Joey Lott's Blog

Bliss Techniques is an online training program in which I share with you the best knowledge I have attained to help you feel better physically, energetically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

Whether your current normal state is “pretty good”, “just alright”, or “terrible”, the techniques and knowledge you’ll find in this program will help you. That might seem surprising to some people. After all, should not the knowledge and techniques for each of these states be different?

But the knowledge is self-knowledge. And the techniques are for the discovery of self. So no matter what the state, the remedy is the same in some sense. Though depending on the state, the insights from the knowledge and techniques may vary. For example, at a low state, the insight of self-knowledge may be how to help oneself or how to know yourself and your path. At a higher state, the insight of self-knowledge may be how to help others as oneself or how to know yourself as other.

Self-knowledge and discovery of self – far from being narcissistic – are humble, gentle, patient, wise, open, truthful, natural, and joyful.

In other words, however you perceive yourself and your life now, greater self-knowledge and discovery of self will reveal more happiness, more peace, more authenticity, more spontaneity.

I discovered the things I share with you in this program out of a long-standing deep interest in the subject…and eventually out of a profound personal need for the healing these techniques and knowledge offer.

At one point in my life I suffered from anxiety (panicking day and night), obsessive-compulsive disorder, starvation, digestive disease, insomnia, frequent urination, rumination, negativity, depression, chronic fatigue, Lyme disease, TMJ dysfunction, and more. I had to dig deep to find the essence of many teachings to put them into practice to find healing and discover a vibrant and meaningful life.

In other words, the knowledge and techniques I share in this program aren’t just some nice ideas I’ve come across. They are what I live and breathe, what has restored me to life, the reason I am alive to be able to share the knowledge.

This knowledge is what allows me to co-parent and homeschool three young children even though when I first began that journey I could barely take care of myself and my habitual responses to life were rage, depression, and despair. Those are unhelpful responses to most of life, and particularly unhelpful in relationship with family and loved ones…or with any sentient beings, including oneself. Today, though I am very much evolving and not a perfected being, I am now not so quick to rage, depression, and despair – the only responses I knew for most of my life until about ten years ago – and I can see the good in self and other. As you might imagine, this makes for a much nicer life.

This knowledge is what has allowed me to have patience, compassion, and optimism even with a great deal of personal ineptitude (making a lot of mistakes, slow to learn, etc.), challenging relationship and community dynamics (miscommunications, interpersonal dramas, attachments, avoidance, etc.), and long-standing physical discomforts. And it has allowed me to be an authentically more peaceful and compassionate person – not “shoulding” myself and others, but often able to experience spontaneous openness and inherent goodness.

This knowledge has allowed me to recover lost function and exceed previous function. For example, in 2012 I was so fatigued and emaciated I was making peace with death because I believed that transition might have been coming soon. I would lie down much of the time just trying to find the will to stand. And I was digesting so little food that I was having difficulty finding anything I could eat. At one point I was only able to stomach half a cup of well-toasted rolled oats chewed very thoroughly per day. But today I am up before sunrise, feeling good in body, able to relax deeply and enjoy moving, and my digestion is healthy.

I experience joy in being able to share with others so that they can also experience better lives in which they have more peace in their hearts and minds, more gentleness for themselves and others, greater naturally-arising compassion, more ease in body, greater range of movement in body and mind, and the many benefits that come from Bliss Techniques.

I’ve been sharing this knowledge online since 2013. And in that time I’ve learned a great deal about what best helps people. Although Bliss Techniques is likely to remain an ongoing work in progress, it is now at a stage where I have confidence that I can provide a introduction to the essentials and a path of study and practice for anyone who is sincere in their interest in learning and practicing these life-changing (and life-saving in many cases) techniques and knowledge.

On this page, you’ll find the most up-to-date “getting started guide” to Bliss Techniques. And you’ll also find how you can keep updated as new developments and refinements come to light that can assist you in living your best life yet.

No matter what your current normal state, I promise you that with persistent and sincere application of what you learn through Bliss Techniques, your life can and will get better and better. There does not seem to be any limit to how good life can be. The limit is only what we are willing to accept and allow. And Bliss Techniques lifts our sights on higher states of being and consciousness so that we can accept and allow better.

Bliss Techniques is a unique combination of the various disciplines and practices I have studied over more than 24 years. By conservative estimates I have practiced these various techniques for over 35,000 hours combined. I mention this not to brag, but to provide some context. I do not claim to be a master. But I serious, sincere, and quite experienced.

Most importantly, the teachings work. People putting this knowledge into practice regularly report benefits. And, if you have experienced benefits from this work, please take a moment to give a brief testimonial in the comments below. (Also, please mention if it is okay for me to include some of your testimonial in the body of this page so that those who are interested can see evidence of the benefits people receive from the work.)

Some of the many influences that have helped to shape Bliss Techniques include BKS Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, Paramahansa Yogananda, Thomas Hanna, Moshe Feldenkrais, Ida Rolf, Dr. John Sarno, Ken Cohen, Roger Jahnke, Konstantin Buteyko, Patanjali, Ramana Maharishi, Papaji, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and Siva Premananda to name but a few.

But you don’t have to know any of those names or anything about yoga, qi gong, pranayama, or any such thing to benefit from Bliss Techniques. My aim is to make this life-changing knowledge accessible to everyone. You don’t need to know how to pronounce Sanskrit terms or sit in lotus posture to benefit. In fact, when I most needed to benefit from this knowledge, I could barely even sit upright and I could barely focus for more than a second at a time. So you can benefit no matter what your starting point.

And, in fact, if even the basic starting information that follows below seems too much or inaccessible to you, please let me know what challenges you are having and I will do my best to provide an effective starting point for you regardless of what challenges you may be facing. Many people have found that this knowledge has turned their lives around for the better even when they were homeless, in severe pain, fearful, and with many other severe challenges. So it is definitely possible to get started and benefit no matter what your starting point. Just ask if you need help.

First of all, I’ll explain to you what the basic problem is that underlies your difficulties, whatever they may be. And then I’ll provide a basic introduction to how to get started with Bliss Techniques so you can make the most of this program to help yourself feel better and function at a higher level.

From the perspective of this program, I can say that whatever your difficulties are, they are due to your consciousness being stuck at a lower-than-ideal level. Don’t take this personally or wrongly imagine that this means something bad about you. It is just a fact that problems are due to consciousness being stuck at a lower and denser level than is desired.

Whether the problem is fatigue, depression, chronic pain, “bad luck”, or any other type of problem, ultimately, the problem as you perceive it is that you don’t like how you feel. If you liked the way you felt all the time, you wouldn’t have a problem. So the problem is really just that you don’t like how you feel.

Despite everything you’ve tried to feel better, it hasn’t worked adequately well. And that is because everything you’ve tried has been at the same level of consciousness as the bad feeling. So no matter what you do things cannot get better as long as you stay at the same level of consciousness.

That lower level of consciousness manifests physically as muscular tension and disturbed breathing. And that forms a vicious cycle in which the muscular tension and disturbed breathing produce more bad feeling which in turn tends to produce more muscular tension and disturbed breathing.

There are many possible interventions that can turn this vicious cycle into a virtuous cycle. So the techniques that I present are not the only ones that can help. However, in my experience, some techniques work more reliably for more people more of the time than others. And the techniques which work best tend to have some things in common.

First of all, they are relatively gentle and are unlikely to result in greater self-harm. Unfortunately, too often the techniques people learn for helping themselves are too high level for them or are inherently too violent. And as such, often people hurt themselves with the very techniques that are intended to help.

For example, many presently-popular breathing techniques (including Holotropic breathwork, Wim Hof method, and more) are very powerful and for those who can’t handle the intensity, they can be harmful. This does not mean they don’t have appropriate applications, but they are likely inappropriate for many people.

So the most important principle of Bliss Techniques is gentleness. You must agree to be gentle in order to proceed with this program. You owe it to yourself and to everyone who loves you to honor this commitment to gentleness. You must absolutely refuse to hurt yourself. And that means you must listen to your intuition and never do anything that you intuitively know is too much for you in the moment or too violent. That is true even if I give a suggestion. You must always honor your commitment to gentleness and never hurt yourself or others.

Please write that down and make the commitment to yourself right now. Say it out loud. “I commit to gentleness and safety.”

But please don’t make the mistake of thinking that gentleness means you cannot or should not also be courageous or that your results will be less than if you used more aggressive approaches.

For you also must be courageous at the same time you are very gentle. Being gentle means how you approach all actions. You can talk gently or you can talk aggressively. The same action is done, but in two different ways. This is true of all actions. So you can walk, sew, cook, write, sing, and do every other action either gently or aggressively. Gently is the way which gives desirable results.

You can be very gentle as you courageously observe your experience. You can notice your feelings, sensations, and thoughts gently but unflinchingly. This gives you direct knowledge. This is the only true knowledge. This direct knowledge gives you life.

The most essential practice of Bliss Techniques is what is called meditation or samadhi. This meditation is bare observation. It means there is only watching, tasting, experiencing, etc. There is only the acting, not a separate actor and objects of action.

This can be most directly and purely experienced as mindfulness both a formal (typically seated) practice of watching the breath or absorption as well as a similarly mindful awareness during day-to-day activities.

Of course, most people find it quite challenging to practice bare awareness. And for that reason, most of us need more remedial techniques which can support us in achieving our goal of attaining effortless bare awareness.

Which specific techniques will be most helpful depends in part on what specifically is most interfering with resting as bare awareness. It will also depend on the intensity of the interference and the present capacities of the individual. So we need a variety of techniques and knowledge which are categorized according to need.

How to practice formal meditation

First of all, I’ll cover the basic instructions for a formal meditation practice. I highly recommend that you commit to establishing at least one practice session every day. It is very, very important that you will actually enjoy the practice. Because if it is a chore, you will have a hard time sustaining it and even worse, you will be practicing in a way that reinforces resistance and hardness in your life rather than the benefits of meditation.

So the first and most important rule of meditation is that you must be gentle. This means you must be carefully watching for violent habits as they arise and you must release the grip on them. That means you must not allow tensions to take root. You must not entertain thoughts which tell you that you’re doing it wrong or that you cannot do it or that you must do it (or else) or any of the other kinds of violent thoughts we have stored in our minds. These thoughts will naturally arise, and you must not resist them (which is also violence). But neither should you grip them or try to understand them or box them in or label them.

If you cannot practice meditation in this truly gentle way, which is truly pleasant and joyful, then you should not force it. Because any force is only going to cause problems. Meditation must be natural and joyful.

I am not saying that it must be easy. So please don’t misunderstand and think that natural and joyful means that challenges won’t arise. But if you find that you cannot disentangle yourself from the violent thoughts and urges, the tensions and gripping which arise, then you are not adequately prepared. So you should practice preliminaries or remedial practices instead and try allowing meditation again later – perhaps in ten minutes or perhaps later in the day or perhaps the next day. It depends on your goals and your priorities and your abilities. But when approached in this way, meditation will be natural and wholesome. It will heal you and you will experience more joy.

The benefits of daily meditation are too great to do justice to. Among the many benefits, it leads to greater compassion, patience, flexibility, joy, contentment, strength, courage, equanimity, and peace. It also cultivates energy which can be channeled according to what one values. If one values health and longevity, this energy can be channeled to that. If one values community wellness, this energy can be channeled to that. If one values spiritual well being for all sentient beings, this energy can be channeled to that.

So this meditation that I am talking about can make life more beautiful both inwardly and outwardly.

If you are able to practice meditation of this sort without need of any remedial practices, then I recommend that you practice it as much as possible. And I recommend that you practice it both formally (probably seated) for as much as you can each day (which might be 10 minutes or might be 10 hours) as well as during all activities as much as possible. This practice will enhance your life and the lives of those in your world. If you perceive that it is detracting from your life or from the lives of those in your world (more conflicts, more anxiety, more compulsive thinking, more distress, etc.) then it means you are doing it incorrectly and you should get some assistance from someone who can offer some guidance. Because all meditation (when practiced correctly) is natural and joyful and enhances the quality of life and the quality of your relationships.

Importantly, your practice of meditation should generate more compassion for self and others. If your practice of meditation produces pride, arrogance, or otherwise inflationary, you need to generate compassion because without compassion, your experience is incomplete. There is an excellent remedy for that, which is called tonglen and the seven point mind training of Buddhism, and in general I think it is wise for everyone who can practice it to do so because it will correct and balance meditation to cultivate both awareness of the nature of self as well as compassion, which gives a balanced and whole experience. (I will give a brief introduction to tonglen later in this essay.)

For formal meditation practice, I recommend that you do it at the same time every day. For most people early morning is a good time for a variety of reasons. So consider making it one of the first things you do upon rising in the morning. If not then, other times of day are okay as well, but usually it is best not to schedule it for when you are likely to be tired and sleepy. If you cannot do it at the same time every day, then it is okay to do it at different times of day, but if possible the same schedule is better.

Since meditation must be pleasant and gentle, it is enjoyable. Therefore, the duration should not be artificially extended beyond one’s capacity. Though at the same time, it is wise and appropriate to allow yourself to meet challenges with courage and gentleness which will dissolve many challenges even for novices. So find the right balance in which you are neither striving beyond your capacity nor succumbing to habit and fear.

Although you should not artificially extend beyond your capacity, it is certainly acceptable to limit the duration of practice to suit your schedule. You may choose to set a timer or to occasionally glance at a clock (the timer is usually preferable) if you wish to limit the duration to 10 minutes or 30 minutes or 60 minutes, etc. Because as you get familiar with true meditation, you will find that you naturally desire it all the time, and the formal practice can be so blissful that you may prefer to remain in seated meditation rather than moving into activity. So a timer can be helpful to limit the amount of time in formal meditation if one has other activities that are important. For example, parents, students, people with careers, etc. will probably want to limit their formal practice to an hour or two per day because of their active engagement in the world.

Sitting upright or standing are optimal postures for formal meditation. And if sitting, the optimal (for those who can achieve it) is to sit in a stable cross-legged posture on the floor or ground. However, if you are unable to practice formal meditation successfully (gently and pleasantly and naturally) in those postures, you may select a different posture that does work for you such as sitting upright in a chair, sitting upright with back support, reclining, and even lying down. The more the spine is resting against something and the more reclining one is, the greater the likelihood of falling asleep. in other words, these non-optimal postures actually make meditation more challenging. But you can make it work no matter what your circumstances. There was a time when I could only meditate while lying down. You have to start where you are.

During this formal practice, relax the body deeply, but don’t collapse the body. So if you are sitting upright, really be upright and well-aligned. This actually will support you in deeper relaxation. Similarly, if you are standing, use a traditional standing meditation posture such as a basic qi gong standing meditation posture which you can find described well in Ken Cohen’s book The Way of Qigong and given a more thorough coverage in The Way of Energy by Master Lam Kam Chuen. If you are reclining or lying down, I recommend against closing the eyes unless you are quite advanced because you will fall asleep most likely with eyes closed. But you can and should still relax the body deeply while remaining very awake.

Simple bare attention means not grasping. Content appears and disappears in the space of awareness. There is no particular object of focus.

