The Reindeer pull Santa's Sleigh. What pulls the Ego’s Sleigh?

Just as Santa has eight reindeer. The Ego-mind has eight tricks. Don’t get fooled by the ego’s tricks this holiday season. Here are the top eight trick of the ego-mind ready to hijack Christmas. Do not let them down the chimney!

1. Knowing: The ego-mind is convinced it knows. It loves it opinions, positions, and confidence. Of course to others we know this as obnoxiousness, arrogance, and pompousness. But the ego-mind is undeterred. It flaunts its knowledge and surety. When you think you “know,” it means that knowing is pulling the ego’s sleigh.

2. The promise of future fulfillment: Good things are just around the corner, so says the ego-mind. And as a result, we are never fully present since ego is on the lookout for the next big thing. There is something wrong with now. It would never occur to the ego-mind that the fulfillment we seek is right in front of us. Of course the criterion the ego uses to measure fulfillment is, “Do I have what I want.” Getting it our way and having what we want is the ego’s goal in life. Since the story ends with death, looking to the future seems like a fool’s errand, but the ego is undeterred.

3. Living in the remembered past: Just as the ego-mind lives in the future, it also lives in the remembered past. Never mind that the remembered past is merely psychological. The ego loves to regurgitate the last conversation, refight the last battle, or recapitulate losses. It is a massive effort to change our internal state, to deny feelings we have, and to justify our behavior. The remembered past and the imagined future are the territory of the ego-mind.

4. Retaliation: This force wants to pull the sleigh into battle! Every perceived wrong must be righted. The ego-mind will never put down its arms. We are right, we will get even; the ego will show them. The ego will stoop to whatever level to throw whatever mud is nearby. It knows neither mercy nor compassion. Never mind that the truth is that the other person is suffering from searing pain. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, the ego-mind wants a dead duck!

5. Blame: I must be your fault! For the ego, my life would be better if you would change. My reactions, my bad behavior, and my insensitivity lay clearly at your doorstep. I wouldn’t be this way if you weren’t they way you were. My ego-mind is going to teach my children to not accept responsibility and to blame someone else if things go wrong.

6. Drama: The ego mind loves drama, it loves the story. He said, she said – let me tell you what happened, and then and then . . . This is the way the ego elevates itself. After all, the story teller gets lots of attention. Paul called this the world of the flesh. In Greek, the word flesh means superficial. The ego-mind is all about the superficial. It is shallow, fascinated and loves to retell your story to someone else.

7. Being Special: This means that to the ego, we are special as an individual. Life must be fair to us. Since we are special we are not ONE with others, we are separate. Some are more special than others. This means the ego-mind must constantly seek control and gain so it can be elevated. The emphasis here is on what makes us unique. The ego thinks that “everything happens for a reason.” And the reason must be from its point of view. Being special means one is at the center of the universe.

8. Masquerades as the real you: This makes sense since the ego-mind has an internal voice that sounds like you and feels like you. It must be you? The result of this deception is that we no longer rely on looking at the world with innocent perception. We allow the ego to intercept our experience and interpret it for us. The ego-mind actually interposes itself between reality and our true self. The resulting deception is a disaster for all human kind.

The holidays are a great time to learn the trick of the ego-mind. Since we are with “family,” the ego is at its best (worst?) and we can focus on its tricks and expose them to the light of our own awareness. A dysfunctional family Christmas is all about the ego-minds of each participant hijacking the holidays. Don’t let this happen to you. Be fully present with your experience.

Stocking Stuffers!

 

What should one get a cat for Christmas?

Well the time of giving has come and all of us have people on our list that we would like to give something of value to, but we don't want to spend much money.

What about this cat?

Well, I have an idea for you. I have written three ground breaking books that might just fill the bill. My new book, Mastering Thought (Before it masters You!), teaches Witness Thought Transformation which moves the reader to a higher level of consciousness. The Dance of the Lion and the Unicorn: The Secret of Conscious Relationships has saved many marriages just from reading it. And finally, Awakening, takes it all and points you toward enlightenment.

Or buy them all together for an enromous discount as The Mastery Library.

