My Story
When I started meditating my life was a complete train wreck.
I had a clinically severe case of ADD, anxiety and depression. My mind ran at warp speed 27 hours a day in a jumble of thoughts that resembled a fresh bowl of steaming hot spaghetti. I would sit on my couch staring at the walls for hours, completely lost in outer space. I often walked into my kitchen and didn’t even remember why I was there.
I had panic attacks daily and even suicidal thoughts. I could barely keep a job, never mind having a relationship or doing something meaningful with my existence.
Come to think of it, “train wreck” doesn’t really do it justice. It was more of like a dumpster fire onboard a train wreck that just crashed into a red-hot pool of molten nuclear waste.
Then one day I picked up a book about how to live with ADD. I think it was one of those “For Dummies” series. One of their suggestions was to learn to meditate. They said that it was the hard road but also the only one that actually fixed the underlying problem – forever.
So I decided to give it a try.
My first meditations felt like a cruel joke. I’d start my timer and promptly zone out for the entire session. The alarm would ring an hour later and suddenly I’d be jostled back into reality, wondering where the time went.
But I was desperate – so I stuck with it.
I practiced week after week, but my mind kept racing. I’d try to meditate for an hour or two each day, only to be battered by another torrential downpour of overthinking.
I often thought “why bother” and “I should just quit.”
What kept me going was how I felt right after I practiced. Even though the session seemed useless, I could concentrate better for the next few hours. Instead of spacing out and getting sucked into the usual distractions, I could actually focus and accomplish something. I felt calmer too, which was amazing for someone with chronic anxiety.
It took a long time. A really really long time. Finally after about 3 months of daily frustration, I had a breakthrough. About 40 minutes into what seemed to be another pointless session, suddenly… Everything…. Just…… Went……
SILENT
You know that voice that’s constantly chattering in your head?
Bills, food, sex, etc. Word cloud
Well mine just went completely blank. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nil. Naught. Nothing. Total radio silence[1].
It felt like that moment when you’re sitting at home in a raging hurricane and suddenly the electricity cuts out across 5 states.
Except for me, it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever experienced. For someone with chronic ADD, even a few moments of peace and quiet were a revelation. Seriously it was even better than wild sex, chocolate cake and skydiving all at the same time.
Even the few times I’d tried various party drugs over the years paled in comparison. With drugs you get high, but your mind is still going going going going going going going. Unless you’re really good at controlling your thoughts, they can still take you to some pretty dark places – even in spite of the best efforts of whatever substance you just ingested.
This was pure, clean, unadulterated bliss… And I wasn’t even going to have a hangover the next day.
The whole experience lasted only a few seconds but that was enough. It was like a breath of fresh spring breeze instantly washed all the dark clouds away.
My life would never be the same.
From that moment on, all I wanted to do is meditate all day long.
You know those things in life that you really don’t want to do, but know you really should, and are always feeling really guilty about?
Thats how I felt about meditation before that first moment of bliss. But after that experience, it went from being a “chore” to something I couldn’t wait to do every day.
As I practiced more and more over the years, things got a lot easier. I could drop into concentration states more quickly and reliably. Instead of 40 minutes it would take 30, then 20, then 10. Now I’m able to get to stillness within a few seconds of sitting down to meditate.
The bliss periods also got longer and more intense. Instead of a few seconds, now they last five or 10 minutes. I’ve even been told that experienced monks can sit in bliss for 4 to 6 hours at a time. Pretty cool, huh?
The best part is the effect on my every day life.
Today I’ve been meditating just about every day for the last 5 years. Its easy now for me to stay focused on my highest payoff tasks. Ok, maybe I get a little distracted once in a while, but I’ve learned to constantly watch myself so I get back on track in seconds. I (almost) never lose anything because I’m present and aware of my surroundings. I never have to worry about getting addicted to something – whether its a substance or a person or any kind of media. I’m in control of what I think about and do in any given moment. When my friends tell me they’re deleting Facebook from their phone for the 12th time, I just chuckle. And I’ve become a happy person too. Whenever I’m feeling kinda funky, I can just do a bit of mental gymnastics and generate a good mood in a few minutes.
Not bad for a kid with panic attacks, suicidal depression, and a monstrous case of ADD straight from the deepest depths of Hades.
Meditation is seriously my favorite thing I do each day. Just sit and bliss out for an hour. Plus it makes my life run right on track. What could be better???
But I had to put in a lot of hours to get here.
And I just want to say for the record that I’m not better than you in any way, I’m not smarter or anything. I just did some really simple exercises and got the results. If I could do it in spite of how bad I started off, then you can too.
I truly believe if everyone would learn these simple basic mental skills, then we would easily solve 99% of the problems facing humanity today.
Why Why Meditate?
Q: How do you eat an elephant?
A: One bite at a time…
If you’re like most people who tried to meditate, you probably started out with a lot of enthusiasm, then practiced for a few days or weeks, only to get frustrated when you weren’t making any progress, and then finally ended up quitting.
Or maybe you haven’t tried it yet and are curious, but feel intimidated by what seems to be such an overwhelming task.
This book is for you.
Let’s be honest – learning to meditate takes time and effort, and most of the rewards will come later in the game.
