As I write this I am preparing the last live broadcast of my show "A New Way To Handle Absolutely Everything" on Contact Talk Radio (iTunes podcasts will continue)  What lies ahead, I'm not entirely sure. 

I must admit, I have always been a great big know-it-all. And a planner. I like to think I have a future, some influence over it, and that I know something.

The truth is, I don't.

Only the other day I was about to state one of my opinions as "fact" when I  caught myself.  As I pulled back I noticed I quieted down inside and settled into  the nicest feeling of not being a somebody.  I remembered how important it used to be to me to know (or to not look like I didn't) and to be seen as having authority.  It's amazing, isn't it, how life is hard enough and yet on top of that we have the full time job of managing our image of ourselves!

I've learned so much about this and have relaxed much more into my authentic self in recent years.

In "101 New Pairs of Glasses" I included quite a few chapters on releasing this kind of strain and my favorite is the chapter on mystery. In it I advocate for the art of not-knowing. I'd like to remind myself of this message today

How do we listen and just let it become clear as we go?

Are we able to just rest in the fresh scent of the unknown and see what happens?


I'd like to share this piece from the chapter on mystery, mainly as a reminder to myself how valuable it is for me allow mystery to be here as I take each step...

"The desire to know, or worse, the desire to look like we know is a modern plague. In one fell swoop it destroys listening, understanding, cooperation and learning.  It undermines peace of mind and peace amongst nations.

Consumed by our desire to know, or not admit that we don't, we finish other people's sentences, we hate people we have never met, and we cling to things we have long outgrown.

Living in the world of familiarity our lives are choked off by the smallness of our ideas.  Crowded in by the known we become selectors instead of creators. The death of curiosity is surely the birth of the ego, as children give up on being explorers of wild imaginings and doodads without names and become regurgitators of facts. 

Our lack of curiosity leads directly to our unwillingness to fail and spreads from there to our unwillingness to try - because we already know.  We know too much. And what we know isn't worth learning.

To allow wonder and mystery into your life is to suddenly find yourself in weightless spaciousness.  We work so hard to fuel personal creativity, business and product innovation, but we would automatically have all of these if we added just an extra dash of curiosity to our daily vitamin supplements.

Imagine not knowing your boss, not knowing your children, not knowing yourself - being totally open.  You'd listen closely. You would see new and amazing things. You'd discover the people you live with are people you've never met before. In the freshness of the moment you would unable to locate that familiar feeling of disconnection.

You would see into how your world is constructed. You'd gasp to realize you are much bigger than you ever imagined. 

You'd lose your fear."

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There is nothing to practice. To know yourself, be yourself. To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let your true nature emerge.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Have you ever watched a pelican dive?  It will circle high above the ocean and then make a gliding turn for an accelerated downward dive, landing with a huge spray of water.

Today as I watched the pelicans dive it struck me how they never miss their water entry.  It is always a perfectly executed turn, drop and splash.  I've never once seen a pelican "blow it" landing in a belly flop or forgetting to pull it's wings in before hitting the wall of water.  The beach is noticeably not littered with pelicans with broken wings and head injuries. Although anyone who has ever miscalculated a dive into a pool knows, missing your water entry is painful and can be fatal.

In the pelican world today,  thousands of birds will make perfect entries and bob back to the surface unharmed. 

Yet, unlike humans, the pelican has not practiced 10,000 hours until they reached mastery in order to accomplish this complex set of maneuvers.  They didn't study, take exams or get diving certificates.  They just  know. They just dive. They pull their wings into the perfect formation at the perfect moment because it is what they are born to do.

Every creature on earth is the same in this respect. 

So what about us human beings?

We humans are a part of the same natural world. Do we not also have a natural self that is perfectly made to do what it is made to do?   I wonder why it doesn't seem that way to us ...

What is the natural (magnificent) self of a human being?

Why do I experience life as if I am motoring under my own steam, a separate entity making its way through life on willpower and acquisition instead of an integral flowing part of the natural universe, clinging to nothing? 

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin" (Matthew) 

Why doesn't it seem like that for us?

Why don't I experience natural me in the flow of life without the struggle?

Shouldn't all beings have the same endowments -- the ability to be perfect in relation to their surroundings without needing a PhD to do so?

We believe that we are the actors, movers and shakers of each minute of our lives. We also seem to think that we took our foot off the pedal, released the grip on the steering wheel and let go of making life happen -- our lives would slow down to an unbearable snail's pace.  We think we would deflate as if we were punctured balloons.

But are we really making life happen? 