Maintaining that kind of bare attention is quite challenging, especially for novices. So watching the breath is a very good practice. Don’t judge the breath or try to control the breath. Just watch it. When thoughts arise, let them come and go. If you find yourself distracted, again watch the breath.

When you are done with the formal practice, transition mindfully, careful not to fall into unconscious violence such as throwing the body around in space without gentleness and intentionality.

Challenge yourself to see how long you can remain aware of yourself and life with bare attention. You will likely find that you lapse into unconsciousness and mindless activities and reactions fairly quickly and perhaps for quite some time before you notice. When you notice, if it has been one minute or one hour or even longer, don’t judge yourself or waste time on negativities. Be grateful that you again became aware of yourself, and challenge yourself to see how long you can remain as bare awareness. Repeat this until the next formal practice.

What if you are distracted by physical discomfort?

Often, we find it difficult to practice meditation – either formal or informal- because we are quite distracted by physical discomfort. That is, we try to sit, but our knees hurt or our back hurts or our head hurts, so we try lying down, but we still hurt or else we fall asleep. Or daily activities – even basic things like sitting, walking, talking, eating, etc. – are experienced as so uncomfortable that it seems difficult or impossible to rest as bare attention. The attention seems to be pulled to the discomfort.

First of all, that discomfort – whether it is perceived as annoyance or unbearable pain – is actually a product of the mind. It is not separate from the very mind that is the vehicle for meditation. So it is not actually an obstacle. And with the right understanding it can be brought into the meditation and it can be quite a wonderful teacher.

So I recommend that you observe your mind to see the many beliefs and assumptions and fears it is projecting as the discomfort. The more you come into right relationship with the mind, the less discomforts you will perceive.

With that said, there are also other practices we can make use of to help with this. Among them, I recommend that most people start with an introduction to basic principles of Somatics. I have been producing video lessons for years on this subject, and I believe that the quality and clarity has steadily increased over time. Even though I know there is still quite a lot I would like to improve the presentation of the material to make it clearer and more concise, there are now some pretty good introductions found on my YouTube channel. Among them is a Move Into Stillness meeting from May 3, 2022 which apparently I thought was a good one because I titled it as the best introduction to the subject yet. Some people have commented to me they found the April 12 meeting to be the most useful introduction. So those are probably good starting points.

Those who are particularly interested may find Thomas Hanna’s book titled Somatics to be a useful supplement to my videos on the subject.

I know that some of my readers do not understand spoken English well. And so I do intend to provide some written information on this subject as well. I intend to find a way to get important videos transcribed and edited into a format that can be easily read and also translated. Once that is done, I will publish the content online and link to it from here.

Next, I recommend an introduction to Buteyko breathing. This is a style of breath training in which carbon dioxide retention increases. This shifts the nervous system to a more balanced state, is physiologically relaxing, and can quickly stop unconscious habits of overbreathing which result in unnecessary stress and tension.

I have a few videos on the subject of Buteyko breathing, one of which is a Move Into Stillness meeting from June 28, 2022.

You’ll want to practice and get comfortable with the Somatics basics and Buteyko breathing for probably at least a week before you proceed to anything else. And you might want to have a daily practice that looks something like 5-10 minutes of Buteyko breathing followed by meditation (resting as bare awareness) for up to a few minutes if possible.

After at least a week of that kind of practice, if you find that you still are distracted by discomfort, you may want to proceed to practice some pranayama such as ujjayi pranayama, which is a yogic breathing practice. You can learn more about ujjayi pranayama and pranayama more generally in Iyengar’s excellent book Light on Pranayama. However, it is a fairly dense book for a beginner. So I have provided a gentle and simple introduction in some videos, starting with Bliss Techniques – Breathing freedom – Ujjayi Pranayama.

I recommend that you then practice ujjayi pranayama for 5-10 minutes (or less) each day followed by a few minutes of meditation if possible.

Once you’ve practiced ujjayi pranayama every day for a week, if you still are distracted by discomfort, you can proceed with other lessons, including some of the following:

Move into Stillness August 2, 2022 – Uddiyana kriya

Move Into Stillness – Deep Abdominal Reset Technique

Bliss Techniques – Ujjayi Pranayama Part 2

I’m sure there’s a lot of other valuable content on my YouTube channel that could be helpful in this regard, but as of this writing, it is not cataloged. So you can help. If there is some other content I’ve produced or recommended which you have found particularly helpful, please comment below and let me know. And if ever you can provide timestamps for specific helpful content in videos, please do so that people can find the content they are looking for without necessarily having to watch an entire meeting recording.

Also, for those who are wanting more Feldenkrais-style movement explorations, I highly recommend the work of Annie Thoe. You can find her on YouTube. She also produces weekly content for members only who sponsor her work through her Patreon page. I am a member of her Patreon page, and though I rarely find that I make time for viewing her lessons (because I have many other higher priorities in my life such as producing content for you), when I do I learn wonderful and helpful things and experience somatic shifts. So I recommend that you consider that if you are wanting that kind of support because with all I am doing right now, I’m not able to prepare and present that level of high quality, gentle, effective Feldenkrais-style lessons. So Annie is an excellent source for that. (If you do opt to sign up for her Patreon page as a member, please let her know that I referred you. I am sure she’d like to know that.)

What if you find that your mind is too easily distracted or you are too emotionally agitated?

Another common obstacle to realizing the benefits of meditation is a mind that is too easily distracted. That also means emotional agitation. The mind cannot be steady because there is too much emotional agitation and too little clarity and space to allow the mind to calm.

Often if the mind is agitated, there is physical tension. So much of the advice from the previous section is quite useful here.

Additionally, if you find that you are having a particularly difficult time with mental and emotional agitation and the aforementioned recommendations don’t allow you to achieve meditation, you may need a more structured technique that specifically helps you to get a new and more useful perspective. For that purpose, Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) can be quite helpful.

NLP is a very broad category of techniques. I’ve given instruction on many different NLP techniques over the years, and you can find them in many of my books.

In the future I intend to develop this section more and provide more detailed and practical suggestions for techniques that can help you in this regard. But for now, I can recommend two books by Van Tharp. Van was the founder of the Van Tharp Institute, which trains traders (people who trade financial investments) by teaching them about themselves. So the two books I am going to recommend are focused ostensibly on helping traders, but they really provide proven, powerful advice for resolving agitated mind and emotions using simple NLP techniques. These techniques have helped thousands of traders to improve their trading, and more importantly, their lives.

Those two books I recommend are Super Traders and Trading Beyond the Matrix.

Byron Katie’s four questions and turnaround process can also be useful in this regard. So if you’re already familiar with that process and you’re competent in using it effectively, that can be helpful. But in my experience, most people don’t actually know how to use her technique, so in general I think Van’s books are better for most people. Plus, Van’s books provide a more well-rounded approach rather than a “one size fits all” technique.

Additionally, my Relax into Health, Wealth, and Happiness video series on YouTube is very supportive in this regard. It consists of guided inquiries that allow you to relax and allow your mind to reorganize itself at a higher level of functioning by removing and releasing false, negative, and limiting beliefs.

More to come…

I intend to further develop this page to provide a basic introduction to the Buddhist seven point mind training that I mentioned above. I also intend to cover that topic in the Bliss Techniques video series in the future after I’ve given adequate coverage to ujjayi pranayama and perhaps some other important topics.

I also intend to include on this page an introduction to self massage. This is a practice which is highly valued in Ayurveda as well as by many Daoists and qi gong practitioners. I find it to be highly valuable, and so I will provide instruction and advice.

I may also provide some basic information about diet and nutrition because this is a subject that many people have confusion about. People often make it more important than it needs to be. People also often make it less important than it needs to be, ignoring signs that they would be wise to heed and respond intelligently to. So I intend to provide a sensible and hopefully simple recommendation for how to approach diet and nutrition to support your optimal experience and to support you in fulfilling your highest purpose in this life. Sometimes people need to rebuild and sometimes people need to reduce or moderate, but often people are trying to do the opposite of what they really need. So I intend to provide some guidelines that can help people to find the right path for them.

If you have other requests or questions, please post them in the comments section below.

How you can help

I have a lot of things I’d like to accomplish to better support the people who are seeking this knowledge. My aim is to help as many people to live their best lives as possible. I know that each of us is here to fulfill a deep desire. That desire is to know inherent goodness as fully and completely as possible.

I know that when we work together with the right knowledge and in the right spirit, miracles occur. We can initiate ripples which reach into all space and time and uplift and enrich lives in ways big and small.

I am just one person. Together we are many and we can do much more that way.

If you have benefited from this knowledge, you may want to support the sharing of this knowledge. And here are some of the ways you can help:

At present I offer meetings, recordings, essays, and more entirely by donation. I don’t turn anyone away due to money. All who are sincere in their desire to discover and live greater truth are welcome.

Your generous financial donations can help support this work. Any amount helps. Give from your heart what is true for you – no less and no more. I gladly accept donations either on a monthly recurring basis through my Patreon page or one-time donations through my PayPal donation page.I have a large amount of recorded information on YouTube, but it is not well organized or cataloged. If, when you are watching a recording (or participating in a meeting live), there is content that you find is particularly valuable, please make a note of the timestamps for that content and get that information to me along with a brief description of the content and why you find it useful.

This can be enormously helpful because then I can get the videos edited and publish shorter, focused video clips on YouTube with better titles and descriptions so that more people can find them and get the knowledge they are looking for to help themselves and their loved ones.If you have specific questions or requests for topics you’d like me to cover, please let me know.Please refer those you know who might benefit from this knowledge to the work. Perhaps this page will be a good starting point for interested people. Or maybe there is a particular video or essay that you think would be helpful to someone you know.If you have a group you’d like me to speak to online, let me know. I am happy to consider speaking to groups on any subject I am qualified to speak about provided that it may offer genuine benefit for those in attendance.I’m sure there’s a lot of help that I am not even thinking of but which could positively impact the ability to reach more people in more meaningful and helpful ways. So if you have any suggestions, please let me know.

The post Bliss Techniques – knowledge and curated methods to feel better first appeared on Joey Lott's official website.

In this essay I intend to demonstrate to you that you have been ignorant of the true nature of your problems and difficulties in life. And as such, you have necessarily also been ignorant of the correct solutions to those problems and difficulties. Due to this ignorance, you have continued to suffer even though that suffering is actually entirely optional.

Furthermore, I will reveal to you how you can help yourself to overcome your ignorance. This overcoming of ignorance is what is called knowledge, and particularly the knowledge of the true nature of the self.

The dominant level of consciousness at present appears to be a materialist level of consciousness (which I’ve called srishti-drishti in previous essays). And as such, the overwhelming majority of thinking and communication among humans is materialistic. The consequence of this is that we tend to think of our problems in materialistic terms.

There’s a quote often attributed to Einstein that states that a problem cannot be solved at the level of consciousness from which the problem was created. And certainly this seems like a truthful statement. Obviously, for example, the Old Testament teaching of “an eye for an eye” only makes the whole world blind, as has been repeatedly noted by various people since that Biblical instruction was first given. So we actually know that staying at the same level of consciousness that produces a problem will not only fail to solve it, but it will actually make for worse problems.

Yet despite the obviousness of this truth, most of us fail to change our level of consciousness. We stay stuck at the same materialist level of consciousness. And we completely fail to even recognize where we are going wrong. Instead, we perceive ourselves as victims of some sort or another. Either we perceive that we are victims of other people, of Fate, or in some other fashion.

So the very first thing we have to see is that our materialist perspective is inadequate and perhaps even problematic. This perhaps easier to glimpse than it is to fully accept and live by. But we have to at least first glimpse it. Then we can discover how to accept and live by it.

The materialist perspective insists that the problems are material and therefore the solutions must also be material. The tragically comic thing about this is that when we do this, we fail to recognize that we are actually working a kind of magic spell which hypnotizes us into believing that the material perspective is the absolute truth of the matter. That same magic – when properly understood – can be worked with consciously to produce quite different results.

Materialist problems are things like finances, other people, physical diseases, viruses, bacteria, neurotransmitter imbalances, politicians, governments, guns, and so forth. And the solutions are equally materialist – legislation, exploiting, mining, manufacturing, mobilizing, withholding, imprisoning, etc.

I won’t deny that materialistic consciousness has its own kind of power. Certainly, we can see the results of this culture’s materialistic technology – air planes, wireless phones, etc. But it comes at a cost because materialistic consciousness is inefficient and produces more problems than it solves. Hence, even though humans may be living longer than in recorded history, we also have good reason to believe that human lives are less fulfilling and meaningful than ever. And even though people can text one another practically instantaneously all over the world, it comes at the cost of lessened meaningful social connection and thus increasingly a sense of isolation for the majority. Not to mention the devastating effects on indigenous human, rural human, and non-human life from the massing mining, transportation, and manufacturing (as well as disposal of) modern technological objects.

By the way, here’s something to consider. Using the technology available today at what we have been taught to think of as the cutting edge of technological accomplishment through all of history, it would be likely impossible to re-build the great pyramids of Giza. Materialistic consciousness believes that the great pyramids were built by relatively primitive people about 4500 years ago. Materialistic consciousness also believes that over the intervening 4500 years humans have made enormous technological progress. So obviously there is a major conflict between these two beliefs held at once by Western consciousness. And this may well be why modern humans are largely schizophrenic (without knowing or acknowledging as much – but this is surely why people are willing to go to war for peace because they hold these conflicting beliefs but cannot manage to examine the conflict truthfully because they unconsciously fear that it will be unbearable to see beyond the false beliefs).

If we begin to see these conflicting beliefs we subconsciously hold, we can start to liberate ourselves from the materialistic level of consciousness, and we can thereby open to a new level of consciousness which may reveal something very different (and quite likely something much better).

For example, if I believe that my culture has made huge technological strides (proven by such feats as space flight and nuclear weapons) and yet a supposedly primitive people 4500 years ago built something that my advanced technology today cannot replicate, let me look at that. It seems unlikely that both of these can be true at the same time. At least not within the construct of linear time that I also find myself believing in. So it seems likely that the truth is something different than what I have formulated.

I will propose some different possibilities.

* Ancient Egyptians were functioning from a different level of consciousness than the materialistic one. From that level of consciousness they were able to accomplish things in ways that are foreign to our way of thinking. For example, perhaps they had awareness of natural laws and knew how to tap into those in ways we aren’t presently aware of. Much as modern humans have learned to convert energy to electricity and transmit it at a distance and much as modern humans have learned to release energy from an atom, perhaps Ancient Egyptians knew how to harness natural forces that could produce levitation or other phenomena that we don’t consider.

* The great pyramids were not built by humans, but rather by the gods. The gods could exist primarily in a different dimension or realm which overlaps with the physical realm, which allows them to interact with this realm and produce material results.

* The great pyramids were not built. They exist as a natural part of the Earth.

You might say, “Okay, those are some interesting speculations, but I can’t know they are absolutely true.” And perhaps that is true (and perhaps it is not), but I will counter by asking you this: in the absence of certainty, why default to the materialist view? The materialist view results in great harm. It’s demonstrated itself to be a poor religion.

Notice that none of the three possibilities I proposed above require factories, fossil fuel, carbon emissions, etc. None of them require enslavement, murder, theft, or other unsavory behaviors.