It’s a bit like learning to walk when you’re a toddler. At first you’re going to fall down… A lot. But you can see all the adults around you walking proud and tall and you know how oh so cool you’re gonna look once you finally figure it out. So you stick with it — no matter how many times you smack your face on the pavement. There’s not even the thought of giving up.
*Failure is simply not an option.*
With meditation its not so obvious. You can’t exactly tell who does and who doesn’t. But you see people around you living happy and successful lives – while yours seems to be going nowhere and stressing you out at the same time.
Now I’m not saying that all successful and happy people meditate, but maybe they don’t even need to. Some folks just naturally know how to concentrate, direct their thoughts, manage their emotions, and stay clear of dangerous mental waters.
If you’re not one of those lucky people, you might need to do some mental basic training.
Notice that I said “successful and happy” up above. There’s plenty of people out there who are quite successful materially in their careers, but are miserable inside and spend their lives frantically running around like the Tasmanian Devil dancing the jitterbug on hot pavement.
If you can’t even concentrate, how do you expect to get anywhere in life?
When you first start to meditate, it might seem like you’re going nowhere fast. In fact it could even feel like things are only getting worse. Meditation makes you more aware of your own mind at work, and you begin to see your thoughts as they jump randomly all over the place, looping and spinning in an infitinite race to nowhere. Of course this is the way your mind has always worked, but now you’re starting to see it clearly. It can be quite a sobering shock when you discover just how out of control it can be.
Some people pick up meditation very quickly. I have a friend who dropped into advanced states of concentration after just a few weeks of practice. Don’t panic – she’s probably one in a million.
For the rest of us mere mortals, it can take a long time before we see the fruits of our practice.
You just have to keep going no matter what, having faith in the technique and the millions of meditators that went before you.
Then one day you’ll be sitting there as usual, lost again in another mental frenzy…. and WHAM!!! Your mind suddenly drops into silence, stillness, peace, bliss, joy and all those other delicious words you keep hearing about it.
It’s not something you can force, all you can do is create good conditions for these states of mind to arise naturally. Just like a flower blooming, you can’t make it blossom but you can give it the right soil, water and sunlight.
And like the toddler learning to walk – one day something just clicks and s/he just ‘gets it’. From then on it just comes naturally.
This book is designed it to get you over the “hump” of meditation. Those long, painfully dull hours of slogging through endless replays of your tired old mental material. Those times when you want a quick fix to make the pain go away, instead of feeling it fully in excruciating detail. And those times when you’re just feeling too damn lazy to make any effort.
To get you to the bliss… And beyond.
There are many books about how to meditate. But for most people the problem is not a lack of understanding the technique. The real problem is they don’t have enough motivation to get through the boring and difficult parts. Hopefully we can solve this issue for you in the pages ahead.
Read this whole book through once now, and then read it again a second and third (and fourth) time when you feel like quitting. It will firm your sights on the goal and keep you motivated through the tough times.
Once you understand how meditation will completely transform every part of your life for the better, then you’ll just naturally want to keep going.
I hope you’ll stick with it long enough. If you do you’ll get the ultimate prize – the power to control your own mind at will and the ability to create your life however you want.
I’ll see you there.
The 60 Second Test
I know you’re all geared up to dive into the main part of the book by now, but first theres still one important thing we have left to do.
Many of the examples Im about to give rely on the fact that you can’t really control your own mind.
“Wait, what???” You might say, “I CAN control my own mind, don’t insult me like that!”
Well can you, punk?
Lets find out…..
The 60 second test is deceptively simple.
If you can control your mind, then you should be able to stop it from thinking, right? I mean there’s all these thoughts running inside your head all the time, if you can control them then you should be able to make things just go silent. There’s gotta be a main OFF circuit breaker inside there somewhere… But do you have a handle on it or not?
For Real?
Lets try it out. Grab your smartphone and open up your timer. Now set it for 60 seconds.
I’ll wait.
As soon as you hit the start button, your assignment will be to NOT THINK for 60 seconds. That means absolutely ZERO thoughts. Nothing but stillness and silence.
I’ll be back on the next page when your 60 seconds are up.
(I know it might be tempting to just skip ahead, but trust me and give it a try – its a lot more powerful when you experience this for yourself instead of just taking my word for it. And hey, its just 60 seconds)
Got your timer ready?
Now tell your mind
*** STOP THINKING ***
And…
Ready…
Steady…
GO!!!
Welcome back!
How did you do?
Did you manage to go the entire 60 seconds without a single thought? My guess is that unless you’ve been meditating for a long long time already, you probably weren’t able to.
Dont worry – I completely failed at this up until a few years ago too. Try as I might, I just couldn’t keep those pesky thoughts from popping up like a bunch of those whack-a-moles at the amusement park[2].
So what happened exactly? Why did you (and I) screw up?
Even if you only messed up a tiny tiny bit in those 60 seconds, it still means you have a lack of control.
You told your mind to do something very simple. You gave it very clear and direct instructions. Why didn’t that work?
Was it being bad, disobedient, or even rebellious? How could that even be possible? It would mean that there’s a “you” who’s giving orders, and then your “mind” which has its own agenda and is somehow independent of “you.”