Many times I've had people tell me that their greatest fear is that if they become too happy or too content, they will no longer want to do anything. Really?  Without the push to achieve, to get and to do you'd would just turn into a marshmallow and stop going to work? Some think they will turn into a slug within a month or perhaps just eat and eat and eat until they explode.

It is interesting to consider just how much life is in motion and how much we are part of it.  Despite what we may think.

Look how during your life you've often been lifted along for the ride. I question that any of us has the kind of control that our daily choices and actions imply.

When a parent tells a child to get an education there are assumptions about how education paves the way for a better life.  What I noticed in my life is that although I quit university and was a chef for most of my 20s while I traveled and wrote poetry -- I went back to school and then completed my bachelor's and an M.A. in less than 4 years. Because I had learned 3 languages in the process I then became a Conference Interpreter at the European Parliament. My life was unfolding perfectly for me.  I didn't make or plan any of it. I was along for the ride.   

In fact I've been along for the ride for every major life event I can think of, including the birth of my daughter.

When we are sick, the body knows how to heal. When we are unsure or can't make a decision, life doesn't throw up its hands in desperation and then drive off without us. It moves on and takes us with it no matter what we say or think -- decisions get made for us all the time.

I was reading some of the stories in "The Pioneer Woman Cooks, Recipes from an accidental country girl" a cookbook written by unlikely city gal who meets rural cowboy, gets married and then writes cookbooks because "Cowboys don't each sushi." A perfect life, I'd say, unfolding despite her other plans!  And she wouldn't have it any other way.

What can we take from this?

It is difficult to imagine human life taking place "naturally" without the momentum of our personal effort and planning.  Our very concept of how life operates for humans as opposed to other creatures seems, in itself, to remove us from the natural rhythm of life.

How might it be helpful to us to conceive that humans too might be part of a flow that moves, contains and ultimately holds us? 

It seems to me that the natural world is showing us something true about ourselves if we would listen a bit more closely.

So what would it be like to live in that flow? 

What is Self-Love?

Why the ways we try to love ourselves do not work and why it's so much easier than we think...

Generally speaking we all believe it's a good thing to appreciate who we are and not be too hard on ourselves.  We get that on some level, it's important at least like ourselves somewhat.   After all, we wake up with ourselves every day for the whole of our lives and it's tough to put up with the constant presence of someone you mildly detest.    

When it was first suggested that I might need to practice to learn to love myself, I was told to look in the mirror everyday and repeat "I'm beautiful! I am fabulous! I am loved!" over and over until I could feel it.  

I've written about using affirmations and I've taught visualization and visioning and I've nothing against them. Affirmations in particular are always intended to have a positive effect. And frankly I can't see how saying "I love you" to yourself could have a negative effect.   I have simply noticed that most people, affirmations well in hand, still find it difficult to love themselves and accept love from others.  So I started wondering about that.

I came up with a simple reason why affirmations don't work to love ourselves.  We are trying to love the wrong thing.

When look to our personalities, which are constructs that we have built over time, pretty much everyone finds it difficult to see their innate value and lovability.  We have spent so much time trying to be deserving; it's impossible to see that we are deserving just because we are here.       

So stop trying to love your "persona."  Personas are not lovable. They are a mask over our true nature.  It is no wonder why positive affirmations don't help people.  We are desperately trying to love the mask.   

"Learning to love the personality you've built in order to interface with the world is a waste of your time"  (101 New Pairs of Glasses Chapter on Self-Care) 

We need to look beyond the construct, beyond what we have got used to seeing in the mirror and identifying as "me."  We are not these personas and masks that we wear. We are not our stories about ourselves.  We are something else.

What experience do you have of who you are beyond the body and beyond the daily self-chatter?  
Do you believe you are broken?
Do you think that although you arrived as a baby perfectly and beautifully made to live your life, that somehow you inner self got taken away from you, dashed to the ground and  shattered?

As we look past and beyond the mirror, it may sound slightly esoteric, but really you do have a very real awareness of this.  Otherwise you would not know you are talking to yourself.  You can only know that because there is something that is you that can observe "you."  Aside from this, you'll also recognize that you are are picking up non-physical, or beyond physical information all the time.  What is that? How do you know someone can be trusted, for example, when only you've just met them? What sense is picking up on that?  What are you picking up on? The fact is that we look beyond the persona that people present to us all the time in everyday life.

Seeing beyond bodies, beyond forms is not as difficult as we make it out to be. And at the same time it is the hardest challenge we face.  

Notice times when you have been able to reach beyond what someone is saying or doing and see their essence as a human being. Times will soon come when you can see your own more clearly.

If you are not entirely fooled by what is looking back at you.