But the materialist view ends up requiring all those unwanted things. The materialist view says that I need stuff and stuff is limited and so I have to do what I have to do to get the stuff I need. Which is why we all know that plastic is not good for anyone (not good for humans, not good for wildlife, etc.) and yet we continue to buy everything wrapped in plastic. It’s why we know that all the techno-fixes produce more problems than they fix (for example, electric vehicles produce more greenhouse gasses in their lifetimes than do gas-fueled vehicles), but we keep on accepting the technological “advances”. Consider this for a moment, how many people had smart phones 25 year ago? The answer is zero. Not a single person had a smart phone at that time. And yet now, just 25 years later, a huge percentage of the human population considers the indispensable.

I’m not pointing out these things to try to make you feel guilty. Please understand that guilt is just part of the very same viscous cycle. Guilt doesn’t produce positive changes as long as people remain at the same level of consciousness. For example, people feel guilty about using so much plastic, and so they “solved” this problem through recycling programs. But wide-spread recycling has been happening for around 30 years and in that time the amount of plastic produced and used has increased, not decreased. The guilt did not solve the problem. The guilt just invented yet another problem (because now not only is more plastic being produced (“guilt free”), but in addition now there have to be new factories and new international systems (like transporting materials for recycling from the US the China) in order to recycle stuff. Again, see that as long as we stay at the materialistic level of consciousness, the problems will not get solved.

And I’m using examples that are not personal to illustrate the point, but please understand that this applies to your personal life every bit as much. The materialist view says that disease is caused by tiny bad guys, so if you feel unwell, you need to go to a doctor to get a technological evaluation (blood tests, saliva tests, urine tests, etc.) and then get prescribed the right material substance which will kill the bad guys. The materialist view says that if you feel insecure, it’s because you don’t have enough money (or something else) and so you need to take some “real world” actions to get the money which will then produce the feeling of security which you lack.

All if which leads me to ask you this question: How well is the materialist way of seeing life working out for you?

Because you are reading this, I can know that you are living at a high level of physical affluence. You probably have on-demand access to clean drinking water from a tap within your very own domicile. You probably have on-demand access to lighting day and night. You may even enjoy heating and cooling systems that operate by merely pushing buttons.

And yet despite the incredible level of affluence had by an enormous number of people today, those same people have relatively very low qualities of life. Rates of anxiety, depression, and meaninglessness are unthinkably high. In fact, in any other time in the past 2000 years, it seems likely that such levels of despair would be absolutely unthinkable. If the mass levels of despair had reached even half today’s levels, we could probably have expected people historically to have done something fairly drastic – mass migrations, revolts against rulers, etc.

But as of this writing, it seems that the majority are still entranced by the materialist utopian vison (or the postmodern malaise of complete relativity and pointlessness) and so keep scrolling though endless drivel on their devices, still secretly hoping the next big thing will be the solution to their miseries.

So I’ll answer the question I just asked about how well the materialist way of seeing life is working out. It’s working out very badly. Not just for you. For everyone.

There are several stories of the challenges the Buddhists faced in establishing the Dharma in Tibet. I’m telling you this story for a reason, so stay with me here. In several cases, the kings of Tibet longed to establish the Dharma in Tibet. They would manage to attract some high-level Buddhists from the Buddhist centers in India to move to Tibet and teach the Dharma. But they were met by elemental hostility – the wrath of demons – who would cause devastating natural disasters. (This is also reminiscent of how Vishwamitra requested the young Rama to come with him to root out all the hostile asuras from the dandaka vana.) In each case, they needed to being in a much higher level master to establish the Dharma.

In one such story there was a king in Tibet in or around the year 1000 AD who repeatedly requested for an Indian master named Atisha to come to Tibet because of these kinds of demonic problems facing the establishment of the Dharma in Tibet. Atisha was somewhat aged and had already done a great deal of traveling, and so he resisted going to Tibet. All the king’s attempts up to that point had failed.

But then the king was captured by his enemies and held for ransom. The enemies said they would ransom the king for an amount of gold at least equal in size to the king’s entire body. The king’s nephew got together the gold and brought it to the enemies to exchange for his uncle. But the king refused, telling his nephew that he (the king) was old and had completed his life therefore the ransom was not worth the gold, and he instructed his nephew to use the gold to bring Atisha to Tibet.

And so the king died in the prison of the enemy and the nephew managed to bring Atisha to Tibet where he overcame the demons and established the Dharma. (You should understand that in this story almost certainly the king has, in effect, been transferred to the gold itself. So Atisha is not attracted to the gold, per se. Rather, he is willing to go when the king has made this sacrifice because that sacrifice was necessary to establish the Dharma. So you will benefit from thinking a little more metaphorically and not so concretely.)

Now, how does this story connect with the topic of these essay? It is an exact description of the situation we face in regard to materialism. Materialism is a demon which has overtaken human consciousness. There is a great and noble king – let’s call this the noblest, truest manifestation of your egoic self – who wishes to establish the Dharma, which is to say the truth which will establish peace, harmony, love, and goodness within human consciousness.

However, this king is met with terrible resistance by the demon of materialism. The demon produces endless “natural disasters” – all the things we think we must attend to at the material level. Hence why most modern people feel they are constantly “putting out fires”. Financial stresses, concerns over physical health, relationship dramas, etc.

On our own, we cannot solve this problem because what we believe we are is actually still at the material level of consciousness. The only way to remedy this is to bring in the master from where the Dharma is already established. And to bring this master, we must be willing to sacrifice the current king. No matter how noble the king may be, no matter how much attachment we might have to this sense of “me”, this must be sacrificed or the master cannot enter.

Now, this “me” that you identify with is a material “me”. It is a particular body and a particular configuration of knowledge and skills. It is a particular narrative about the self. And this “me” is terrified of the so-called materialist objective reality because that objective reality might hurt you or kill you at any moment. So when the demon of materialistic consciousness warns you that it might cause you to become sick or get hurt or die, you tend to react and select from a predetermined set of materialistic options. All of which keeps you stuck at that level.

The remedy is to sacrifice the materialist sense of “me”. In other words, when fear arises, you must refuse to allow yourself to be ransomed. Instead, you must see that this “me” is old and has served its purpose. Now it is time for the master to enter and establish the Dharma. Which means that like the king, you give up on the wrong fantasy of getting out of prison and being a successful king again. Because that’s not going to happen. As long as that “me” is king, no matter how noble it may be, it cannot successfully establish the Dharma. The demon of materialism will continue to reign supreme as long as you fight for your king.

Here’s a line from the New Testament which affirms the same in which Jesus says, “in anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

By now, hopefully you can agree that the veil of materialism is harming you – at least as long as you are ignorantly choosing it. And hopefully you’re also seeing that you cannot expect to rid yourself of materialism with materialism. That is like trying to fight fire with fire. And perhaps you can even see that the “me” which wants to be victorious in this endeavor and enjoy the fruits of that success is actually a materialistic character which cannot remain if we are truly to invite the higher level of consciousness to enter.

So now we are faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, we can see that we must allow this higher level of consciousness. But on the other hand, we are too attached to this materialistic consciousness to allow that higher level of consciousness. We must sacrifice that materialistic consciousness, but we’re afraid to do so because as far as we believe, that materialistic consciousness is indistinguishable from who we are. In other words, we’re afraid we’ll have to endure the very worst suffering imaginable if we were to sacrifice that materialistic consciousness because we mistake it for ourselves.

Well, it seems that this is quite a pickle. We seem to be rather stuck in quite a terrible way because we know the problem and the solution, but we seem completely unable to accept the remedy. And, in fact, the more we observe ourselves sincerely, the more we’ll see that we’re apparently working against ourselves all day long!

This is perhaps quite a shock. But it is an essential shock. We must see that we have a problem that is completely insoluble from the level of consciousness we are currently identified with. And we must further see that this problem is not merely maintaining itself. It is actually increasing. And we are the unwitting agents of that worsening. It is as if we are hitting ourselves repeatedly with a very painful object, but we seem to be unable to stop it.

Are we doomed to suffer interminably? Is awakening merely awakening to the suffering but without any agency to put a stop to it?

I tell you that suffering is not required. There are ways you can help yourself.

As I’ve described in previous essays, there are a variety of methods which you can use to help yourself. Which you choose depends in part on your temperament. But generally, the highest and most direct method is what is called self-inquiry, jnana yoga, philosophy (love of wisdom/truth), and by other names. And, in fact, I believe that this highest method is always pointed to by all the other methods.

For example, in the practice of some types of pranayama and yoga the aim is to produce a spontaneous retention of the breath or at least a completely spontaneous and tranquil breath which is virtually imperceptible. This extreme reduction of breath or cessation of breath results in a stilling of the mind. This is a samadhi. There is conscious awareness without an object. This is divine union.

That might sound like a life-changing spiritual experience to one who has not consciously experienced such a state. But in truth, it happens all the time. So it’s not in and of itself a big deal in one sense. And definitely there are many yogic practitioners who regularly achieve such a state…perhaps even learning to sustain it for relatively long time…who nevertheless receive no obvious benefit from the experience.

In other traditions a person may practice deity worship or contemplative prayer and also enter into an ecstatic samadhi state. But this does not in and of itself guarantee particular benefits.

Something else is needed to give the benefits. And I am proposing that the something else which is required is jnana – self knowledge. Ultimately, whatever the approach taken, one must inquire intimately into the nature of the self and see clearly that the self is not what is thought.

With experiences of samadhi, at least those of a temporary sort, it is important to activate discernment between what is true (eternal, unconditional) and false (temporary, conditional). This discernment is called viveka in traditional Indian thought. (And Swami Vivekananda’s name means the bliss of discernment between what is true and false. In other words, this viveka gives rise to bliss.)

Samadhi is a particularly powerful state for viveka because the thinking mind and all its objects and problems are absent…and yet you remain present. So this clearly shows that you are not the mind and all its objects. Or, put more clearly, the mind and its objects don’t define you (though neither are they separate from you.)

But we can cultivate viveka always, not only during samadhi. And generally we can say that more viveka means more self knowledge which means less ignorance which means less suffering which means more bliss.

So certainly we should want to cultivate viveka always.

The general method for cultivating viveka is philosophy or self-inquiry. There are many variations on this theme. Among them, of course, Ramana’s “Who am I?” inquiry. But that is not the only possible variation that works. So we may need to educate ourselves on various ways of cultivating viveka. A comprehensive (or even partial) examination of those variations is well beyond the scope of this essay. However, we can start by understanding basically what viveka might be and how this brings about the desired effects.

Discernment means we are distinguishing between two or more things such as a foreground and background, desirable and undesirable, etc. You cannot discern oneness because there’s nothing to distinguish it from. So discernment is happening in the field of the mind.

It is said that the Buddha offered 84,000 teachings all aimed at the same thing, which is the middle way in which all opposites are merged. That middle way is the highest fulfillment of viveka because as we discern between true and false, we are continually looking at our reference for truth and getting clearer and clearer such that the false are subsumed by the true. Of the 84,000 teachings, it is widely held that one teaching is the most essential among them. It is called Seven Point Mind Training.

The key phrase is “Mind Training”. This tells us about the cultivation of viveka. It is in the mind. For the mind is both the source of suffering and the source of liberation. All depends on the state of the mind. Is the mind trained? And if so, is it trained in a good way that reflects the truth? To the degree we suffer we are identified wit a mind that is poorly trained such that it reflects much falseness. For truth is ever true and clear and free, ever undefiled by the false. The false is not independent of the true, but it is imagined wrongly to be separate. And this wrong imagination produces attachment and aversion, which is suffering.

The more we suffer, the more afraid we are of the mind, and the more we try to distance ourselves from it, ignore it, etc. So the suffering increases. We become denser and denser, more sunk into materialism.

So we must befriend the mind and stop going to war with it or trying to kill it. Even if you have glimpsed the ultimate emptiness of the mind, in the next moment when you again assume the reality of the mind, you are suffering if you try to avoid it.

Instead of all our usual strategies, we need to train the mind. And to train the mind we must be in right relationship with it. We must be fearless, patient, generous, compassionate.

The first thing to see is that you unconsciously divide your mind into good and bad, safe and unsafe, pleasant and unpleasant, desirable and undesirable, self and other, etc. You desire one part and reject the other part. Immediately this produces anxiety and distress. This gives rise to anger, greed, fear, worry, and everything else you don’t want.

The next thing you want to recognize is that in truth, the thoughts and images which arise in consciousness have no inherent meaning. They are simply vibrations or light or sound. They are pure energy set into some coherent motion. But the judgments about good and bad and all the rest are not inherent in the thoughts and images. Rather the judgments are the result of the pairing of those thoughts or images with particular feelings which you associate as being indicative of good, bad, etc.

You can try this out for yourself. Think of something pleasant. How do you know it is pleasant? You’ll see that the feeling that accompanies the thought or image is a feeling you associate with pleasant. Then think of something unpleasant. And likewise notice that it is the accompanying feeling which you actually associate as being unpleasant.

The thoughts/images and feelings co-arise, but the are not otherwise related. In the Yoga Vasishta one of the most-repeated references is to a bird alighting a coconut palm and coincidentally a coconut falling from the tree. The mind leaps to the false conclusion that the bird caused the coconut to fall whereas, in fact, they merely coincided and no causal relationship exists.

This habit of mistaking relationships and meanings that don’t actually exist is how the world takes shape. When two phenomena co-arise the tendency of mind is to link them and imagine a relationship between them such as causation or identification. Since phenomena are ultimately arises from, as, and in consciousness, think linking of phenomena results in the same two phenomena co-arising with more frequency. As Hebb’s rule points out in neurological terms, “neurons that fire together, wire together”. This is an observation of the same thing.

The more often the two phenomena co-arise, the stronger the association, and it becomes accepted as “fact”. Hence we think that the bird alighting the coconut palm causes the coconut to fall. And we also think that certain experiences are inherently unpleasant, bad, etc.

Obviously, we have many of these kinds of associations which we have accepted as “Facts”. So many that we are completely blind to the vast majority of them. And some of them may be relatively useful, of course. For example, it is generally fairly useful to accept as a fact that “gravity will keep working” because that allows for some goundedness in life. Whereas, if we are always anxious about floating into space, we might have a harder time. So at least for the moment, that might be a useful association. And to the degree that an association allows us to fulfill our highest purpose, we can call that a truthful reflection.

But obviously many of those associations are not very helpful. They get us into a lot of problems…and repeatedly. For example, if a person accepts it as a fact that anyone who does not subscribe to the same political ideology as they do is evil, that is going to almost certainly produce a lot of problems. Or if a person accepts as a fact that the chronic pain they experience is caused by some irreparable damage caused by an accident in the past, that is going to lead to problems. And these unhelpful associations which interfere with us fulfilling our highest purpose are what we can call false reflections.

So we are wanting to convert our false reflections to truthful reflections. That is the essence of mind training.

I’ll go into more detail on this subject in subsequent essays. For now, I recommend that you simply are aware of what you’re assuming to be true. As much as possible, question your assumptions. Be willing to see that they are not ultimately true, but are simply based on the associations you hold in mind.

In particular, be aware of the assumptions you have which result in painful experiences. When you are experiencing anger, fear, envy, greed, etc., pause and notice what you’re assuming to be true. There are assumptions which underly the experiences, and when the experience is painful, the assumption is a false reflection. So you want to become aware of it. That is the first step in converting the false to the true.