Well thats exactly the point I’m getting at here.
Your mind has a mind of its own.
You do your best to just sit there and relax… Enjoy the silence… Get a little peace and quiet for once in your life… And all it does is yap yap yap yap yap all day long (and probably all night too.)
Wouldn’t it be so cool to just shut it all off for a few minutes and finally chill out?
That’s what meditation is all about.
Now maybe you’re not completely buying what I’m saying here. Maybe you think that you COULD control your thoughts, just with some practice .
You’re actually right about that (if you put in a LOT of work!) But the fact remains that right now you still cant control your mind. Maybe in the future you’ll be able to, but at the current moment it’s a definite “NO” and thats good enough for the purposes of the rest of this book.
Ok now that we got that out of the way, lets move on to the part we’ve all been waiting for… How much more AWESOME your life is gonna be once you put in your practice time and get a hold of your mind once and for all.
Oh… And if this chapter didn’t fully resonate with you right at this moment, don’t worry about it. Just move on with the book for now and re-read it later. It’ll sink in when the time is right.
Now lets talk about how meditation will fundamentally upgrade the deepest inner workings of your mind and help you find unconditional happiness.
The Dictator
Before You Meditate
You can see this lack of self control very clearly if you’ve ever had any kind of addiction in your life.
It could be smoking, alcohol, chocolate cake, coffee, painkillers, your favorite drugs, sex, gambling, shopping, video games, work, or even just a garden variety social media addiction. Pick your poison.
One part of you always knows you really shouldn’t be doing it. Another part of you doesn’t actually want to do it at all. And an even deeper part of you might even hate yourself for doing it.
But like a whiny 3 year old brat, your mind says
WAAAAAA, I WANNAAA!!!!!!!
After Enough Practice
And you don’t have the strength to set some healthy boundaries and say no. Then all of a sudden there’s another cigarette (drink, pill, cake, phone, porn, or whatever) in your hand.
You don’t even know how it got there.
Its like there’s this dictator in your head, controlling your actions all the time and there’s nothing you can do about it. Try as you might, you just can’t seem to get rid of that nasty habit.
Finally you might come to realize the chilling truth….
If you can’t control your mind, then it must be controlling you.
You.. Unleashed
Before You Meditate
Kind of like a dog on a leash, your mind tells you what to do, how, and when. A few feet off the path and YANK!!! Right back on the straight and narrow with all your old habits, whether they’re good or bad.
You’ve been trained so well, you don’t even put up a fuss. You’re so used to the same routine that you don’t even try to make any life changes.
And probably you don’t even get a bone when you’re good.
After Enough Practice
Meditation helps you get rid of that uncomfortable collar and that nasty restrictive leash.
Training your mind is just like training your dog. With a bit of practice and patience, you can teach it to be well behaved and not pee on your carpet. Then you can play and have lots of fun together. But it takes a bit of effort in the beginning.
Conditional vs Unconditional
Before you learn to mediate, your life is at the mercy of external circumstances. The things that happen to you determine how you’re feeling and being.
When you have the things you want ⇨ you’re happy.
When you dont have them ⇨ you’re upset.
When you’re faced with unpleasant ⇨ you’re upset again.
When its gone ⇨ then you’re happy again.
So your happiness is dependent on something outside yourself being either near or far. No wonder you’re so moody!
For example, if you win the Mega Millions or find a sizzling new partner ⇨ you’ll be dancing with joy for weeks! On the other hand if someone calls you a lousy no good boogerface or your cat pukes on your brand new shoes ⇨ you’ll be in a funk the rest of day.
This is called the conditional self or the reactive self. How you’re doing is a reaction to the conditions around you.
One of the main goals of meditation is to create a second “self” inside you, called the unconditional self, higher self, or witness. This witness experiences all the same things as you do, but doesn’t react (and doesn’t have an opinion about) whats going on.
That does not mean you repress your feelings and become a frigid emotionless robot! You still experience all the same reactions – anger, fear, sadness, joy and more. In fact, with meditation you’re specifically instructed to not repress anything whatsoever and feel all of these things 100% fully and completely.
The difference is that now there’s another part of you that simply sits there, watching everything happening and stays neutral no matter what.
Its kind of like having James Bond as your personal mental bodyguard – calm, cool, collected in every situation. How’s that for security?
With some practice you can even go beyond a neutral reaction, and cultivate a friendly and warm attitude toward everything in your life. Yes, even the hard parts. At first it may seem kind of crazy to try and meet difficult things like fear, anxiety, hatred, abuse, trauma, poverty and oppression with unconditional kindness. But once you learn to face all of life’s challenges with a smile, your life will truly never be the same.
How cool would it be to free yourself from dependence on external circumstances for your happiness?
Pavlov’s Pooch
You’ve probably heard about the famous Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov and his experiments with dogs. Basically Pavlov would ring a bell every time he fed his dog, and then after a few repetitions, the dog would learn that the bell meant FOOD and would start salivating before the food arrived, at just the sound of the bell.
This type of training is called conditioning. The idea is to train the dog to have a response (salivate) when you give it a certain stimulus (bell). Effectively it means you can control the dog’s behavior with just a bell.