Please consider them as gifts for your loved ones.

Ronnie - In Memoriam

Many of you know of my cat, Ronnie. I have mentioned him from time to time in my books, most recently in Mastering Thought. Well, I am very sad to say that Ronnie seems to have left us. He went out early one morning and never came back. We can only speculate, but we feel that he probably was killed by the coyotes that frequent our rural neighborhood.

It is hard to be sad for too long when I think back on what a blessing this little gray fur-ball was to me. I remember when I brought him home for the first time as a kitten. It was about an hour’s drive. His brother, Gorbie, went to the back of the carrier, curled up and went to sleep. Meanwhile, Ronnie did his best to press himself through the wire mesh. He was curious, adventuresome, and he always assumed the best intentions from those he approached.

I was his person. He slept with me, snuggled me, and helped me with the computer. He was a talker. I always knew what he wanted or was trying to communicate. He was a very human oriented and affectionate cat. His love for me was absolutely unconditional. What a gift!

Ronnie is gone, but we still have Stripy, Gorbie, Stinky, and Rupert. We are all liter-mates. But I will forever miss that little gray kitty, my companion, my friend. But I will never lose the sense of honor I had to have such a creature in my life. Still, I fear my heart is broken.

Survey Question #2

Okay, time to reveal the number two question revealed by the survey. Remember the question was, “What is your biggest question about the voice in your head that criticizes you and beats you up, that berates you, that constantly dwells on the worst case scenario, that won’t shut up?”

I was actually pretty shocked when I saw these responses coming in. The reason for my shock was that I have just finished writing a book that reveals the Answer to this question. The number two question from the survey about the voice in your head was, “Where does it come from?”

The answer may or may not surprise you. But the voice in your head is heavily influenced by a part of the brain that we share with dogs, cats, and primates. Science calls it the Limbic System. I call it the monkey brain! In the brain, it is the vortex for flight or fight, anger/fear, survival and all emotions. The kicker is that it is fully wired up by the time we are 5 years of age.

What this means for human kind is not good. The voice in your head that sounds like you talking to you is basically a 5 year old, with a 5 year old’s view of the world.

On November 6th I will be holding a teleclass where I will give you the key to breaking free from the voice that criticizes you and beats you up, that berates you, that constantly dwells on the worst case scenario, and that won’t shut up.

In the mean time my new book, Mastering Thought (Before it masters You!), has just come out. So here is a prescription for freedom. Get the book, read it, and then join the teleclass to learn more and get your questions answered!

Here is the link for the book. Mastering Thought (Before it masters You!) And here is the link for the teleclass.

Survey - #1 Question You Had

Wow, I want to thank everyone who participated in the survey. Remember the question was, “What is your biggest question about the voice in your head that criticizes you and beats you up, that berates you, that constantly dwells on the worst case scenario, that won’t shut up?”

Now I realize that is a bit of a loaded question because it does presuppose that there is such a voice that is up to no good in your head. But what was the number one question that people had about it? By far and away the number one question the people who took the survey had about the voice in their head was, how do I get it to stop? Now people had various takes on the question. Some were oriented more toward controlling it, some were more interested in mastering it.

It turns out ironically enough that you cannot control it and you cannot stop it, but you can master it! How can that be? How can you master it without making it stop? Well, I just finished writing a book about that called Mastering Thought (Before it masters You!). And I will be teaching you how to master thought through the practice of Witness Thought Transformation during a free teleclass on November 6th.

The voice in your head is a biological function that we have mistaken for ourselves. Now you cannot stop digestion, or perspiration for obvious reasons. We cannot expect to stop thinking for those same reasons. But we can become the master of thought by thoroughly understanding it and putting it in it proper place. That is what I want to teach you during the teleclass.

Stay tuned for the next installment of my blog where I will discuss the number two question that people had. And in a way, the number two question is far more interesting than the number one question!

Click here to sign up for the free teleclass on November 6th.