For those painful assumptions, one very simple-yet-effective technique is to simply observe unflinchingly within yourself. Allow the thought/image along with the associated feeling. And just openly allow and observe. Notice how you have a habit of flinching, distracting, or tensing, and do your best to relax those compulsions. Notice the feeling and where you notice it. You’ll surely notice that the feeling (since you associate it with being unwanted) has a sense of contraction (versus openness). Which means there’s some unnecessary effort being made to produce that feeling. So allow the effort to soften as much as possible. Even if you can only soften it 1%, that is enough to get started. So soften and then keep allowing the thought/image.

As you continue with this process, eventually the feeling shifts enough that the charge is taken out of the association and the link is weakened. So it is now less likely that the thought/image and feeling will co-arise. It may still happen, but the link is weakened. And as you continue to apply this same process each time they co-arise, eventually the frequency of co-arising will diminish to practically zero.

I do recommend that you use this process first with low-to-medium intensity experiences instead of high intensity. The process works equally well for all. But since your resistance to the high intensity experiences is naturally high, it can be challenging to gain skill with the method if you start with too high intensity. Once you are confident in your ability to make use of the process, you can successfully apply it to higher intensity experience.

So you now have a basic introduction to mind training and a simple process you can use to get your feet wet.

The post Recovering the sacred in a materialistic culture first appeared on Joey Lott's official website.

What I want to share with you in this essay follows on a previous essay on the subject of the necessity of starting where you are. In this essay I intend to outline a simple way of understanding the various types methods and approaches that are available to you to help yourself in liberating yourself and living wakefully.

In that previous essay I outlined three broad categories of perception and their associated states of being. Specifically, there is one state which is uniquely desirable which is characterized by such notions as bliss, harmony, naturalness, and abundance.

That “highest” state, which is called by various names such as ajata (uncreated) or samadhi (union) is both profoundly attractive and true to the very essence of our being and at the same time enormously threatening to our more common states of consciousness.

Those second two states of consciousness, in order of increasing density, are called dristhi-srishti (d-s) and srishti-drishti (s-d). D-s means that perception is form. And s-d means that material creation exists independently “out there” apart from me.

I proposed that when we can recognize that we are in a d-s state, we can best help ourselves by remaining aware of ourselves. But if we are in a s-d state, we are definitely going to want to take hold of some kind of useful process, method, narrative, or other form of authentic help to lift our state of consciousness.

In Hindu thought, these things we can take hold of to help ourselves are called yogas. Yoga has the meaning of union and is the root of the English word “yoke”, meaning to join together (as cattle are yoked together to pull something). So yogas are those ways by which we can yoke ourselves to the spirit, to the living reality, the all-in-all.

Therefore, in truth, these yogas provide means by which we can attain that highest state.

Swami Vivekananda played a very important role in bringing the systems of yoga to the West. He had a very unique training in India and he had quite a lot of exposure to Western thought, which I believe made him the perfect person to bridge the gap and bring knowledge from East to West in a way that was relatively easy for Westerners to digest. It was a spiritual science. That was the emphasis. Yes, it is spiritual, but it is also systematized and appeals to the Western rational materialist in a strange way.

Vivekananda presented the yogas as four-fold. And for our purposes, this is a useful way to organize it. So you needn’t think that Vivekanada was right or that he was an avatar or any such thing to appreciate the organization and the knowledge he has gifted us with. So on just those grounds alone we can have gratitude and receive the knowledge in that spirit.

The four yogas that Vivekananda outlined are as follows:

* Karma yoga

* Bhakti yoga

* Raja yoga

* Jnana (pronounced gi-yana) yoga

Karma means action. The theory of karma says that everything which happens in creation has a cause. The cause is some other action. That action therefore also has a cause. And that cause is also an action, which therefore has a cause, ad infinitum. Karma does not connotate bad. It just means action. Good and bad are judgments, not karma.

Now, obviously, when you follow this theory of karma to where it is obviously pointing, you will realize (if you are willing and ready to see it) that no action ever actually exists because there is no first cause since that cause would have to have a cause of its own. In other words, this leads you to the ajata vision. This present reality is undeniably real. But at the same time, the mind has gone silent because it is clear that no commentary could ever begin to approach the wholeness of this as it already is.

So that is one way to take hold of karma yoga. Just see that fully. And stay there. That is the fulfillment of karma yoga. And very fast.

But most of the time, people don’t seem to do that. So they need the remedial form of karma yoga. Which means that you should do stuff. Now, you might say, “But I’m already doing stuff. Does that mean that I’m doing karma yoga?”

And the answer to that is, no, you are not doing karma yoga unless you are doing the action with intention. And that intention should be one thing only. Call it God, call it Self, call it Kali (as did one of Vivekananda’s teachers, Ramakrishna)…whatever you call it, your intention is to do all action to serve that living presence.

But if you cannot seem to do that, which most people cannot seem to do most of the time, then you can do another more remedial form of karma yoga, which is do actions to serve others. Not to serve causes. Serve others. Be of authentic service to other people. This is called seva, or selfless service.

And lest you think that seva sounds unpleasant, keep in mind that this is a powerful practice endorsed by many traditions as having the potential for ecstatic union.

Incidentally, on that note, let me briefly mention that ecstatic union or samadhi is surely the naturally good state for humans. Surely that should be obvious that the happiness that we can glimpse just by imagining the possibility of ecstatic union proves its natural goodness. We are deeply attracted to it.

That divine union is truly natural. To the degree that we are not natural, we will not experience that samadhi. So that should be a wakeup call for everyone who is not experiencing samadhi. It means you’re lying. It means you’re hurting yourself. It means you’re numbing yourself and confusing yourself. But it’s not necessary that you should do those things. You only do them because you’re asleep to that degree with which you do those things.

And another note about that is that samadhi is not limited to a state experiencing while sitting cross-legged with eyes closed. That is one class of samadhi. But Ramana told of many classes of samadhi. The “highest” of these is Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi is that in which the state of samadhi is maintained unbrokenly regardless of experience. In other words, the experience is not separate from the awareness. Divine union. Yoga.

In other words, you can be truly fulfilled and truly at peace not merely as a result of having the wholeness of reality align with your idea of how it should be. Rather, the seamless wholeness of life Is simply being.

One major obstacle, of course, is the attachment to the false selves we think we have to maintain. Every time we attach to a self-image or self-concept instead of the seamless wholeness of which those are aspects, we fracture our perception and cast ourselves into hell. And the postmodern hell is a hell of unthinkably infinite hostile emptiness. So we recoil in horror and tend to grasp ever more franticly at the images and concepts apart from the whole, which sends us more deeply into hell.

So we need yogas to help us. Without the yogas, we will tend to continue to fall into our vision of hell simply because that is the dominant energy on the Earth. But when you stop thinking of Earth as a planet on the edges of a vast and terrifyingly empty universe and instead think of it as a living Elemental Being, a Goddess, then something remarkable happens. A ray of cosmic light pours into hell and right into your soul and you realize in your very being that you are not alone. You know it in a way that no one can talk you out of because it is more real than anything anyone could say to you. And that light attracts you and you keep connecting with it and loving it, and it fills more of your life, shining even on the dark and ugly bits and making even your sins a blessing.

That is bhakti yoga. Bhakti is the yoga of love and devotion to the Divine Being. And it is beautiful. It is the yoga of the heart. It really does reveal a blessed divine light right here in this life. In Bhatki yoga, one’s devotion draws the Divine Being more richly into the experience of the devotee. Where the devotee had been hardened by skepticism and cynicism, bhakti softens the shell and tenderly sooths and draws out the soul from the interior into the sensual world which is now saturated with Divine Being.

Bhakti yoga is not the adoration of a god who exists only in the mind or only in heaven or only in some other realm. Bhakti yoga is the intimate relationship with Nature herself. It is to touch and be touched by Nature and to know yourself as inseparable from her. And therefore, bhakti yoga is worship of what we could call archetypes. And at the highest level, all archetypes are known to resolve into one Divine Being with all the archetypes as the “parts” of her body. Since Nature is immanent (it’s unavoidably real here and now), our present experience (both sensual and cognitive and otherwise) is her body. And that includes everything we think we experience as discrete things, places, events, people, qualities, the conceptual component parts of things, etc. So, for example, one aspect of the Supreme Goddess is Earth (both as a place and as an element). Another aspect is Abundance. Another aspect is Beauty. Another aspect is Time. Another aspect is Mother. Another aspect is Father. There are, I suppose, infinitely many aspects. I don’t claim to be a great seer, and I don’t know what the great seers have said in that regard, so I might be wrong. But there are certainly a lot of aspects.

And you can worship any of them. In fact, you DO worship many of them. But you don’t know it usually when you’re doing it. I’ll explain that more in a moment.

First, you need to understand that to worship is to give your attention and devotion to something. And Hindu thought tells us of what they would call a natural law, which is that what you put your attention on grows. We see that this seems to be true in our natural lives. If I don’t give any attention to roses, they won’t grow. If I give just enough attention to plant the rosebush, maybe some roses will grow, but maybe over time it won’t do so well (though it also might do well…so there’s an important element of Fate at play here too, not just forced attention). Yet if I continually give it the right kind of attention, it is likely to continue to grow in the sense of growing into its essence fully expressed, not necessarily endlessly growing bigger.

Now, ask yourself: what do I tend to give a lot of attention to day after day? Maybe you’ll see that you give a lot of attention to worry, fear, anxiety, stress, resentments, etc. And then notice that surely commensurate with your attention, those things have indeed grown in potency and frequency in your life. Sometimes those things grow so much that they virtually block our view of any other possibilities, any alternatives beyond our narrowly-defined idea of reality.

So then I’m saying you’ve been worshipping worry, fear, anxiety, stress, etc. And to the degree that people collectively worship certain archetypes or forms of the Divine Being, the world is made into a temple of that deity. So that our present collective world seems to be littered with temples of Fear, Hostility, and the like.

You may not be able to directly change other people. And fortunately, that’s not your job. But what is possible is to change your own worship. You can choose to worship Truth, Peace, and other deities who speak to your soul.

When you worship the deities who speak to your soul, you must approach them sincerely and humbly. Don’t have the attitude of “you owe me something!” Instead, look for them. They are just waiting for you to find them. Their temples are here, hidden in plain sight. You have to learn to see in the right way. Then you see your Beloved in your very world. You see your Beloved in every moment, every experience. You cannot see your Beloved in this way if you insist on your idea of the Beloved. You must get to know her.

Practically-speaking, this can take many forms. In Indian traditions there are deep levels of knowledge about many of the deities as well as technical knowledge about the attributes, character, elemental affinities, color affinities, and their manifestations as sound. A lot of that knowledge is extremely powerful and can be easily misused and harm the practitioner. So in general, it is important to practice those things under the guidance of a highly knowledgeable teacher who you trust completely.

But that does not exclude you from bhakti yoga. If there are any forms of the Divine Being which speak to your soul, worship those. They could be traditional forms such as Gods or Goddesses from any tradition, including Christian. There is also a tradition in India of worshipping the sadguru (teacher of truth) in this way, which is said to confer the same benefits as worshipping the supreme Divine Being directly. That is often somewhat difficult for our Western sensibilities, but it is one option. But bhakti yoga needn’t be deist in that conventional sense. If the sky speaks to your soul, worship the sky. If the ocean speaks to your soul, worship the ocean. If time speaks to your soul, worship time. If love speaks to your soul, worship love. Incidentally, all these – sky, ocean, time, and love – have traditional archetypal forms personified as deities in various cultures. So the benefit of looking to those traditions is that they give you a rich amount of support for deeper reflection and worship. The traditional symbols and images of avatars, Gods, and Goddesses are powerful methods of divination in the sense that they can help you to see your essential self and access divine union simply through contemplation. Yes, that includes the Christian cross.

The main thing I want to emphasize is this: know what you are worshipping and be sure that you are worshipping what is truly speaking to your soul. If you worship things simply because that’s what others do and you don’t want to stand out or be weird or rock the boat or look like a fool or be wrong or any of the millions of other shallow excuses we let rule our lives, then you’ll get more of those things, and your life will affirm the qualities of what you worship.

The examples of this are endless, but I’ll give you a few to make it clear. One might be a person who worships a particular form in a particular way because of cultural norms – such as worshipping a patriarchal vengeful God who threatens eternal damnation if you don’t comply perfectly with his every whim – even if that does not truly speak to your soul. Or on the flip side, a person could find that such a God truly does speak to their soul, but because that form of the divine is not held in high esteem by the person’s peers or family, they don’t worship their authentic form of the divine.

Another example might be a person whose soul sings at the mere thought of a forest, but day after day they go to a job doing something that sucks their soul just to make money to pay for their housing and food so they can keep working the job they don’t want to work. Meanwhile, their soul withers, and the forest remains a dream divorced from the sensual reality. They haven’t realized the dream. They just dreamt it. And the difference is night and day. Because a life merely dreamt is no life at all, and the soul will be malnourished from such abuse.

Another example might be a person who has a song in them left unsung for fear of ridicule, embarrassment, shame, criticism, etc. Another example might be a person who leads the charge on some “great social movement” only because they get a cheap thrill from the sense of power, but the actual practices and even the many of the principles of the social movement are actually abhorrent.

It’s what almost everybody is doing all day long

And bhakti yoga is the remedy. If your soul is withering, you need bhakti. Look to your heart and listen to what is true. Listen to the message as it thumps its truth in the physical heart and as it whispers that same truth to the soul. One unanimous synchronicity of spiritual aliveness. Then stay true to that.

Don’t betray your Beloved because you are afraid or weak or feeling sorry for yourself. Love your Beloved so much that you confess it all. Confess your fear, weakness, and self-pity. Confess it and give thanks for you are not alone and you are comforted.

The hardened soul who needs it most will resist it most, thinking that it must “all be self-deception” and think themselves too educated for such primitive nonsense. But their heart is hard and they hurt so badly, and this is the best remedy if only they will start sincerely and then continue. Confess to your Beloved that you don’t believe. Confess that you are afraid to be a fool. Confess that you fear your weakness. Confess that you are terrified of being alone. And feel the truth of being fully received without any judgment. For your Beloved does not judge. Your Beloved accepts you unconditionally. And you’ll see that it is really real. It is true. It’s honestly real. Just not in the way you thought it would be.

Let’s next look more closely at raja yoga, which means royal yoga. As I understand it, this is how Vivekananda described to the yoga of Patanjali. I have not read any of Vivekananda’s writings extensively, so I don’t know all the details about how he defined raja yoga, but I do know about Patanjali’s yoga.

Patanjali’s yoga is a system of eight steps leading to divine union. The first few steps are moral precepts and specific suggestions for purification of the veils that cloud spiritual vision. The moral precepts are non-violence (ahimsa), truthfulness (satya), non-stealing (asteya), practicing the Presence (brahmacharya is sometimes translated as continence, and it is misunderstood to mean avoidance of sexual activity, but Brahma means the Divine Being and acharya means one who practices and teaches, so it’s not really about sexual activity as much as it is about remaining committed to the Divine Being through all activity and non-activity), and non-grasping (aparigraha which is sometimes translated as non-convetousness). The suggestions for purification are things such as practicing contentment and studying the Scriptures. Seva (selfless service rendered to the Lord) is also a method of purification.