We all like to think we’re better than dogs, but I have some bad news for you – unfortunately we’re much the same.
Just think of what happens when your phone goes ding a ling. The clever device manufacturers have trained you to go over, pick it up, check your messages, and promptly get lost on social media for 45 minutes. Pretty soon they’ll figure out a way to make you salivate, too.
This is obviously a pretty benign example, but we can easily find something much more serious.
Ever been in a fight with your partner? Or yell at your kids? How did it happen? Probably they said or did something annoying (stimulus) and then you snapped at them (response), all before you could catch yourself. Maybe you regretted what you said later, but by then it was too late. Things just happened too fast.
Most people want to have better relationships with their partner and loved ones, but its just not possible until you get a better grip on what comes out of your own mouth.
The only way to finally break this vicious cycle for good is to learn to intercept yourself before the habitual response happens automatically.
That’s where meditation comes in.
With practice you’ll train your mind to be much more aware of itself, to see your own thoughts as they bubble up to the surface. It puts a gap, like a space of choice between the stimulus and usual habitual response. We call this space discernment – the ability to fully evaluate any thought before acting on it or even spending any more time thinking about it.
Discernment lets you to make conscious decisions about how to respond to anything that comes into your experience. It’s like being a mental ninja who’s always ready to take out any unhelpful thoughts at a moment’s notice. That means freedom!
–
The core problem is always the same. Somehow the unwanted habit happens too fast before we can catch ourselves and do something different.
While there are many different treatments for addiction, there’s only one ultimate solution that’s guaranteed to work.
Push My Buttons, Baby
Ever had someone “push your buttons?”
Let me guess… It was probably your partner, or a family member. Someone real close, huh?
They somehow knew exactly the
WRONG
thing to say to just totally
*** PISS YOU THE FUNK OFF ***
again for the 8th time this week
How the funk did they manage to do that?
You see, all these “buttons” you have inside you are the Stimulus ⇨ Response mechanism we were talking about in the last chapter.
With meditation, you learn how to disconnect the wires that run from those buttons to your arms, legs, and mouth.
With some work, you can get to the bottom of your own issues and become
UNFUNKWITHABLE
Someone could be freaking out in your face, you could have just lost your job and all your money on the stock market, your dog died, and the atom bombs are dropping… And you’re just sitting back watching it all with a smile on your face… Cool as a cucumber.
This may sound completely crazy and impossible, but there are people out there to prove it’s true.
Spiritual master Echkart Tolle tells the story about how before he got famous, he spent 2 years homeless and sleeping on park benches, the entire time in a complete state of bliss.
This guy is a spiritual BADASS.
Rescue at Sea
Lets take a closer look at how these “buttons” actually work and how your brain operates on a deeper level. It will help you understand why things go wrong for you and how make it better.
The way your mind functions is kind of like you’ve been thrown overboard into shark-infested waters – without a life jacket.
Stay with me here, its an analogy.
The water below you represents your subconscious mind. All of your thoughts originate from your subconscious. They take shape deep under the surface and then bubble up until you become aware of them, just like water boiling in a kettle.
In other words, you don’t actually create your thoughts. They create themselves.
That’s why you had so much trouble with the 60 Second Test at the beginning of the book. Your thoughts just bubbled up from your subconscious to the surface on their own. There’s nothing you could do about it.
Sometimes the thoughts that bubble up are completely random, but most often the subconscious is triggered by something from the outside which then evokes some thoughts and emotions as a reaction.
For instance lets say you’re walking down the street and suddenly you get a monstrous craving for Chinese food. You don’t know why but boy, you could sure go for some greasy Beef Chow Mein right about now.
You didn’t realize it, but it turns out you just walked by the back of a Chinese joint on the last block. Even though you didn’t notice the smell consciously, the oderiferous emanations from the kitchen hit your nostrils and next thing you know your stomach was grumbling and you were dreaming of chopsticks.
Its what people call a subliminal message and the ad companies do it all the time.
Did you know that at the movies they used to splice in extra frames that said things like “THIRSTY” or “HUNGRY” right before the intermission, just so people would buy more snacks during the break? You don’t realize the extra frames were there, but you buy more $12 popcorn anyways. True story!
Apparently this is now illegal, but I’m sure they’ve come up with much more clever ways to manipulate you these days.
This is a pretty innocent example, but lets take a look at how you get into fights in your relationship (yes we all do it unfortunately).
Your partner says a few words to you, maybe they don’t even mean to provoke you, but suddenly you’re in a raging frenzy. There’s dinner plates flying across the room and they’ll be lucky if you don’t gouge out their eyeballs and set them on fire.
What happened? You got triggered.
Those couple of innocent words went inside your brain and hit up against something really nasty, probably some old trauma from your childhood or a past relationship. That thing has a really short fuse and even a tiny bit of prodding could easily make it blow up, which is exactly what happened.
Here’s where the sharks come in.
The problem with the sea of your subconscious is that its really dark down there and you have no idea what’s lurking below the surface. The moment you least expect it, some crazy behavior pattern might swim up from the depths and bite you on the bum. Your loved ones might also lose a few limbs in the process. Usually it will happen at the worst time too.