Thought without a Thinker

So many are trying to overcome the mind, thinking, and have a better life. We know that drama comes from our heads and we are trying mightily to overcome it. We read so much literature, eastern and otherwise, pointing us in the direction of the mind as the source of human misery. It all makes so much sense. The problem has to be stinkin’ thinkin’. Doesn’t it?

But wait. What if I told you that negative thinking is not the problem by a long shot? What if I told you the problem was thought itself, but in a way that we have not realized before? What if I told you that there is no thinker!?

Here is the problem. We have identified ourselves as thought. We think we are thought.

It is as if we had identified ourselves with our right hand. We experience what the right hand experiences, we feel what it feels. We adopt the perspective of the right hand. We think we are the right hand. As long as we never question ourselves as the right hand we never know what the left hand is doing! Our experience of life is relegated to that of the right hand only.

But in the brain there is no thinker. Thought just happens. Thinking is a function, not a person. It is a byproduct of language and association. But since we identify with it, our experience of life is restricted to the content of thought – good or bad. The practice of Witness Thought Transformation breaks the bonds of this identification and we finally experience freedom from the mind.

The message is that we can work on our negative thinking, but as long as we believe we are the thinker, we live in thought’s prison.

Every secret but one is in my new book!

My new book, Mastering Thought (Before it Masters You), is just about ready to hit the market! But I am going to tell you the missing secret right now. I would not want you to buy my new book and be disappointed because this one secret is not in the book. What’s the missing secret? The secret to financial success.Why did I leave it out of my new book? Simple, you already have 15 books promising that!

Haven’t we all bought those books, been to those workshops, and worn those T-shirts only to find that the people who achieved financial success were those selling books, workshops, and T-shirts? I have been to mega marketing events where every hour wave after wave of people plopped down their credit cards in the hopes that they finally were buying the secret to financial success.

Also, consider this; what if you are elderly, disabled, or you are a caretaker to others. In other words, your life circumstance simply does not make you a candidate for lots of material achievement. What then? How do you improve your life?

My new book, Mastering Thought (Before it Masters You), is about something far more fundamental than money. The secret that I reveal in my new book has kept human kind in a mental prison for thousands of years. This is a book about the voice in your head that sounds like you talking to you. I reveal the truth about what it is and where it comes from – and, of course, what’s to be done about it.

Oh, and while we are on the subject, there is another secret that is not revealed in the book – how to have more positive thoughts. There is nothing wrong with positive thoughts. The problem is thought itself. If our fundamental relationship to a thought is based on a misunderstanding and a false belief then having more positive thoughts will not fix the problem of thought! I show you how to fix this in my book.

Once you break out of the prison that thought creates, you will not want to go back into prison to create more positive thoughts. That just doesn’t make sense.

Mastering Thought (Before it masters You) challenges our basic belief about thought, the voice in the head, and our emotional reactions. It won’t tell you the secret to financial success, but it will reveal the secret to Life itself.

Awakening without Mastery has no Value

Many people who have encountered my work have been seekers for many years. For them, and all others, Witness Thought Transformation brings about a dramatic Awakening within a short period of time. This brings with it a freedom from ego, defensive patterns, and an understanding of life at a new level of awareness.

Then something very sinister begins to happen. The ego mind sets about to co-opt the entire process. What this means is that the old patterns start making their way back into one’s life, and before you know it – your back into the same misery you were in before your Awakening.

Awakening comes as such a huge shift and with such a complete knowing that it is easy for us to think that we’ve got it and no more growth work is necessary. As a result, the new experience of being awake gets gradually integrated into the ego defenses that where already there.

Let me give you a for instance. If you have passive defenses like getting away, avoidance, and isolation, your new found Awakening may eventually be subsumed into activities like retreats, long periods of meditation, or silent weekends.

If you have active defenses like being angry or hostile you may begin to use your new awakened state to judge and condemn those who are still not awake.

I see this all the time in the emails and phone calls I get. Those who learn Witness Thought Transformation are transformed alright, but they often stop right there thinking they have made it. Their messages to me contain all kinds of energy around their unresolved issues.

The road to Mastery requires you to stop with each and every emotional reaction and relentlessly ask the right questions until you get to the bottom of it. Once you get to the bottom of it, go to the next reaction and do it all over again. That’s Mastery.