Please understand that none of this has to look like something extraordinarily difficult, strenuous, or unpleasant. This is not about doing penance. It is about letting your soul be unburdened of the unnecessary baggage you’ve unwittingly carried around. It is a joyous thing. When done correctly, it is entirely wonderful. It simply means that when you observe that you are indulging a habit of violence within yourself – violence in your thinking or intentions, for example – that hurts you and it is antithetical to the life of the soul. So in noticing that, you can begin to choose non-violence, which is not so much about your outer actions as it is about the violence or non-violence within your psychic system. That violence is ultimately anti-life, and if you indulge the habit, you are worshipping that self-violence which hurts you. So it is a great relief and blessing to learn to soften and release that self-harming fixation and to open to a life-affirming reality.

The third step is the practice of physical postures, which are called asanas. These are the kinds of things you see people doing in yoga classes – “warrior pose”, “sun salutations”, and the like. And this step is to prepare the body for doing the next step, which is energy work called pranayama (literally control or harnessing of life energy) which may involve breathing techniques, visualization techniques, energetic seals, and so forth for the purpose of regulating the energy in the various bodies (the yogic system speaks of five bodies or sheathes which surround the soul) which will allow you to feel better so that you can proceed to the remaining steps. (I believe that for most of us, Somatics in the tradition of Feldenkrais and/or Thomas Hanna offer a more suitable substitute for asanas [or at least a prerequisite to the practice of asanas], and I have published many episodes of a series called Move Into Stillness on my YouTube channel which explores this subject is much more detail. One such video which gives perhaps a good introduction to the subject is found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyEaq_Q8538. And on the subject of pranayama, I have another series on YouTube called Bliss Techniques, and you can find the first in a series covering a basic pranayama technique called uddiyana pranayama here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdnKOx-yOUc)

Again, you don’t need to think this has to be exotic and rigidly defined. The basic idea here is that if you aren’t feeling good in your body and energetically, you’ll have a hard time with meditation, which is the remaining steps of the process Patanjali defines.

Patanjali defines meditation in multiple steps steps. First is the withdrawal of the senses. This doesn’t mean that the registering of sensation has to stop. Rather, the belief that “I am a separate observer of these senses which are of the exterior world” must become transparent. You need only recognize that these divisions in consciousness are false and that there is an as-yet unknown mystery happening and that you cannot grasp it with the senses. Rather, you can know it intimately “interiorly”.

What follows are dharana (concentration) which naturally leads to dhyana (meditation properly, which is a blissful experience) and then that is followed by samadhi. The samadhi of Patanjali’s yoga may be of various classes, but eventually it must yield sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi. Basically, this is a progressive absorption and union.

Obviously, the raja yoga path is somewhat technical and step-by-step. This is an excellent path for those who need discipline. If you struggle from a lack of good discipline in your life, perhaps this path can be very helpful. It is also very helpful when one is not feeling inspired to seva or bhakti. In such a case, perhaps going for a conscious, slow walk followed by some conscious, slow, satisfying breathing which clears and calms the mind and body followed by meditation in the form of watching the breath or silently reciting an inspired phrase or gazing at a single point or even lying down on the back and deeply relaxing the body while remaining fully awake (called savasana or corpse pose) even for just a few minutes could bring refreshment to the soul…at least a brief pause in which you allow yourself to merge with the natural essence of yourself in silence and full appreciation.

And what of jnana yoga? This is what could be thought of as the philosophical approach. Ramana Maharshi is considered by many to be a supreme exemplar of the love of jnana (wisdom), which is what philosophy means. So we have to understand what this actually means in practice. Because jnana yoga is not merely reading about or hearing about ideas. It starts there, but it does not end there and is incomplete if it remains there.

The first part is hearing or learning of the truth. In this context when I speak of truth, I mean the truth of Divine Being. That means you have to hear the message that you are not separate from Nature Divine. You and Nature are one. There are not two. There is one, and it is both you and Nature.

But your present beliefs differ from that truth. So at first you cannot believe it. You cannot see it. You don’t really know it. So you must puzzle over this. You must observe very carefully in direct experience to see whether this could actually be true. So you must watch for every possible evidence that arises which might disprove the truth which has been told to you.

You will have thoughts and sensations which you will – out of habit – believe must be proof that you are separate. But you must carefully see what is the evidence that this belief is true. And as you look honestly and persistently, you’ll see that there is no actual proof. It was only an assumption.

Eventually, this persistent careful observation reaches a tipping point in which it will occur to you that you could potentially go on seeking to disprove the truth indefinitely, but intuitively you sense that the truth really is the truth. In this moment you are at the edge of the mind. The analytical mind has a limit, and you’ve encountered it. You will see that there is a fundamental choice available to you: you can hold to an old (but unproven) belief in limitation and pain, or you can let go and embrace and be embraced by wholeness.

At that moment, the invitation is to let go. This is a kind of death, and so there is often some apprehension. But as long as one is persistent and sincere in the inquiry, eventually the painful restriction of the old perception becomes too great and one can no longer justify holding on to it.

What I have just described is perhaps the purest form of jnana yoga. And this will give good results fairly rapidly. This is the basis of Ramana’s instructions given in “Who Am I?” Ramana tells us to watch carefully for every arising thought and we will see that there is a subtle thought which underlies all the other thoughts. This subtle underlying thought is called the “I thought”, meaning the assumed sense that the thoughts and experiences belong to me as a separate self. Ramana tells us to watch for where the ”I thought” comes from, and we will see that it arises from the formless silence of what he calls the spiritual heart, which is not a location but the very essence of being.

If you can successfully do that, I recommend that you do. It is very direct and simple. If you can avoid any further complications in the inquiry, that will be good. However, most of us don’t seem to be able to keep it so simple. We find ourselves quickly lost in thought and distracted by the dozens of competing feelings and desires bubbling up at any given moment.

So for those of us who struggle to keep it so simple, we need a more remedial form of philosophy. And fortunately, there are long-standing traditions – both Eastern and Western – in philosophy which can offer potential help in this regard. One difficulty, of course, is that because these philosophies are relatively complex, there’s a relatively greater chance of getting lost in thought and abstraction rather than clearing away the confusion. However, there is also potential value in the study of this more remedial form of philosophy. It is well beyond the scope of this essay to go into any detail on this matter, but it is an important topic which deserves much more consideration. As such, I will take this up in subsequent essays and I also intend to examine this subject in much more detail in an upcoming video-based program.

I cannot say whether Vivekananda’s system of organizing yogas is perfect or complete. But it is certainly a useful starting point and helps us to better make use of those yogas which might be of greatest benefit to us based on temperament and other factors. Some people are naturally more suited to bhakti, for example, and may find that bhakti provides a complete means for discovering fulfillment. Others may find that jnana is their true calling.

Yet most of us will find that some combination of these yogas – different methods at different times – will be most valuable. So don’t artificially limit yourself to thinking that you must choose one and one only while excluding the others. Ramana is considered by may to be the supreme lover of wisdom, and yet Papaji (who was a devotee of Krisha and an incurable bhakta) was able to accept Ramana as his sadguru because he was able to recognize that same love of the divine in Ramana. So don’t think that anyone is purely a jnani or purely a bhakti or whatever. Everyone is all, but we each are uniquely composed.

The post How to attain enlightenment first appeared on Joey Lott's official website.

First of all, I want you to know that whatever your sense of suffering may be, true freedom is possible. There is no such thing as eternal damnation. And you need not endure suffering. There is a remedy, regardless of how long-standing, intense, or seemingly interminable the suffering may be.

Even if you cannot see any possibility of a way out of the suffering, there is definitely a way out. That I can promise you.

Whether you call it physical pain, depression, anxiety, or by any other name, you need not endure suffering.

However, to properly remedy the suffering, we have to have the correct understanding. Because with the wrong understanding (ignorance) the suffering continues. In fact, the ignorance is the suffering. So when we correct the ignorance, the suffering vanishes.

In this essay I intend to provide a guide by which you can begin to remove ignorance. I am not presenting this as a quick fix. Though the knowledge provided here can certainly provide an instantaneous correction, and in truth when the correction does come, it is always instantaneous. However, I caution you against the mistake of believing that you “tried it and it didn’t work”. Because it requires patient and persistent application to achieve the instantaneous correction. (In other words, [sincere] practice makes perfect.)

In our modern world whenever there is suffering of any type, we tend to approach it first by labeling it. We have been taught to identify the suffering both by giving it a name (frustration, anxiety, worry, fear, anger, depression, etc.) and by identifying the supposed cause of it (a person, an organization, an event, etc.)

I will propose to you that this is not an efficient nor a particularly effective method for resolving the suffering. In fact, this approach tends to actually worsen the suffering over time because it fails to actually recognize the real nature of the suffering.

Another mistake we commonly make is to take supposed remedies as one-size-fits-all prescriptions. For example, many people have heard the message that there is no separate self and that all suffering arises from the wrong perception of a separate self. They then attempt to make this into a prescription in which they try to alter their behavior to match with their (wrong) understanding of this idea. This is that awkward stage in which people try to fix their problems by dropping their use of personal pronouns, mistakenly thinking that will help.

But here’s a radical idea. Start where you are and intelligently select the correct remedy that will actually help you.

To do this requires that you can perceive clearly. And to learn to perceive clearly is, in fact, the remedy.

First of all, let’s see if we can categorize perception into some simple categories which will help us to “locate” ourselves in terms of how we are perceiving presently. If we try to select a remedy without knowing where we are in terms of our clarity of perception, we are likely to choose a wrong remedy.

Broadly, we can categorize perception into three types. Classically, in Indian thought these are described using the terms ajata vada, drishti-sristhi vada, and srishti-drishti vada. Stay with me. I know that all of those Sanskrit terms can seem intimidating. But I’ll make it simple and clear.

Ajata means “uncreated”. This is what is generally considered to be the highest or truest perception. This is the truth affirmed by great sages such as Gaudapada and Ramana Maharshi. Papaji also affirmed this, as have many others. This is the perception that nothing has ever happened, nothing has ever been created. There is oneness without a second. There is no separate perceiver and the perceived. There is simply pure perceiving.

The perception of ajata might initially seem completely alien to most people. After all, it seems to contradict what we consider to be the obviousness of objective reality. We conventionally believe that this world appearance is solid and real apart from us. We think it is “out there” and that we are “in here”.

It is possible to deconstruct the belief of the objective world as having independent substance. It is not difficult to do. And I have done that many times in talks available on YouTube. I will write another essay some time to explore that in more depth. But that is not the focus on this essay. So for now I’ll simply say two things about this.

1. It is very possible and quite easy for anyone to experience a flash or glimpse of ajata. In fact, it happens all the time, but most people are just not trained to recognize it. So really you need only to learn to recognize it and then voluntarily glimpse it. As I understand it (and I’m not an expert in Buddhist philosophy or practice) this practice of flashing on ajata (which is called sunyata [which is typically understood as emptiness in Buddhism]) is fairly important. For example, I’ve encountered instructions for the practice of Tibetan Buddhist tonglen meditation which emphasize the importance of the first step of flashing on sunyata. Anyway, try it now. For one instant right now, let go completely. Let go in body, mind, and spirit. Let go of all the gripping and grasping for protection, for answers, for security, for power, for okayness, etc. Just for one instant be completely present, awake, and unattached. Don’t cling to even the subtlest of thoughts. Just for one instant. Don’t try to maintain it or sustain it. Just flash on it. And see if you can glimpse the total freedom of it. The total peace of it. The total contentment of it.

2. Flashing on ajata often is probably helpful for most people. It is a reset. It gives you instant access to peace and fulfillment as well as complete clarity. Of course, on its own, these flashes of ajata are probably not going to produce enormous changes in your sense of self and your perception of reality in the bigger sense. Although it certainly is possible that this simple practice on its own could be all that is needed for some people to completely dissolve all suffering forever, perhaps most of us will require some supplemental remedies. But don’t discount the value and power of this simple practice. And at the same time, don’t stubbornly demand of this subtle practice that it should solve all your problems forever simply because you let go for an instant. This instant of letting go is really to familiarize you with yourself. That ajata is the Self. So when you no longer dream that you can leave yourself, you simply know that you cannot ever be other than the Self. That means no problems, no suffering. Problems and suffering require someone who will suffer. When it is clear that there is only this eternal presence, no suffering is possible.

Now let’s look at dristi-srishti vada. Drishti means seeing or perception. Srishti means creation. So drishti-srishti (which I will abbreviate as d-s from here on) means that perception causes creation. In other words, rather than “I’ll believe it when I see it”, d-s is “I’ll see it when I believe it.”

Of course, most people today are very materialistic. The dominant cultural paradigm is one of objectivity, rationality, inert material substance, mechanics, etc. So most people don’t readily perceive in the d-s way. Most people think that material substance is “out there” apart from their perception. But actually, it is not difficult to make this shift.

Again, to do that deconstruction justice requires more treatment than I am going to give it in this essay. But you can do this simple experiment for yourself right now to possibly give yourself a taste of this d-s perspective. Just observe any object. Do this right now. Select an object – it could be a cup or a lamp or a ball or even your own hand. And observe it. As you observe it, ask yourself how you know of the existence of this object. Really see if you can find any way to know of the object directly. And when you do this sincerely, you will have to realize that your only knowledge of the object is inferential. That is, you don’t know of the object directly. Rather, you infer the existence of the object (such as “the cup”) by way of sensory information (you see it, hear it, smell it, feel it, etc.) and thought (you experience the word [“the cup”] and have “inner” subtle sensory perceptions such as mental images [which may be called memories or fantasies]). Since there is no object to be found independent of senses and thought, and since senses and thought are completely subjective experience (not objective experiences “out there”), the d-s perspective is relatively subtler than the sristhi-drishti (which I’ll abbreviate as s-d from here on) perspective (which I’ll address in a moment) because attention can be kept on the subtler subjective phenomena rather than the grosser level of energy at the objective level.

If you can make the shift to d-s, you can help yourself a great deal better than you could if you were still stuck in the s-d perspective. That is because the subtler your perception, the less energy is required to produce change. Think of it this way: if you receive a bill and you pay it right away, you incur no debt and thus your energy expenditure is limited to that one payment. But if you don’t pay the bill right away, you will be penalized so that your debt will increase. The longer you put it off, the harder it gets to pay off the debt because the debt keeps increasing.

So d-s helps you to get out of debt and begin to take responsibility for your experience.

Now, you might (rightly) say, “I get that it is better to pay the bills on time rather than incur increasing debt. But would not it be better to avoid all bills and debt altogether?” And yes, of course that is true. Which is what ajata offers. Again, flash on the uncreated nature of reality. Observe that complete stillness for just one instant. Just let go for a split-second. And notice that for the one split-second there is complete okayness.

So the more deeply ajata takes hold of you, the more you are blissfully surrendered to that, the more your mind has quietened, the more profoundly relaxed you know yourself to be…that is to be completely free of debt. That is to be completely the Self without entertaining delusions because there is abundant clarity regarding the true nature of reality, which the Vedanta sages uniformly proclaim is sat-chit-ananda (being, consciousness bliss). In other words, when you completely know yourself as sat-chit-ananda, why would you look elsewhere? When there is nowhere else to look, there is only here.