How else do you think people start doing crazy sh*t? Like hitting their kids… Or starting wars… Or shooting heroin? Don’t they realize they’re being complete morons? Ok, maybe there are a few psychopaths out there who create evil and harm themselves on purpose. But for the most part, the only rational explanation for bad behavior is that the person had some freaky thoughts come up and then acted on them before they realized what a horrible idea it was.
Most people do know better. Bad behavior is almost always a result of poor self-awareness and lack of self-control.
Once you have enough meditation practice, the way your mind works fundamentally changes. Instead of swimming in the subconscious sea with all the sharks, you develop a strong witness consciousness thats always watching you from above.
Its like a rescue helicopter came and pulled you out of the water and now you’re sitting way up above all the thoughts swirling around down there. There’s no way they can get to you (unless someone actually makes sharks with laser beams).
Of course you can still jump in the water and go for a swim anytime you like, but you always have a safety rope to lift you out. The moment you see a fin pop out of the deep, you can lift yourself up out of harm’s way.
Its like you’re trying to cross a field riddled with landmines. You have no idea when you’re going to trip over something dangerous and blow yourself up.
Would you rather walk… Or fly?
Master Your Puppet Master
It’s bad enough you have triggers that make you go crazy sometimes. But it gets even worse when you take a look at where these “buttons” came from in the first place.
Ill give you a hint… You didn’t put them there yourself. Why would you?
Once you zoom out a little about your life and see the big picture, you realize that all your buttons and triggers were put there by your experiences in life, most of them when you were really young and didn’t even understand what was going on. There’s nothing wrong with this – its totally natural and normal. The only problem is that today, you’re still replaying the same old unconscious habit patterns like a broken old Elvis record.
You’ve been programmed from a very early age to like the things you like, dislike the things you don’t – the kind of foods you eat, what you drink, who you hang out with, your favorite music, the clothes you wear, how you do your hair, even what you say, think, and do every day.
If you don’t believe me, just think about how different you would be today if you grew up in Japan. Even if your parents were the same it would be a major influence. Chances are you’d be eating tuna eyeballs, wasp crackers, and fish prostate which are all considered delicacies there.
Unfortunately, as we can see from all the buttons and triggers, sometimes the programming we get from our society and surroundings isn’t very beneficial – neither to yourself nor those around you.
A lot of your unconscious habits are causing you a lot of problems.
It’s like there’s this puppet master controlling you that makes you do really stupid sh*t sometimes that funks up your life and makes hell for your family and loved ones.
How cool would it be if you could get rid of it and finally be free?
Well you can. It’ll just take some work.
You can take the reins back from those that are controlling you. Meditation helps you clearly see all the patterns running your life, and gives you the strength of mind to make a different decision in the moment.
Freedom has a price. What are you willing to do for yours?
Freeing the Wild Hamster
Before You Meditate
Do you ever feel busy?
It seems to be a common theme these days.
“How are you doing?”
“Been busy!” “ Sooo busy.” “Crazy busy.”
Don’t worry, if this is you then you’re in good company! 99.9% of people live their entire lives caught up completely in reactive mode. They spend their days trying their best to just survive the daily torrent that life’s constantly throwing at them.
And boy do they feel exhausted by the end of the day!
Now That You Practice Enough
Worst part is they don’t even feel like they’re getting anywhere. Their whole life is just empty busyness. Just stuck repeating the same habits and patterns day in and day out. There’s some nagging fear that if they stop, something really bad will happen (trust me, it wont).
Wouldn’t it be nice to just take a break once in a while?
When you start meditating, you realize that its not just your life that’s running out of control. Its actually your mind that’s stuck on permanent spin cycle.
Meditation helps you get off the hamster wheel once and for all.
Instead of just running around fighting fires all day, you can make conscious choices about how you spend your time and move directly towards your goals step by step. Life becomes an adventure full of mystery and wonder around every corner.
Hamster, run free!
Donkey carrot stick
Sisyphus on Steroids
Have you ever set a goal for yourself but didn’t follow through? It usually happens around New Years for most people. Maybe you even managed to do it for a few weeks but then fell off the wagon.
Let’s face it, change is hard.
If you’ve been doing the same things for years, then those patterns are well worn into your subconscious mind. You’re really good at doing them, whether they’re beneficial or not. Learning new behaviors takes time and effort. Whatever it is, you’re probably going to suck at it for the first while. Plus it just feels uncomfortable. Just like lifting weights at the gym, its gonna make you sweat and you’ll definitely be sore the next day.
It’s a bit like pushing a giant boulder up a mountain. Just one little slip and the boulder rolls all the way back to the bottom… And then you have to start all over again.
Change becomes easy with meditation. Once you grow your beefy awareness muscles, you will quickly notice when you’re about to get off track.
That gives you the power to actually stick to your plans and finally get somewhere in life.
You can become anything and anyone you want. Create something new and different. Live the life you always dreamed. Explore new directions.
The possiblities are limitless!
Normcore Hardcore
Can you imagine going into your closet and there’s only one set of clothes? I don’t mean multiple copies of the same outfit. Literally one shirt, one pair of pants, two socks, and your undies. Yes the same ones you’ve been wearing for the past two weeks straight – and they’re getting a little smelly. But you keep putting them on every day just because you ain’t got nothin’ else.