There is good news about all of this however. Each of us only is enslaved by about 2 or 3 patterns. So the road to Mastery, while being a lifelong commitment, is not a complicated task. Once you have mastered the couple of patterns that are constantly trying to hijack you, it merely becomes a matter of vigilance. The even better news is that vigilance becomes second nature after a while.

I am currently starting a coaching program to help people master their patterns. If this is of interest to you, contact me and we can talk about it. In the mean time, every time you react, every time you send an email or pick up the phone, ask yourself this question, “Where is this really coming from?”

The Entire Brain is Enlightened

There have been so many searching for so many thousands of years for enlightenment. The search goes on and on. There is nothing more unrequited than the hunger for truth when you know it is within your grasp, but you simply cannot reach out and grab it.

So what do I mean when I say the entire brain is enlightened? What I mean is that if we were aware of everything our brain is experiencing, we would instantly experience enlightenment. But we have chosen to only be aware of certain selected things about the brain’s experience of Life. To be more specific, we have become enamored with one aspect of the brain’s experience to the exclusion of all others. We are so plugged into the voice in our heads that sounds like you talking to you that we have focus on it to the exclusion of everything else in our field of awareness.

It is very much like falling in love with a beautiful woman. She is gorgeous, lovely, cute – we are smitten. We get married and spend years with her. But we really never get to know her as a person because the only thing we ever focused on was her physical qualities.

Those of us who have experienced the abiding love that deepens with the years in a relationship, know what we would be missing if we only focused on one facet of our mate.

This is what we have done with our brains. Verbal thought is the function of a couple of areas isolated in the left hemisphere of the brain. But we identify that function as “me” and as long as we do, we never really become aware of the depth of our true experience of life. If we did, we would instantly experience what the sages call enlightenment.

The entire right hemisphere and the deep structures of the brain are nonverbal. What the heck are they up to? As long as we identify heavily with verbal thought, we will never experience the depth of the nonverbal. And yet a whole new world waits.

The nonverbal invites us to look further, to experience deeper. But we have to do something for ourselves to find that new world. We have to put down the boom box with the game-show--host that is narrating our lives. Then we can stop thinking life and start living enlightenment.

Announcing the 4 Week Intensive

June 5th heralds the return of the 4 week intensive.

What is it? It is a series of 4 teleclasses where students will learn the practice of Witness Thought Transformation™ and move to an Awakened state. Along with the 4 teleclasses participants will receive a workbook, and audio workbook, daily reminders, as well as a recording of each class to listen to again and again.

Those who sign up by Saturday the 22nd will receive Extra Bonuses: A half hour one-on-one Laser Coaching Session to insure that their practice is on target, A specialized follow-up Q&A call to cement the learning and to clear up any remaining issues, and they will receive a copy of my new book, Mastering Thought.

Check out all of the details of the 4 Week Intensive at: www.masteringthought.com/masteringthought.htm

Is Awakening a Mystical Experience?

The simple answer is no. I know that comes as a great disappointment to many who are fervently pursuing mystical experience. The simple fact is that Awakening is about Awareness and there is nothing mystical about Awareness. That does not mean that the moment of Awakening might bring with it what might be called a mystical experience. It also, does not preclude one having a mystical experience and being no wiser for it.

What then is Awakening? It is breaking free from thought identification. Okay, what is thought identification? It is the mistaken belief that the voice in your head that sounds like you talking to you – is you. This is a case of mistaken identity that has gone on for thousands of years. We have been held captive by this identification. It is as if a hypnotist lives in our heads that we cooperatively call “me.” This “me” identification makes it all very convenient for the voice to control us, to doom us to a life of suffering.

Awakening is the visceral ah ha that we experience when we break free of this identification with that little “me.” We then instantly realize that the world of little “me” was considerably smaller than the real world without the guidance of an internal commentator. This is so liberating that the various energies realized during this rebirth can be experienced in what only could be termed as mystical.