So you can’t “be here now” as a doing. You can’t become sat-chit-ananda. You can only realize it and from this realization naturally the apparent “doing” arises. That is to say, your attention naturally rests with the Self when you know yourself to be that. It is not an effort. It is not a practice. It is natural. It is even more natural than seeing the appearance of an object you imagine to be appearing before your eyes. But you can’t force it by trying to violently keep your attention somewhere. That won’t work. You must fall in love with the Self. That is the only way. If you use violence and too much intensity, you hurt yourself. So be gentle. Be loving.

So when you cannot seem to be in love with the Self naturally, at those times when you seem to be stuck in some kind of agitation or suffering, you want to recognize where you are in the sense of how you are perceiving. Are you perceiving in a d-s way? If so, that is very good because from d-s you can more easily get to the ajata way naturally and rest in the sat-chit-ananda of your true nature.

When you can achieve d-s perception, all you need to do is remain there. Continue to be aware of yourself. Be aware of yourself as the awareness of the sensory information and the thoughts. Keep noticing that all of this is appearing to you, in you, as you. And see that you are aware of it. You are not separate from it. But you are aware of it. All of this is recognized to be only you. As the temptations arise to pull you away from this perception, you see that you are aware of them and that they consist of sensory information and thoughts. Don’t believe the thoughts that suggest that some external matter requires you to interact at that level. As soon as you drop to that level, you are working much harder and going into increasing debt.

As you stay with d-s perception in this way, which requires quite a high degree of consciousness, you eventually shift to ajata perception.

Now let’s look at s-d vada, which means the creation precedes the perception. This is the common materialist view that says, “Whatever I perceive is something that exists objectively.” This perspective Is dense and “sticky”, so it is often challenging for people to see through. And furthermore, because there are so many variances between people, what is best suited for one person may not be what is best suited for another when it comes to shifting out of s-d perspective.

But we have a great many technques, methods, and philosophies that help us in this regard. We just need to be able to best select those that are best suited for us in this moment. And while we are blessed presently to have so much access to such a huge diversity of these things (Buddhist, pagan, Vedantic, Tantric, Christian, bodywork, breath work, four-step processes, visualization techniques, etc.), at the same time the sheer volume can be overwhelming much of the time.

So we really need a way to organize all of this stuff and make sense of it. And ideally, we want to systematize it such that we have a kind of roadmap that allows us to find the ideal processes or methods or whatever according to our present “location in consciousness” and temperaments, etc.

Obviously, with this essay I have begun the rough outline of that map by sketching these three modes of perception and giving some sense of their relationship to one another as well as your relationship with them.

To recap, the truest or greatest or fullest perception is ajata. This is possible in a flash now. See it. Recognize it. Familiarize yourself with this. This is you in the truest sense. Ajata means there is no relationship between you and the state because it is self awareness in the sense of awareness of the Self as one without a second.

D-s is “denser” than ajata because it concedes that there is a creation. But it is not as “dense” as s-d because d-s perceives that the creation is not independent of the subjective experience. So it is possible to more easily make changes or dissolve beliefs at this level of d-s. The amount of energy put in is not less than what is returned, so one is not depleted at this level and one may even stop leaking energy and start to develop coherence and integrity, which allow for the transition to ajata.

At the level of s-d, the amount of energy returned is always less than what is invested. You work harder and harder and get worse results because you’re exhausting yourself. This is too dense of a level to be operating from most of the time. Perhaps there are circumstances that seem to necessitate it from time to time. While I find no actual evidence that there could ever be anything that would necessitate operating at this level, I do admit that most of us seem to have a lot of reasons that we believe necessitate it. For example, if I have a thought that says “I don’t have enough money, and not having enough money is unthinkably terrifying,” and I believe that is true, then it is quite likely that I’d think it was necessary to operate at the level of s-d. But in reality, operating at the s-d level makes it impossible to overcome the problem because no matter how much I do in the world, it will only amplify the perception that is already held in place. The perception needs to change, not the world. But when we try to change the world, we are reinforcing the perception.

So this shift from s-d to d-s is the most important because when people are stuck in s-d, they are getting into worse and worse difficulties. There’s no way to be found that way, but it is like a whirlpool which pulls one into it as if by an external force. Because the more we fight and struggle at that level, the more we are putting all that energy into the creation which increasingly intensely mirrors our perception which we obviously don’t like because we keep fighting it.

The answer, obviously, is to stop fighting. But when we’re stuck in s-d perception, it’s often very difficult for us to stop fighting. There’s such a hypnotic momentum to it that we forget that there is a way out and that it involves stopping the fight with ourselves.

So the first best thing to do is to flash on ajata., Flat on okayness. Just let go for a moment and see the completeness of the Self. And see if that might not be all that is needed. And if not, ask yourself why not? What is it that is causing you so much discomfort like a thorn in your side that you cannot but give it your attention? Get clear on what it is. Because that will help you in determining what might best help you to make the shift.

For example, if you can see that really it is a thought, feeling, or subjective experience that is troubling you – not anything objectively “out there” – then you have shifted to d-s and you can remain with that awareness of yourself as the awareness of and oneness with all that is appearing. So stay there if you can.

If you discover that what is really troubling you is a sensation that you don’t know how to allow – something you call an ache or pain or discomfort – you know that probably some kind of somatic approach will be useful to you. Maybe some type of yogasana or qigong posture or pranayama or Feldenkrais. I recommend bringing as much conscious awareness to whatever you are doing as is possible. Slow down. I mean really slow down. S-l-o-w d-o-w-n. Notice your breathing. Relax consciously. Let the belly become deeply relaxed and comfortably warm. Let your hands and feet be comfortably warm by relaxing them deeply all the way up the legs and arms through all the joints.

This essay is already fairly long as it is, so I will wrap it up here. There is a great deal more that can be said about all of this. I’ve only scratched the surface. So don’t think that you must understand all of it completely. I’ve just provided a rough outline here. But this should serve as an introduction to the idea.

What I hope you take away from this is the following: there really is a way to resolve suffering, and that way is accessible to you. You might not have previously know about the path. And perhaps even if you did know about the path, you weren’t sure how best to access it. But I’ve provided a rough outline of the path in this essay so that you can know of its existence and also have some idea of its structure and some of the points of access.

There are many more points of access, of course. And that is way more than I can try to summarize in a single short essay. But do know that I intend to elaborate on all of this in coming essays. So you can expect to learn of many of the types of processes or methods we can apply, how to identify the best of them, how to select among them depending on need and temperament, and how to systematically nurture yourself such that you more and more rest in sat-chit-ananda, extending that bliss into all creation whenever you do shine the light of consciousness upon it (i.e. d-s).

You might ask, “Once there is an establishment in the truth of Self as sat-chit-ananda, why would there ever be any desire to turn attention to the fantasy of creation?” And the best answer I can provide to that (understand that this is obviously not the truth from ajata, but from a relative level) is that there still remain latent tendencies from past impressions, which is called prarabdha karma in Indian thought, which are activated from time to time. And so it is skillful to know how best to perceive and understand and channel that energy.

The energy which is released when that desire manifests, when the impulse to look at creation arises, can be channeled in an infinite variety of ways. By default, it will tend to go in the same way that is already familiar. Whatever notions already exist will tend to be believed as true, and thus creation will appear according to those familiar notions believed to be true.

But if those existing notions are unsatisfying or incongruent with what you know of the Self, you can channel the energy consciously by turning it toward the Self and thus the energy moves into creation as a reflection of the purity of the Self. This is also known as blessing.

So in this way, creation is blessed as you extend the bliss of the Self. And thus, each time you gaze upon creation, you naturally and effortlessly see that bliss because you are seeing the Self more and more purely reflected.

That is a very high level truth. Ramana when in human form was perhaps functioning at that level. Just his gaze was a supreme healing balm to the souls of many. People reported miracles simply from his gaze.

But maybe that seems too far out for you presently because maybe you’re stuck in s-d perspective. So then don’t worry about it. In that case Ramana advised that you should know about that in such a way that will help you. For example, maybe you need to accept that all of creation is conscious being. Maybe knowing that and accepting that can help you to shift from the density and darkness of that deep suffering and sense of alienation and victimization. Maybe you need to know that your life has meaning and purpose. Sometimes people prematurely let go of ways of seeing that are actually helpful to them. Even if something is not “the supreme truth”, there are helpful and unhelpful partial truths. If you are not confidently resting as bliss, then you’re holding to some partial truth which is unhelpful instead of a helpful partial truth.

Look for more essays soonish. If you have questions about anything covered here that you are not clear about, feel free to ask in the comments below.

The post Start where you are (because it’s the only way) first appeared on Joey Lott's official website.

It may be tempting to believe that the purpose of life is success.

However, what is the basis of that success? What does it mean to be successful? And how do I know what success is or what defines success?

When I look sincerely, I see that my ideas about success are all based on assumptions and habits. I have no absolute knowledge of what success really is.

In other words, when I blindly obey my notions of what success is and I strive toward that, I have no way of knowing that I am actually doing something good, noble, or even ultimately desirable.

In fact, if I tell the truth, all evidence is that quite the opposite is true. Because despite my compulsive efforts to be successful – even despite my apparently achieving what I thought would produce success – I don’t seem to have gotten whatever it is that I thought success would be.

I thought success would remove doubts, fears, anxieties, insecurities, etc. And it is true that sometimes in a relative way it seems that I can achieve that.

But in a larger sense, the same quantity of insecurity remains. And that insecurity is even magnified.

When I honestly evaluate my success in achieving success, I have to admit that I’ve failed.

And this failure is the first opening to something beyond the mind. Beyond blind compulsion. Beyond the limitations of the dead ideas of salvation.

Most of us are trained to avoid this failure. Or, rather, to avoid admitting to the failure. We are taught to “think positive” or keep on trying.

But what if I embrace this failure instead? Or what if I even give up the notion that I can embrace the failure since it is far too big for me to get my arms around. So let me surrender to it and be embraced by it.

Find out with me right now. Perhaps you can notice that right now you are tired of trying so hard to win, to be right, to succeed. Perhaps you can notice how difficult and exhausting it is to keep trying to believe that you’re going to win despite all the evidence that you don’t even know where you stand.

If so, you can do this experiment with me right now. Just tell the truth about the exhaustion and hopelessness…and how scary it is to tell that truth.

It is scary. So you’re not doing it wrong if you feel that fear. Or anger. Or frustration. Or sadness.

Now, let’s admit the deeper truth, which is that we don’t even know what it would be to actually succeed. All the ideas we have about it are fantasies which, if we imagine them to their conclusion, result in the same empty dissatisfaction that we already have now.

If everyone in the world agrees that I am right all the time…If they all approve of me all the time…If my body behaves exactly as I want it to all the time…Even if I can have good feelings all the time…

…Still, there is something lacking. Still I am not completely satisfied. Still I am seeking something else.

So let’s tell the truth: all the ideas of success are incorrect.

What are we left with now? Only what is.

What is, does not necessarily comply with what I think should be. And that seems threatening. Scary. Terrifying.

I might be emotionally hurt. My pride might take a hit. I might be uncomfortable. I might be humiliated. I might even experience bodily pain. Even death.

So many possibilities. So many possibilities that don’t fit with my ideas of success.

But my ideas of success are unsatisfactory. So I am doing this experiment. And hopefully you are also.

The experiment is to simply allow what is. And that means whatever is. Regardless of how it matches up with my ideas of success or what “should be” or what is acceptable.

I strongly recommend you don’t read further until you have done the experiment for yourself up to this point. That is to say, at least for a moment give up all effort. And just see how miserable and pointless all the compulsive effort is. See that all the compulsive effort is only aimed at trying to keep away what has been deemed unacceptable – the discomfort, fear, anxiety, frustration, hopelessness, etc. And see that in this one moment of no effort – not trying to get anything or get rid of anything – completely defenseless – what remains. What is really here when no effort is made? When there is no effort to succeed in any way, when all failures are allowed, what is here?

Please don’t read further until you have done that much sincerely.

What is here? Does what is here need any success to be? Is what is here diminished by any failures?

Or is it paradoxically the case that the more “failure” is allowed without any effort that what is here becomes clearer and clearer?

I may have thought that what I wanted was freedom or peace. But because I was aiming to succeed in achieving those ideas of freedom of peace, I overlooked the ever-present, unconditional reality of freedom and peace here now.

Yet in this moment now, making no effort, allowing all “failures”, meeting every disappointment, fear, anxiety, worry, sadness, anger, etc. without making any effort at all…what is found?

The surprising reality of true freedom, true peace. True freedom is the freedom which allows everything, including failure. True peace is that which makes no war, instead receiving everything as it is.

This true freedom, true peace, is here now. And it is discovered through the gateway of failure.

The post The vital importance of failure first appeared on Joey Lott's official website.

What I want is peace.

I want peace more than I want anything else. More than I want money. More than I want sex. More than I want power. More than I want to be right. More than I want immortality. More than I want respect.

But I forget this truth when I get spooked. When I am frightened or overwhelmed, I think that I want other things more than I want peace. I think maybe I want safety or protection more than I want peace.

When I forget, I use all kinds of crazy justifications for insanity.

But it hurts to do that.

That pain is a wake-up call. It is saying “Lies hurt. Tell the truth. Start with clarity about what you want.”

I want peace.

The good news is that peace is here now. Peace is not something I have to earn or gain or hold on to. Peace cannot be had. It cannot be defended.

Peace is right here. Right now. It is even in the wake-up call of pain. The pain itself is none other than peace because it stops the lie right now. And in this one instant now, what is revealed is peace.

The lie begins as soon as I try to use that revelation of peace as another sword and shield.

When I first was introduced to this inquiry – this living inquiry of peace/truth – I thought it was insufficient. It seemed unspectacular. I thought I needed something flashy and big.

So I picked up the sword and shield again and again and went back to the misery of defending myself – not seeing that every defense keeps the war going. Every defense perpetuates the false division, the mistrust, the fear.

But as I have matured – which has been a much slower process than I would have liked for I was far from mature – I have discovered that what I focus on is what flourishes.

This is one of those lessons that is incredibly obvious and yet I overlooked it for a long time. It is in plain sight and yet invisible because of its obviousness. I thought I knew it already and so I dismissed it.

But once I started to see the truth of it, it started to sink in and change my life. It humbled me and opened me. And it helped me to see the power and wisdom in being a student always at the feet of the teacher – always ready for today’s lesson, willing to admit that I don’t know.

We can run here and there in search of the best answers, the best teachings. And we can spend a lifetime – or dozens – doing that and learn nothing of real value.

Or we can stop now and submit with humility to the supreme teacher that is this exquisitely perfect moment now. And in so doing, we receive the great gift that is being offered. We learn, we grow, we transform.

What I focus on – what I give my attention to – what I commit myself to – is what grows.

When I give my attention – whether consciously or unconsciously – to maintaining the defenses, the war grows. If I put power, image, protection, or anything else before peace, war continues.

When I give my attention to peace, peace grows.

