of interest in Ram Dass and/or all this spiritual stuff, you’re nuts if you don’t go to Ramdass.org and check out these talks. They are a free treasure trove of wisdom. (Ditto Mickey Singer’s talks at tou.org.)

So, on to the Ram Dass nugget that I found so compelling. He said:

“You can’t escape from prison until you acknowledge you’re in prison.”

How’s that for dramatic imagery?

The prison of the mind

First up is tackling the characteristics of that ‘prison’ so many of us are trapped in, without even realizing it. There are a zillion ways we could describe it, but I’m going with this: It’s the prison of the mind.

How do our minds serve as prisons? They produce tornadoes of involuntary thoughts that swirl around our heads.

What do I mean by involuntary thoughts? They’re thoughts that we don’t ask to think.

When you’re driving home from work and you find yourself ruminating about whether you think your spouse is having an affair, in all likelihood you didn’t say to yourself,

“Hmm. I have a half hour to kill on this drive. What should I think about? Ooh, I have it. Let’s think about whether Paul is boinking his assistant!”

No way. It just happens. Involuntarily.

These thoughts drive most of us crazy. In fact, Ram Dass could just as well have called it a torture chamber instead of a prison!

Our thoughts aren’t us

Fine, so our minds drive us crazy. The point is that most people don’t realize that their minds confine them in a prison. They believe that all those crazy, swirling thoughts are just who they are.

But our thoughts aren’t who we are. We are the consciousness that is aware of all these thoughts. Those last two sentences form the basis of Hinduism, Buddhism, the teachings of Ram Dass, Eckhart Tolle, Mickey Singer and a slew of other teachers and traditions.

The best thing for our world

It’s my belief that nothing would change the trajectory of humanity more than people simply realizing that their minds incarcerate them in a psychic prison. Why is that so important? Because, as Ram Dass says, only when we realize that we’re in prison can we escape.

What did Ram Dass say we do once we know we’re imprisoned? This:

“Once you’re aware you’re in prison, you bend all your efforts toward figuring out how to escape.”

This awareness involves realizing you not only constructed this prison, but you’re also the warden. You can let yourself out any time.

It’s hard to escape mind prison

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as turning a few keys and walking out into the bright sunshine of freedom. It takes significant work once we realize we’re in prison to actually spring ourselves from it.

Any of you who’ve read my stuff know what that work comprises. It’s the daily sadhana of meditating, practicing mindfulness and letting go of the emotional baggage we’ve accumulated over our lifetimes.

The whole path in two simple steps

Leave it to the great Ram Dass to so eloquently sum up the entirety of the spiritual path in one short metaphor. It’s just two steps:

– Realize that we’re in prison.

– Do the work that frees us from prison.

Step one is the easy part. But, as Ram Dass notes, it’s indispensable. Because without it, we don’t even know there is a step two.

How do we achieve step one, knowing we’re all imprisoned by our minds? By reading articles like this.

Better yet, by reading Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now or Mickey Singer’s The Untethered Soul. They explain all this clearly and beautifully.

The takeaway

So if you still aren’t clear on this concept that you’re stuck in your own mind jail, get those books and read them. Then move on to step two…the escape.

If you’re done with step one, get to work on the Great Escape. Get quiet inside. Let go of your ego.

Freedom awaits…