After this liberation from thought, life becomes supremely practical and down to earth. At this point there is no longer the question of the mystical. Now Awakening takes on a new dimension – that is that each moment presents us with a clear choice. We can either choose the drama that comes with thought identification or choose the abundance of Life itself as it presents itself through innocent perception. Now that’s living. And that’s mystical.

Survey Response #3

I my previous blog posts I have covered the first and second greatest questions that people had regarding Creating your own Reality, Affirmations, and the Law of Attraction.

Today in my final blog on the survey I want to take on the third most often heard question in the survey. The third most popular response was, “Why are certain aspects of life out of my control?” Obviously I have boiled down a number of responses to their essence. But these responders were concerned with aspects of life like health issues, characteristics we inherit in our biology, the death of a loved one, accidents and so forth.

Obviously there is a reality out there that we cannot control. Like death – there’s a reality! So we can either react to it or accept it. By studying our minds, its thought patterns, and our emotional reactions we move to a level of Mastery in our lives where it is possible to live with grace and acceptance so that we can enjoy our life and others can enjoy our life too.

If you would like to hear the rest of my answers about creating your own reality, affirmations, and the law of attraction, I will be holding a free teleclass where I will answer all the questions I can.

If you are interested go to this page to learn more and sign up: .

Survey Result - 2nd Top Question

There were so many responses to my recent survey that I wanted to address the number two question I got.

In my previous blog post, I talked about the number one question. The number two question was, “why do I still have bad thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.” Of course I am distilling down a number of responses to their essence. The questions sounded a lot like when Paul said, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

My answer might surprise you. We are being hijacked! Human nature is a mechanism, and we can learn how that mechanism works. Once the hijacking has taken place, it’s too late to do much about it. So we need powerful tools of insight and understanding to battle this hijacking. The best tool we can have is Awareness.

Awareness trumps thought, feelings and behavior. So rather than battle the hijacking, we need to lay in wait for the hijacker. And, yes, there is an easy way to dramatically increase your awareness and move toward Mastery in your life.

If you would like to hear the rest of my answers about creating your own reality, affirmations, and the law of attraction, I will be holding a free teleclass where I will answer all the questions I can.

If you are interested go to this page to learn more and sign up.

Survey Result - Top Question

WOW you blew me away! Over the last week or so I have been conducting a survey. The question I asked was, “what is your greatest question about creating your own reality, affirmations and the law of attraction.” The number of responses I got was well above what even I had hoped for. This tells me that a lot of you are interested in this topic.

So what was the number one question? Many people articulated it in many different ways, but it all boiled do to one question; “why don’t they work?” or rather “what does it take to make them work?”

Here is my radical and controversial answer. They do work! They are working now. We just don’t like how they are working! When people discovered that the Buddha said, “With your thoughts you create your world,” everyone ran off and started to try to create the life they wanted. People totally forgot what he said next which was that we need to purify our minds.

So we need a way to very clearly see what our thoughts already are. That’s both the problem and the missing key. The issue is not creating new thoughts; the problem is to discover the thoughts that are already there that are manifesting our reality.

If you would like to hear the rest of my answers about creating your own reality, affirmations, and the law of attraction, I will be holding a free teleclass where I will answer all the questions I can.

If you are interested go to this page to learn more and sign up

Survey - I need your help

I need your help. I'm planning a teleclass on Personal Growth and Self Development and I need to know your biggest question about it.

If you could take 2 minutes and click on this link Survey and answer my question, "What is your biggest question about Creating your own Reality, Affirmations, and the Law of Attraction?" I would really appreciate it.

In a few weeks I will be hosting a free teleclass where I'll be answering as many questions as I can.

Here is the link again: Take Survey

By the way, I will be revealing the results of the survey in my newsletter. If you would like to sign up for it, here is the link:

sign me up

Life with Howard Cosell

Many of you reading this may be too young to remember an American icon of sports casting named Howard Cosell. "I'm telling it like it is," he would say about his style. I remember Howard Cosell as an irritating, grating, and raspy reminder of what one’s ego mind might sound like who would drone on and one in a nasally tone that made you want to turn down the TV. My apology to Howard Cosell fans the world over.