Besides being a little gross, its just downright boring wearing the same clothes all the time. But that’s how you are in life.
You’ve probably been wearing the same personality for at least the last 10 years. Ok maybe you patch up some holes if things get frayed, but its still the same outfit. Same old you.
Maybe that’s why people love Halloween so much. It makes them think they’re someone different for a day (even though nothing’s actually changed).
Mediatation has a funny way of liquifying your personality. Instead of being some fixed solid ME thats impossible to budge, you start to realize you’re actually an endless flow of different thoughts, feelings, intentions, and emotions. That makes it easy to get rid of old unhealthy personality traits and try on new ways of being.
With a bit of practice, you’ll be able to strip off unwanted habits like a pair of smelly old socks.
—
Before I started meditating, sometimes I would wake up in the morning feeling grumpy and think to myself, “I’m really in a foul mood today!” Making such a strong statement first thing would create a self-fulfilling prophecy and not surprisingly my day would end up really lousy.
Then after practicing for a while, I saw how quickly my thoughts and moods change throughout the day, sometimes even in a matter of minutes. So I decided to change my tune. If I woke up in a funk, I started to say, “I’m not feeling so good right now, but maybe I’ll feel better in a while.”
Then I’d deliberately start imagining things that made me happy. Old memories, people I loved, my pets. I’d put on some cheerful music. Next thing you know my bad mood was gone with the wind.
None of this is possible if you think you are some kind of fixed entity.
> Different outfits for different days of the week
Clown, Army, Suit,
The Secret Behind the Secret
If you’ve ever watched the movie The Secret then you’re familiar with the “Law of Attraction.” It’s the idea that your thoughts attract the people, things and circumstances you have in your life. If you have good thoughts, then you’ll have tons of money, awesome friends, live in Beverly Hills, drive a Ferrari and be an international rock star. If you have bad thoughts, then your life will just plain S-U-C-K.
I studied all those teachings for years. Tony Robbins, Bob Proctor, Abraham Hicks, Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale, Neville Goddard, Louise Hay, Jim Rohn, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, John Assaraf, Lisa Nichols, Joe Vitale, Marisssa Peer, Michael Beckwith, Jack Canfield, MindValley, you name it…
I knew all the right things to think say and do – backwards and forwards… But I just couldn’t get it to work for me. I faithfully did my affirmations every day, visualized my dream life in vivid colors, felt all the positive feelings, and I was still broke, lived in a crappy little apartment on the wrong side of town, and couldn’t find a date to save my life.
It took me years to discover what I was doing wrong. I call it…
The Secret Behind the Secret
You got really lucky picking up this book because its something none of those other teachers explain. And I’m not even going to make you read a 50 page sales letter and pay me $1,897 in 3 easy installments before I tell you.
While all of those teachers tell you to think positive and focus on your dreams, they don’t tell you what to do with all the rest of the garbage that’s in your head.
The Law of Attraction does work.
But it depends on the balance of your thoughts. If you have more good thoughts than bad ones, then yes good things will happen to you. But if you do a few affirmations in the morning and then spend the rest of the day telling yourself that you’re a worthless speck of slime mold, then you’re not going very far.
The secret behind the secret is this. It’s not enough to just visualize what you want. You also have to find a way to not think about all that crapola thats stopping you. All the fears, doubts, worries, judgements, anxieties, and self-criticism. The part of you that thinks you’re just not good enough and it’s not even worth trying.
The worst part is you’re not even having any of these harmful thoughts on purpose. Nobody ever puts “beat myself up” or “worry for an hour” on their to-do list.
It just kind of happens when you’re not paying attention.
Notice especially those last 4 words. Ill repeat them for dramatic effect.
YOU’RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION
If you were actually awake then you’d notice pretty darn quick when you’re having garbage thoughts.
And that’s exactly the key to breaking out of self-sabotage. If you trained your awareness muscles, you’d notice instantly when your thoughts started going down the drain. You wouldn’t let your mind hang out in all that sewage for a split second!
It’s like installing an internal BS alarm on a hair trigger. When it goes off and you notice yourself thinking the wrong things, its easy to divert yourself to something more positive, remember your visualizations, and re-affirm your affirmations.
And thats the road to success. Here’s to yours!
Train Wreck of Thoughts
The expression train of thoughts is actually quite literal. Your thoughts run one after another like a bunch of boxcars all connected.
Thinking about your lunch makes you think about your weight which makes you think about how you should probably go on a diet which makes you think about whether you’re attractive or not which makes you think about that cutie you saw at the gym and do they like me which makes you think about your last partner and all those awful things they said to you and what you would say to make them understand and maybe you shoud write an angry letter which makes you think about…
Your train on a set of rails and its headed… Somewhere.
Probably pretty fast, too.
Unless you’re an engineer and know how to switch tracks, you’re going wherever that train is going, like it or not.
Plus when you have too much on your mind, your thoughts start to pile up one against another. Its like there’s not enough space between each boxcar and that makes the train unstable and difficult to manouver. Same with your mind – if your thoughts get really jammed you could even go off the rails and end up having a meltdown.