To give attention to peace – truthfully, not just a superficial idea of peace – is rare. It is so rare, we have few good role models. We have to tread this path mostly alone. We have to have the courage to venture into unknown territory.

And so it is not easy. It takes great commitment, persistence, and faith. The truth of peace often looks and feels like what I think is terror. The compulsion to defend is strong at times.

But once awake to the reality of peace and the lie of war (in its many disguises), truthfulness is the only real option.

Keep it simple. That means come back to the basics. What do I want? What do I REALLY want? What do I want more than anything else? What will truly satisfy?

Will more money truly satisfy? Will more power truly satisfy? What will actually satisfy?

Only true peace will satisfy. This has to be seen. It has to be seen over and over and over. Now, now, now. This has to be the moment of truth. A memory of past seeing is not enough. It has to be seen now. And in that seeing, the pain of the lie is apparent.

(By the way, none of this means that we have to reject money, power, etc. That is not necessary. That would just be an inversion of the defenses.)

It also has to be sustainable. What I give my attention to flourishes. Giving my attention to peace once – even if in a really big way – does no good if it was in the past. It has to be alive now. Only living peace now is of any value.

How can it be sustainable? Start where you are. Start now. Be truthful now. See truthfully now. And for this one instant now, open to that truth. Even if it is uncomfortable. Even if it seems to be other than what you think is good, nice, or pleasant. Just for one half second catch a glimpse.

Don’t try to force anything. Force is not sustainable. Force lasts only until it runs out of steam. Then it is done. Then whatever was seen is in the past and that is a dead thing.

What is needed is living truth, living peace, living inquiry. And that requires gentleness.

Be gentle. Accept whatever appears without judgment. Just see it. That is gentleness.

The post Keep it simple and sustainable first appeared on Joey Lott's official website.

When I dream at night, anything can happen. I can be anywhere. I can be anyone. I can do anything.

When I wake in the morning, however, none of the dream remains. It is gone.

Where did it go?

This might seem like it is too trivial of a matter to really care about. After all, all my waking problems are still very much real upon waking. I still have the same unhappiness, the same sense of inadequacy, the same anxiety. And so surely I should forget about a trivial philosophical question such as “where did the dream go” and focus instead of solving my real problems, right?

But actually, this “trivial philosophical question” turns out to be more important than it seems.

Here’s why. Let’s return for a moment to the dream. In the dream, I am being chased by men with swords. They corner me. They begin to cut me.

In the dream I experience pain and suffering. I am afraid. I want desperately to escape, to overpower them, to somehow change this desperate situation into a more favorable one. My very life depends upon it.

Now, when I wake up, what has happened to the cuts, the pain, the swords, the bad men, the desperate situation? Where is it?

I am unharmed, unaffected by the dream.

Of course, even though the waking self is unharmed by the dream, the waking self still has all his or her problems to contend with. And to the waking self it is the waking problems that really matter. The dream problems disappear upon waking, but the waking problems reappear upon waking.

Still, I believe that this seemingly trivial matter is highly relevant.

In the dream I imagine that I am the dream character. I believe that I am the one being chased by the bad men. I believe that I am the one being cut. I am trapped. I am harmed. My life is in danger.

In the dream, that dream self is real. Its problems are completely real within the dream.

This is important. The dream problems are real to the dream character.

This is why in Indian philosophies Maya (world illusion) is described as both real and unreal. We cannot get rid of her by calling her unreal. She is real just as the dream character’s problems are real within the dream. The dream itself is real. It really happens. To say otherwise is dishonest.

But at the same time, Maya is unreal in the sense that her reality is dependent. She is real in a dependent manner. The dream really does happen. But she is not independently real. The dream does not occur independent of the dreamer.

The dream, the dream character, and the dream problems are real. They are also Maya. They are real, but not independently real. They are real because they are witnessed by the dreamer.

But who is the dreamer?

When I wake up in the morning, if you ask me who dreamed, I will tell you that I did. And we can end it at that. There we have a neat and tidy answer. I am the dreamer.

But who is this I? Who am I referring to?

And here is why this seemingly trivial question turns out to be highly relevant.

Who is the dreamer? I am. Who is this I?

I cannot honestly respond to the second question (Who is this I?) just be repeating “I am”. Because that answers the question with the same starting point as the question. Which is to say, it is not a valid answer.

So now I have to look more closely. Who is the dreamer? Who is this I?

I know that I am the dreamer. I know that because it is clear that I dreamed. It must be that I am the dreamer because if I were not the dreamer, I could not say that I dreamed. And I know that I dreamed. So it is fair to say that I am the dreamer.

I am present during the dream. That is implicit. The dreamer must be present during the dream. Otherwise, how can he know that he dreamed?

I am also present now, awake.

So whoever this dreamer is, he is present both to the dream and to the waking state.

Who or what is present both to the dream and to the waking state? I know that in the waking state the dream character and the dream problems and the dream world disappear. So I am clearly not the dream character, problems, or world.

That much is common sense. We all know upon waking that we are not the dream character, problems, or world.

But isn’t it also true that by the same token, since this waking character, waking problems, and waking world are not present in the dream that I must not be these waking things either?

If I can disappear to myself, I cannot say honestly that what disappears is truly me. Only what is aware of what appears and disappears can be what I truly am.

The dream objects, including the dream self, disappear in the waking state. The waking objects, including the waking self, disappear in the dream state.

What I am must be constant in all states. It must be what is common among all experiences. It must be what is unchanging.

What is that?

I am.

What is that? I cannot say. Because I cannot get out of it to see it or experience it. I am it.

The eye cannot see itself. The finger cannot touch itself. I cannot experience myself.

But the eye can see. The finger can touch. I am aware.

My nature is awareness. Whatever experiences come and go, there is one constant, which is that I am aware.

I am the dreamer of the nightly dream. And I am the dreamer of the waking dream.

This is a crucial moment. This moment of pure seeing is awareness of the dreamer, awareness of the independent self. And the temptation is to try to do something with this – to grab it, turn it into a thought, make a plan for the future of it.

Then I’m lost in the dream again. Mistaking myself for the dream character.

There’s nothing to be done about this. Any attempt to do anything is arising from within the dream. Any attempt to do anything is trying to pull myself up by my own bootstraps.

To the dream character this is just another problem to add to the list of problems. I can’t do anything without mucking it up, and that’s a problem.

But again, this moment of pure seeing. This is a moment of lucid wakefulness. In this moment, the problems vanish just as all dream problems must vanish upon waking.

Still, the desire for an end or at least a change to the bad dream arises. Even if I realize that I am the dreamer, unaffected by the dream, I still don’t want a bad dream.

When experiencing a nightmare, what is the means to ending the nightmare? What is required is to wake up.

There is waking up from the dream. There is also waking up to the dream. The only difference is that one ends the dream and the other does not. But the wakefulness is identical.

If I fight and struggle, I am putting myself more to sleep. What I want is to wake up. So I must not fight or struggle. Even if fighting or struggling is happening, I must not fight against the fight or struggle.

How can I determine that I am awake?

Must the dream end? No, it is possible to be awake to the dream.

Must the dream change in some particular, more favorable manner to prove that I am awake? No, it is not necessary that the dream change in any particular way to prove that I am awake.

Compulsive checking to see “has it changed in a favorable way yet?” is a narcotic that lulls one back to sleep, back into delusion. This compulsive checking inverts reality, positing that consciousness is a function of the dream rather than the other way around. And as such, it keeps perception upside down and inside out so that nothing is seen clearly.

Compulsive checking to see if the dream has changed in a favorable way yet is like chasing after a mirage yet again. The mirage is not water and will never be water. True and lasting satisfaction cannot be had in the dream because the nature of the dream is that it is ever-changing. It is unstable. It is dependent.

I used to compulsively check everything. Not only was I compulsively checking to see if the dream had changed in a favorable way, I was also checking the stove to make sure I’d turned it off. I compulsively checked the door to make sure I’d locked it. I compulsive checked all kinds of things.

And let me tell you what I noticed about why I did that. I did it because I wanted a “just right” feeling. I felt unsettled, and the compulsive checking was an unconscious attempt to fix the feeling.

The more a person checks compulsively, the more unsettled the feeling becomes. No amount of checking can fix the feeling. And more checking only makes things worse.

It is a vicious cycle. There is no way to resolve it by doing more of the same.

The compulsive checking is the problem, not the solution.

Compulsively checking “How do I feel now? Has the pain (or depression or anxiety or anger or worry or whatever) gone away yet? Is my life better yet?” results in feeling worse and worse.

What is the answer? Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Stop checking. Stop indulging the habit of assuming that the delusion of mind is primary reality and basing all perception on that. Stop assuming that just because I think something or believe something or believe that I remember something that it is necessarily true. Stop assuming that my ideas about what this is are correct.

And just allow. Allow this present experience as it is without the unnecessary filter of “I know what this is and I like it or don’t like it.”

Or as Papaji would say, “don’t give rise to a thought”.

This is being awake now without conditions, without waiting for the dream to confirm or deny the wakefulness. Because if I wait for the dream to confirm or deny the wakefulness, that’s compulsive checking, which only lulls me to sleep.

Waking is now. It is unconditional.

The post The dreamer and the dream first appeared on Joey Lott's official website.

For many of us, the habit of worry is a strong one. Some have theorized that humans have been selectively bred by life to focus more on the negative than the positive.

The theory is that historically, those who have been more naturally attentive to potential threats have been more likely to survive and reproduce. And thus, over billions of years, we have a species in which we are naturally hardwired to focus on possible threats. As a result, we suffer from worry, anxiety, depression, obsessive thinking, compulsive behavior, and so forth.

I disagree with that theory. It is quite obvious that humans have a natural capacity to focus on possible threats. But that is only one of our natural potentials. We also have the potential to rest as awareness and thus see clearly.

We are endless potential. How that potential is actualized is up to us. It has everything to do with where we place our attention and what we choose and how often we choose that.

By default – whether due to hard-wiring or due to conditioning – we may tend to focus on potential threats. And as a result, we get a lot of worry, anxiety, and so forth. But all that hard-wiring can be re-wired.

Humans are a remarkably non-specialized species. We aren’t particularly good at any physical activity (except maybe endurance) compared to other species. But one thing that is quite remarkable about us is our ability to cultivate specialization.

Consider for a moment how diverse the specializations of humans are. Some humans are virtuoso violinists. Others are mathematical whizzes. Still others lift enormous amounts of weight. Some learn to throw with remarkable accuracy, speed, and power. The list of human specializations could fill entire libraries it is so extensive.

Yet none of us possess great aptitude in a huge number of the specializations simultaneously. We develop specializations at the expense of others by virtue of the fact that our specializations require time, focus, and dedication to develop.

We all know this is true. It is obvious. Common sense, even. And yet few of us recognize that this same principle applies when it comes to specialization in fear versus specialization in peace.

The question really comes down to: what do you really want and how badly do you want it?

If you want peace but you don’t want it more than is required to overcome inertia, then you will not attain it. Not because it is kept from you. Not because life is meant to be suffering. Not because there are real obstacles out there. Not because of some theoretical threat.

Rather, the only obstacle to peace is the lack of commitment. And that lack of commitment comes from a lack of recognition of the true value of our potential.

As I have already stated, the potential for peace exists already within us. And that potential is completely equal to all other potential. In every one of us that is true. Each of us has equal potential for peace. No exceptions.

With that said, not all of us have had equal access to the helpful guidance that points this to us. Many of us are like the laborer in the Papaji story I recently recounted during a video meeting, which I will retell briefly here.

The story goes like this: there was a laborer who worked moving bricks from the kiln to job sites. He moved the bricks by loading them onto his donkey at the kiln and then unloading them at the job site.

He made only $0.50 per day for his labor.

One day while his donkey was drinking from the stream, the man saw a rock in the water that caught his attention. He reached down and pulled the rock out of the water. He thought it was pretty and he tied it on a string around the donkey’s neck.

Weeks later a diamond merchant came to town and seeing the man and his donkey, the merchant could not believe his eyes. There around the donkey’s neck was the largest, most flawless, most valuable diamond he had ever seen.

The merchant asked the man how much he wanted, pointing at the donkey’s neck. The man thought the merchant was asking to buy the donkey, and thus answered, “five dollars.” For if he had known the merchant was asking about the rock around the donkey’s neck, he would not have asked as much.

The merchant gave the man $5, took the diamond, and left.

We are like that laborer. We have this diamond of unprecedented worth – the potential for peace. But we do not recognize its value. We do not even see it for what it is.

And so we keep doing what we are accustomed to doing, not realizing that what we are accustomed to doing is what keeps us impoverished even though we are actually the wealthiest person in the universe!

Well, now you know! So now you cannot say you don’t know. I am telling you, you have the diamond of unrivaled value within. The potential for peace is within you. And it is here and now. It is not at a distance. You do not need to wait.

It is here and now. This moment.

So don’t make excuses. Don’t put it off. Because of you do, you are only exercising the habits that keep the inertia. Putting it off or making any conditions for peace reinforces the habit of fear.

This may be relatively easy to see and tell the truth about in the moment when the perceived threat level is low. But what about when the perceived threat level is higher?

That is actually the most important moment. Because when the perceived threat level is higher, that is when the potential will be actualized either as fear or as peace. That is the critical moment.

If I am only willing to choose peace in the moments when it is easy, I don’t truly recognize the value of the diamond. This diamond is so valuable that it is worth holding fast to it even when the stakes are highest, even when the perceived threat is very high.

This diamond of peace, which we already have, is incomparable. There is nothing in the universe that has greater worth. Not everything else combined in all the universe can even approach the value of this diamond of peace. And we already are this diamond of peace.

Your body will die. That is certain. All things must pass. All things are that passing only. There are no things. There is only change. Nothing ever came into being. Only change. This body is change. There is nothing here to tether oneself to. There is only change.

If you give up this diamond of peace, if you trade it for some false and temporary security, who will be left to take receipt of whatever you trade for? Who will take receipt of the (false and temporary) security?

The moment I abandon the diamond of peace, I abandon myself, and therefore, there remains no one to take receipt of whatever I have traded for. Any trade is a bad deal.

The so-called “real” threats of pain, loss, suffering, sickness, injury, failure, and so forth cannot harm this flawless diamond. Peace exists as pure potential within. I can only know that peace by choosing it now. And if I choose anything else, I lose what truly matters.

What good will temporary health, temporary wealth, temporary happiness, temporary love, temporary anything do me when it is at the expense of true peace? Health, wealth, and happiness are all eroded by fear.

Only peace is the true remedy. And true peace is absolute. It cannot be harmed by anything. All acquisitions, all accomplishments, all attainments are temporal. They come and go.

Peace alone is unaffected by time. Peace is independent of time. Peace is independent of all conditions.

Still, though the potential exists always, I can only live it and actualize it by choosing it now.

All the threats are in the mind only. All the threats are to a temporary notion of myself. None of those threats can touch the flawless diamond of peace.

It is like the moon reflected in a pool. The moon is peace. The reflection is the notion of myself. The threats are pebbles thrown into the pool.

The pebbles cannot touch the moon.

But if I mistakenly believe that the reflection is the moon itself, I will dismay and forsake the true moon while trying to protect the reflection.