My point about Cosell is that whenever the man opened his mouth you knew it was Howard Cosell. There was no way to deny the tone, timbre, and quality of his voice. At sporting event after event, his unmistakable voice could be heard and heard and heard.

Now, for those of you that can remember Howard, imagine the following scenario. You and I have gone together to a football game. You are completely taken by the smell of the fall air, the pageantry of the crowd, the play on the field. You are taking it all in.

On the other hand, I am sitting next to you listening to the broadcast of the game through a set of earphones. And after every play, Howard Cosell is telling me what just happened, how it happened, and more importantly what it all means. In other words, I am listening to the commentary about the game.

So ask yourself this question, “Who is experiencing the game you or me?”
The answer is simple; you are. I am experiencing the commentary about the game. I am listening to Howard Cosell interpret the play by play is his pompous self important tone. Everything about the game that I am seeing is being distorted through the lens of the commentator coming through the ear pieces.

This is a metaphor for how we live life. We are so enamored with the internal commentator, so inured that we are thinking life instead of actually living it. Our experience of life, and therefore of one another, is filtered through the commentary. We talk to ourselves and then we talk some more. Then we have an internal dialog about self-talk!

Are you tired of having the irksome commentator dictate your experience? Join me and so many others in breaking free from the internal commentator. Life without Howard Cosell is a new life and then the real adventure begins.

The Monkey Brain Strikes Again

My upcoming book, Mastering Thought, has a subtitle, Loquacious Simianus. Many of us know what loquacious means. It means talkative. But Simianus may be a bit of a mystery. It is a Latin word that means monkey. This is what I call the Limbic System. It is the part of the brain that we share with other mammals like dogs and cats and primates. Since it is all about fight or flight, anger/fear, and survival, and since it is in charge of all emotions in the brain, I call it the monkey.

Now the missing piece that ties together the monkey and “talkative” is that the Limbic System is the driver of the voice in your head that sounds like you talking to you. Therefore we all have a loquacious simianus in our heads! Yuk!

But this particular monkey has some specialties; namely rationalization, regurgitation, and recapitulation. Rationalization is the process of constructing a logical justification for a behavior that was originally arrived at through a different emotional process. In other words, it is a story we tell ourselves to make us feel okay about something we did that we probably shouldn’t have.

Regurgitation is the rehashing of something said or done that we simply cannot digest in its original form usually because to digest it in that form would make us sick!

Recapitulation is a brief summary of what we did. The beauty of recapitulation is that is allows us to leave out key facts from our summary thus making us look better.

You notice that the three “R”s of the monkey are about the past.

There is another specialty the monkey has about the future; anticipation. Anticipation is the building of a scenario of what will happen in the future. Anticipation is almost totally useless since the future can never be predicted, but it gives the monkey a sense of control over what we cannot control!

As long as we believe we are the voice in our heads, the monkey has its way with us, and we have lost our way. This is where Witness Thought Transformation™ comes in. It frees us from the monkey. To be sure, the primitive primate doesn’t necessarily die, it just becomes irrelevant and we go free of its influence. Oh loquacious simianus – take a hike!

Tiger Woods - Sex or The Finger

I have been wanting to weigh in on this Tiger Woods thing ever since we all read that he was being treated for sex addition. My experience as a therapist give me a very different view on this. I look at it through the lens of my theory on relationships - the Dance of the Lion and the Unicorn.

Infidelity is more often an act of anger than about sex. Tiger Woods is a Unicorn. As such, his sexual acting out has more to do with his viewpoint that he is being pressured and dominated and that someone is "telling him what to do." This is always about a parental relationship that has left an imprint of rage on the young child.

"You can't tell me what to do." What better way to act out than to violate the trust in a relationship. Oh, you asking what has this to do with his wife. Nothing, to the Limbic System, a very primitive emotional part of the brain, the wife is a surrogate for the parent that was demanding and dominating.

So infidelity more often is a way of giving life the finger - over and over again. Without this insight, I am not hopeful that a sexual 12 step program will cure this kind of passive aggressive behavior.