Practicing meditation teaches you how to create gaps between your thoughts. Instead of one though leading automatically to the next, there’s some time for you to reflect on the previous thought and decide where to go from there. Its the discernment we were talking about earlier.
You can reflect and ask yourself some of these questions:
- Is this thought helpful?
- Is it useful?
- Is it getting me what I want?
- Is it making me happy?
- Is it helping those around me?
- Is it making the world a better place?
- Does it feel good?
- What do I want to be thinking about?
If the answer to any of those questions is ‘no’ then you can consider whether to stay on that train of thought, or instead switch tracks to a another destination.
Each space between each thought is a point of choice in your life. Without space you’re just running on autopilot. The more you meditate and create more space, the more choice and freedom you’ll have.
You can even start to insert whatever thoughts you want into your mindstream, like the affirmations from the previous chapter.
Like a 4 year old playing with toys, you can make a successful career train, an exciting romance train, a deep and meaningful relationship train, a vibrant healthy body train, a worldwide adventure train, or anything your heart desires.
But you’ve gotta clean up the wreck first.
Blur?
Jumble-tron
The simple truth is that if your mind is a mess, then you have no idea where you’re going to end up. Thats how people find themselves in some pretty nasty life situations.
Maybe you even know someone who cant stop drinking, died of lung cancer, cheated on their spouse, or got put behind bars.
All because they couldn’t control their mind!
Now I’m not saying you could become like this, but hey you never know… Nobody ever sets off to end up in rehab, sleeping on the street, or in the slammer. It just happens that way because you got started down a bad road and weren’t awake enough to catch yourself before things got out of hand.
Maybe your situation is less severe, just a garden variety boring job with a dash of relationship problems and the odd binge on Game of Thrones reruns. Your life is dull as a rusty hammer but you just can’t seem to snap out of your routine.
Either way you’ll get a lot of mileage from setting some clear goals, making a solid plan, and building the mental strength to stick to it. Emphasis on that last one.
It’s important to note that the path to your goal isn’t always direct. Notice the lines in the 2nd drawing aren’t exactly straight. Of course life always has its twists and turns. But now you know how to stay on course and get to where you deserve to be.
Riders on the Storm
Getting to your goals in life is a bit like taking a sailboat all the way across the Pacific Ocean. That’s really far! Except instead of a proper seacraft they gave you a rickety old tub with a leak in the bottom. You don’t have a rudder so there’s no way to steer the damn thing. There’s no sail so you can’t catch a good wind when it comes. And you don’t even have an anchor in case you need to just stop somewhere for a while.
The ocean current flows and you just end up wherever its randomly taking you.
When its sunny everything is pretty much ok. But when the storm comes – you’re gonna get tossed around pretty bad. The wind will blow your rusty little tub way off course and you’ll probably be really really far from your destination. Or worse maybe you’ll find yourself in shark infested waters. Or it might even just break your boat and sink it entirely.
Meditation puts you at the captain’s wheel of your craft. And you can make it a nice one too. You can buy yourself a sweet 80m rig with a swimming pool, gym, nightclub, and helicopter pad. Or maybe it’s something more humble. It’s up to you!
Whatever your taste, you can set your course and sail through life’s rough waters in style.
Ye Olde Automobile
Lets imagine you go to the used car dealer looking for a new set of wheels. They show you a few models, and then you notice a sweet looking hot rod off in the back corner – and its half the price of everything else on the lot. Naturally you want to know what’s wrong with it. “Oh,” says the dealer, “that one the steering doesn’t work at all and the brakes are totally shot. Do you want to take it for a spin?”
Sounds pretty dangerous, huh? Would you ever consider getting in such a vehicle?
Is it even legal?
Well this is how most people live their whole lives. They can’t steer their thoughts in the direction they want, and there’s no brakes to slow down their mind even just a little bit. Their thoughts just run automatically all day long and there’s nothing they can do about it.
No wonder your car ends up in the ditch so often.
Going Up the Drain
Lets face it – life can be pretty tough sometimes.
We’ve all been through some grim times. Lord knows my life was a dumpster fire for way longer than I’d like to admit[3].
If you don’t know how to meditate, steady your mind, stay focused on the positive and keep moving in the right direction, then you can easily start to get sucked under.
The Answer Isn’t Blowing in the Wind
I said it before and I’ll say it again, if you can’t control your mind then your life is completely at the mercy of random circumstances.
Like a leaf blowing in the wind, carried this way and that
So sorry, Bob Dylan, but the answer isn’t blowing in the wind. It’s exactly the opposite actually. If you want to maintain a steady level of happiness and get somewhere in life, you’ll have to learn to not get carried away by every little breeze that comes your way.
Pleasure Seeking Missile
Of course your brain is wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Its a biological survival mechanism designed to make you make you want to have kids and keep you safe from being eaten by lions. Its completely healthy to pursue happiness and stay away from things that make you upset. The problem comes (fix) when pleasure seeking and avoiding discomfort become compulsive behaviors that run your life. That’s the stuff addictions are made of.
About 34 Million Americans smoke cigarettes and another 14 Million currently have a drinking problem.
Lorem Ipsum. Although Cicero probably didn’t meditate in the way we’re describing here, he sure did know a thing or two about the human condition.