That you are that peace is beyond doubt – though doubts may still arise. You can prove this to yourself. Who you are must be always present. It must be the thread that creates a sense of coherence among all the otherwise disparate happenings.

In other words, you know that morning, noon, and night it is you who is experiencing. The experiences change, but you are what is constant. That is why you can say with confidence that this is your life, your experience.

Whether you are awake, dreaming, or in deep dreamless sleep, you know that it is you who is experiencing.

But clearly the content of the experience changes always. Your body changes, Your feelings change. Your thoughts change. The circumstances change. Everything changes. So you cannot be those imaginary things that you imagine among the constant changing.

You are that which is always present. Consider that for a moment so that it is clear to you.

Once you see that you must be that which is always present, then you must admit that you are not any object, any thought, any feeling, any notion.

What remains? It is not a thing, but it is undeniable. Whatever we call it, it is not that notion. We can only point. But you know what you are pointing to because it is yourself beyond all notions.

And this is what I am calling peace. I call it peace because it is undisturbed. It is pristine. It is formless. It can receive everything without being harmed. And moreover, everything also arises from it.

Just observe your direct experience and see that this is true. Merely reading about it or thinking about it won’t do any good. But a single glimpse now will change everything.

See that this peace is beyond all effect. Nothing can touch it. All ideas of yourself arise from this and dissolve into this. There is no you separate from this. And everything that occurs is this.

If you abandon this peace, turning away to try to protect a notion of yourself, you abandon yourself. Or put another way, consider Matthew 16:26 “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

The “world” is temporary. It is an idea. It is the five dollars the merchant gave the laborer.

The “world” means temporary false security. It means believing “I am safe” as an idea that can protect a false person.

Whereas to lose the world is to finally turn to what is real beyond threat. To lose the world, means to acknowledge that this current perceived threat is just another obsessive-compulsive thought. Yes, this notion of this person, this personality, this ego, this body, and all the rest will pass because it is already passing because that is all it is. It was destined to be so because that is its nature.

No thing ever was or ever will be. There is nothing to protect.

Please understand that the mind can and will twist and distort anything and everything. It will distort this message to suggest that you should form a new strategy in which you allow others to abuse you and in which you never take any action to protect your body or your finances or whatever.

And that would be a useless and completely unnecessary distortion. Because what none of this has to do with that. This is beyond that. This is about what is here and now only. This is not about a strategy for dealing with some theoretical future.

This is only about right now. This is only about this instant now. And if you think about it, you’re missing it entirely.

Peace is here now. You are that already. You can only know it if you choose it. Choose it simply by turning away from all else.

The post But what about real threats? first appeared on Joey Lott's official website.

I received an email today from someone who read a book I wrote years ago on the subject of misophonia (extreme sound sensitivity). I responded to the person, and then I realized that the message I wrote is pretty good advice generally.

So I’d like to share it with you here.

Let me preface this by saying that it may be helpful to first acknowledge that you have been completely unsuccessful in trying to fix your problems. When you can acknowledge that, you are ready to open to something beyond the limitations of your conditioned perception of yourself and your life.

Your perception of yourself and your life is a product of what I call “alert mode” in the message below. Alert mode is the mode of perception that you stuck in if you keep trying to solve your problems. And no amount of thinking, reading, understanding, or seeking can change this. In fact, all those things reinforce the stuckness.

Here’s the message I wrote that I’d like to now share with you.

Your nervous system has two basic modes of operation. For the sake of simplicity let’s call those modes alert (i.e. hypervigilance) and rest.

When you are stuck in alert mode (as you are), that forms a vicious cycle in which you are most likely to remain stuck. That is because you are unconsciously forming a groove in your nervous system. It is just like how over millions of years a river can form a canyon. Bit by bit, that groove becomes bigger and bigger. And after a long time, everything will feed into that groove.

That is the situation you find yourself in. So you must first understand that is the case. And know that because you are very sensitive right now and because you are in the habit of fear and reaction, you must not let that also cause you stress. Just accept that is the case right now. You are afraid and reactive and tense and that is how it is. So don’t fight it. Because if you fight it, you will only reinforce it, making it stronger.

The good news is that you can recover. I promise you that you can. It is 100% possible. And it will not take a very long time as long as you commit to it completely.

What you have to do is undo that groove. And to undo the groove you need to do only one thing, which is deeply relax. No matter what happens, your only responsibility is to deeply relax. You must deeply relax as often as possible. And you must use every trigger as a reminder of your responsibility to deeply relax.

When you deeply relax, you shift into rest mode. In rest mode, your nervous system undoes that groove of stress and hypervigilance. But you must remain in rest mode often enough.

Physically relax. Observe your breathing and allow your breathing to become relaxed. Let the exhalations be long but not forced. Relax your facial muscles. Relax all the muscles in your body. And let thoughts drift by. Do not attach to any thought. Do not try to solve any problems. Do not try to protect yourself.

If you try to protect yourself or solve your problems, you only reinforce the groove of stress and keep yourself stuck in alert mode. You must commit completely to deeply relaxing.

I promise you that if you practice deep relaxation as often as possible all day long no matter what happens, even if it is scary, even if you feel rage, this will cure you. You just have to commit to it no matter what.

You will feel many things that you think you do not want to feel. You will have thoughts that will tell you that these feelings are unbearable. You will want to tense up and scream. You must relax anyway. And if you must think any thought, just think this thought: It is safe to be here now. It is safe to feel now. You are safe now.

Just keep relaxing deeply and trust that it will work. The more you do it, the more it changes your nervous system’s conditioning so that a new groove forms. That new groove is a groove of rest, relaxation, openness, ease, happiness, creativity, and flow.

At first it may seem impossible. It is not impossible. It just seems that way when you’re stuck in alert mode. Alert mode keeps your focus narrowed so you cannot see the bigger picture. So you must trust and deeply relax.

You can do it. You can succeed. You can heal and be happy and at ease. All your problems can dissolve. I promise you it is true. It just requires commitment. No matter what.

You will see some benefits in a short time if you commit to it. And then sometimes it will seem harder and as though you have relapsed. Do not dismay. Just continue to relax deeply. Make it a new way of life to relax deeply. And sometimes things will seem very, very good. Other times you will think you are relapsing. Just continue to relax deeply. It will keep getting better. You just have to keep relaxing deeply no matter what.

The post On reversing the groove of misery and hypervigilance first appeared on Joey Lott's official website.

I might think that I have a many different problems. For example, I might think that I am experiencing fatigue, that I don’t have enough money, and that my children aren’t behaving the way I think they should.

In fact, I’d estimate that that 99% of my thoughts are simply a list of all the problems I think I have.

I could go on seemingly endlessly delineating my problems. And even if I work to resolve my problems – and even if I have reasonably good tools for doing so – I am destined to lose in the long run.

Because the number of problems that I can delineate is seemingly endless.

What I see in my own experience is that the essence of all problems – however I might delineate them – is the same. So whether I think the problem is about health or I think the problem is about relationship or I think the problem is about money or whatever the case may be, the essence is the same.

This really simplifies things. Which is good for someone like me because I need things to be really, really simple if I am going to stand a chance of having success.

So what I’m left with is this: my only problem is my indulgence of my conditioned avoidance of some of my feelings.

Put another way, the only way that I ever “know” that I have a problem is because I “feel” that there is a problem. But the feeling itself does not have the meaning that I ascribe to it. The meaning is not inherent in the feeling. That meaning is layered on top by my conditioning.

And if I indulge that conditioning by seeking to avoid the feeling (because I believe the feeling is bad), I never resolve the problem. That is because the indulgence (avoidance) IS the problem. There is no problem apart from that avoidance.

Strictly-speaking, the avoidance is not a problem either. So a clearer way to put it is to say that the avoidance is what allows the illusion of a problem to continue. The instant the avoidance disappears, the problem is revealed to be non-existent.

Consider this imperfect analogy. I can look at the sky and see shapes in the clouds. I might say, “Oh look, there’s a dragon!” And you might look and agree, “Yes, I see a dragon too!”

But is there a dragon? No, there is no dragon. It was only imagined.

My avoidance is what gives the shape to my experience. Thus, through my avoidance I can say, “I feel the problem, therefore I know it exists.”

But the moment the avoidance is dropped, the problem is revealed to be absent. It is not that the problem went away. There never was a problem.

Avoidance is an action. If I don’t do the action, there is no avoidance. Meaning, avoidance is not some external force or object that I am subject to. It is something that I do. And if I can do it, I can NOT do it.

In my life I have learned a lot. And the overwhelming majority of what I’ve been taught was all about action. It was all about how to do things. I learned how to do, do, do.

But unfortunately, doing is only half the picture. And if I only know how to do, no matter how much I learn to do, I will suffer.

Consider this imperfect analogy. Imagine for a moment that I’ve just invented a space ship for traveling through outer space. I’ve developed a propulsion system that can move the ship a million miles and hour so I can travel very fast through space.

The ship is top of the line. It has defense systems that will fend off asteroids and all kinds of things successfully. It is luxurious inside with all you could want.

I’ve scheduled a trip on this ship to Jupiter. Do you want to go for the trip?

Well, there’s one thing you should know. Despite all its perfection, there is one major flaw. It has no brakes.

It can go, but it can’t stop.

That’s what doing without inhibition is. We can do, but can we inhibit the doing? Can we stop?

I have learned how to avoid. The avoidance is second-nature. It happens unconsciously. I’ve practiced it so much that it happens automatically. I have an over-developed doing capacity and an underdeveloped inhibition capacity.

For me, the tool for developing the skill of inhibition is what I call inquiry.

Inquiry for me means observing the process by which I am doing at subtler and subtler levels, effectively reverse-engineering it.

Inquiry (as I am using the term) is not an intellectual exercise. It is not a thinking process. It is not designed to arrive at an answer. It is not intended to deliver a step-by-step technique or a narrative.

Inquiry means simply seeing. It does not mean judging or fixing. Because the judging and fixing are based on a conditioned idea of what is good and what is bad.

But in true inquiry I have to admit that I don’t know. The difficulties arise when I lie to myself and say that I do know. Then I am bullshitting myself, and I am avoiding all the while calling it inquiry.

In practical terms, what this means is that inquiry involves going into the feelings/sensations that I’ve habitually avoided. That means that when I’m truly inquiring, it is highly likely that I’ll encounter reactions that could be voiced in ways such as “This is terrible! Get me out of here! I’m dying! I’m breaking!”

So on the one hand it is the easiest thing because it involves doing nothing – absolutely nothing. And on the other hand, it can be very challenging because my doing habit is dramatically stronger than my inhibition habit. So the doing reflex kicks in many times, and I have to remain watchful so I can slowly but surely learn how to reverse-engineer and inhibit all that compulsive doing.

At the most superficial level, there are lots of thoughts and delusional fantasies about how bad this is. When I am feeling something that I am in the habit of avoiding, all those thoughts and fantasies are the distraction that keep the habit of doing strong.

So in my experience, that is one of the hardest parts of inquiry. When the feeling is strong and attention is still on the heavy stream of thoughts and negative fantasies, the temptation to keep indulging the avoidance in full force is strong.

It is like trying to paddle upstream against a heavy current.

Fortunately, paddling upstream is not the only way. Using the same metaphor, I can have more success if I get out of the canoe and walk along the bank of the river.

Getting grounded rather than struggling at a superficial level is important for me if I am to have success in inquiry. Otherwise I’ll tire myself out and then collapse.

For me, the easiest and most direct way to achieve that is by allowing the body to become very restfully still. That means I turn my attention to the physical sensations and look for the “low hanging fruit” of the tensions that I can readily voluntarily release.

This helps to simply side-step the thoughts and fantasies.

I don’t aim for 100% perfection in this. I don’t need to become perfectly still. I don’t need to become perfectly relaxed. The actual benefit as I experience it is simply in directing attention to what is subtler and subtler. The more I gently attend to releasing tension, the more I become aware of subtler aspects of experience.

Eventually, all experience of objects – even subtle objects such as thoughts, sensations, etc. – becomes so subtle that I cannot say that it is even happening. It is like dreaming of imagining of a memory of a ghost of someone who never was. It seems almost as though it might be, but it is not.

At this point, there is simply what always is. And I am that. I am this which is prior to and during and after all experience. This is obvious once all the phenomena have settled down enough because I can clearly observe that I remain as I always am, and yet nothing is happening. No objects are here.

Now, that state of what I might call pure stillness or non-objective reality or pure potential or awareness or by any other name is quite blissful (according to me, at least). But if I have to maintain that state by keeping all objective phenomena at bay, that becomes rather strenuous and unpleasant.

In my experience, the good news is that maintaining that state is not necessary. After all, the revelation is that that pure non-objective reality is always here. It is what is before, during, and after every thought, sensation, and so forth.

Objective experience seems to overshadow non-objective reality, but a closer look reveals that non-objective reality is never overshadowed. It is too close, too intimate, to be overshadowed. It is what is always here. It is what is continuous where as objective reality is winking in and out non-continuously. Thoughts appear and thoughts disappear. Sensations arise and sensations subside. But non-objective reality is continuous.

In my experience, this inquiry results in feeling better. I am not saying that I feel the way that I think I should feel. That would be feeling well. Rather, I am saying that inquiry helps me to feel better. That is, I feel more clearly, more skillfully.

I used to feel as part of what I call constellations. As I use the term, a constellation refers to a group of fundamentally unrelated phenomena that give rise to a non-existent entity that produces suffering.

The elements of a constellation may be thoughts, images, and sensations, for example. A particular configuration of a particular thought, image, and sensation gives rise to the delusional sense that something is harming me, something is oppressing me.

In the context of an unquestioned constellation being triggered, I will react predictably, producing my own suffering all in the name of trying to defeat my suffering. But because I am fighting a non-existent foe, I am only hurting myself.

Inquiry helps me to dissolve constellations. By noticing what is prior to all experience and resting as that, I start to see more clearly. I start to see what is rather than what I have wrongly imagined.

That means I start to see that the elements of the constellation are fundamentally unrelated. The thought, sensation, and image don’t have any essential relatedness. They were only glued together by delusion.

This is like the story of the snake in the rope. A man is staying in a hut overnight. In the growing darkness he looks to the corner of the room and sees a snake coiled and ready to strike. He stays awake all night in fear, watching the snake. At dawn as the light grows, he sees that it was a rope all along.

If I see a snake in the rope, I am experiencing a constellation. An image (snake), thought (snake), and sensation (fear-contraction) form the constellation and I in delusion I see a snake where there is none.

So it is with most if not all of my objective experience. If I perceive that I don’t have enough money, what is really happening? I have a thought (not enough money), a sensation (fear-contraction), and maybe some images (crying children, living under a bridge with tattered clothes, etc.)

Whatever the problem is – whether it is health, relationship, finance, or anything else – in my explorations, all of them turn out to be constellations. All of them are snakes in the rope.

When I inquire, I see this clearly. Then I start to feel better in that I am perceiving what is rather than fighting a war within myself. And I also typically eventually start to feel well – though that may or may not happen right away and I can’t count on that short term reward. So I find it best not to give much concern to whether I like how I am feeling or not. Instead, my judgments about the quality of my experience can be more opportunity for inquiry.

The post Avoidance versus inquiry: how to feel better first appeared on Joey Lott's official website.