Messy Room
Does this picture look familiar? Maybe you know someone whose house looks like this? Might even be someone really close…
Well this is how it is in most people’s heads. A giant mess of thoughts running all over each other in no particular order. Memories from 10 years ago mixed up with anxiety about your job, crowded with reruns of some TV show you watched last week – oh and what was I having for dinner tonight??
If your mind is a mess, then its not surprising that your life is a mess too.
The irony is that it would take just a few minutes to pick up all the junk and put it away neatly. Hardly any effort at all.
So why doesn’t it happen?
The reason is simple… Momentum. Mess creates more mess. Confusion creates more confusion. Thinking creates more thinking. The only way out is to step out of the mess, to just sit down and come back to stillness. From there you’re in a much better place to clean things up.
After you’ve mediated for a while, your thoughts start to run more clear and clean. Just one thing at a time, thank you very much. You decide what to think about and when.
Notice that all of the problems are still there – Money issues, childhood trauma. They’re just neatly filed away. If you don’t want to deal with it right now then you can just put it aside. Then pick it back up when the time is right.
Meditation doesn’t fix any of life’s problems for you. But it keeps them from messing up your mood and spoiling your day. You can stay focused and centered no matter what. From that place of strength, you can tackle your problems much more easily.
Of course if you have trauma or life challenges, you shouldn’t just hide it off in some corner and pretend it’s not there. Get some therapy and some life coaching if you need to! Fix the issues bothering you so you can live an awesome life.
Mediatation wakes you up to your life, so make sure its a good one!
Car Without Dashboard
Back when the first cars were invented, they didn’t come with a dashboard. All you got was gas, brakes, and a steering wheel. There was no way to tell how fast you’re going, your mileage, the engine’s RPM’s, no check engine light, no oil guage, no temperature warning, no tire pressure, and no fuel guage. Sure you could still get from point A to point B, but your engine could explode any minute without a warning.
Thats how it is before you start mediating. You’re somehow making it through life, but you have no idea when something might blow up unexpectedly.
Mediatation makes you highly aware of your mind, body and emotional state in every moment. So you know what’s coming down the line. You can tell when you’re about to get sick 3 days before and take the approprate measures to head it off. You can sense a bout of moodiness and depression well in advance and be extra nice to yourself instead of falling into a funk.
When you get good enough, you can even see your own thoughts bubbling up in your mind before you think them. In other words, you know what you’re going to think before you think it – so you can decide whether to think it or not.
This might seem crazy and impossible, but trust me now and believe me later. experience it for yourself and you can thank me later. Example
Cliff Notes vs piles of books
DUMP
This is just the tip of the iceberg, though. The real sneaky part of conditioning actually takes place entirely inside your own mind.
What happens is you’ll have some thoughts and feelings, which lead you to have some more thoughts and feelings, then those thoughts and feelings create even more thoughts and feelings, and then those produce yet another bunch of thoughts and feelings and then… I think you get the picture.
In this case, the stimThis whole process takes place automatically and completely outside of your control.
Your mind is completely controlling you.
Hold it right there! Isn’t my mind supposed to be controlling me?
Well yes, actually it is…
But a much smarter question is, who is controlling your mind?
Of course this is all completely natural and there’s absolutely no problem with it… Until you realize that you’ve been programmed and most (if not all) of your behavior is just a response to some external stimulus. Instead of making deliberate choices in your life, you’re being controlled by the circumstances around you.
You’ve probably noticed that your daily routine mostly runs just automatically. Get up, get washed, have breakfast, get to work, hang out, go to sleep. I’d even guess you have pretty much the same thoughts from day to day.
Maybe you’re even unhappy with your life, but you feel like there’s nothing you can do to change things, nor change yourself. Same old habits… A lot of them not so great. Same old situation… My life kinda sucks but there’s not much I can do about it so why bother?
What if there was a way out? A way to free yourself?
A way to be or do anything you ever dreamed?
Only the few and the brave ever attempt to get a grip on the controls of their own mind and actively steer it in the right direction.
Meditation is an anchor that keeps your mind from flying all over the place. It lets you make conscious deliberate choices about what you want in life and what you’d rather leave in the past. And then it gives you the mental stability to actually be able follow through on your choices – no matter what the circumstances of whats going on around you.
Before – ship adrift in stormy sea. After – you are the captain
Ship needs an anchor or rudder otherwise it just drifts all over the place
Being Unconditional
Maybe you’ve heard the term unconditional happiness or unconditional love.
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Many years later I came to understand that silencing your mind is NOT the goal of meditation. It’s actually just a side-effect of what you’re really after which is building your awareness. This is the #1 misunderstanding about meditation in our culture and it makes people think they’re bad at it when actually they’re doing just fine. Don’t fall into this trap. More on this subject later in the book… ↑
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– These days, even with 5 years of daily practice under my belt, I can only keep my mind still for a few minutes at a time. It definitely improves with practice, but can take a while to get there. ↑
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If you happen to be going through a hard time at the moment, I just want to take this moment to offer you some compassion and kindness. I know how brutally hard life can be sometimes. Try to get some support from your loved ones and spirit guides, trust in yourself and just keep going. Things will get better if you keep the faith and put in your full effort. ↑