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The photo above comes from my desktop, with Ram Dass on the left and his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, on the right. They’ve been sitting there 24/7 for several years now.

Actually, that’s not true. Whenever my octogenarian Louisiana in-laws visit, they stay in my office which doubles as a guest bedroom. My wife always puts the photos in my desk drawer for those visits, thinking they would freak her parents out. Which they might.

God knows, my kids all think I’m crazy for having photos of two weird-looking, bearded guys staring at me all day. I just keep telling them that these are two of my favorite people who’ve ever lived. Because they are.

My latest Ram Dass binge

Needless to say, I’ve embarked on another of my periodic Ram Dass binges. That means listening to his talks from the 1970s and 1980s which I’ve done for the past week.

If you want to listen to some of the wisest, most accessible spiritual talks you’ll ever hear, go to ramdass.org and check them out. You won’t be disappointed.

I find Ram Dass’s words as compelling as any spiritual teacher I’ve read or listened to. Eloquent and wise do not begin to describe the totality of his work.

This was on full display a few days ago when listening to a talk he gave in 1986 at the Omega Institute in New York. In it, Ram Dass did his usual by drilling down to the core of the spiritual path.

He said:

“It’s about again and again letting go of who you think you are to become who in fact you are. Each time you let go of your ‘somebodyness,’ you can hear more clearly your ‘everybodyness.’”

Let’s take those two sentences one by one.

Who are we?

What does it mean to let go of we think we are? Let’s all do this right now. Without thinking too much, who do you think you are? Take thirty seconds and write down what comes to mind.

I’ll go first. I think I’m David Gerken. Male. A funny guy. Good athlete. Dad of three kids, husband to Stephanie. Worked in politics in Washington and as a writer in Hollywood. Writer of all things spiritual. Five feet, ten inches tall. (I’ll omit weight if that’s okay with you…)

What Ram Dass is saying, and he’s right, is that that is not who I am. It is a tiny part of who I am. All those things combined comprise the part of me that is the tip of the iceberg protruding through the water.

We are NOT the tip of the iceberg

The important part of the me, the essence of me, is the vast mass of the iceberg standing below the water. That is the conscious me. The divine me. The me that arose from The One Source and that will return to that source when I leave my body upon death.

Am I going deep enough?! Yikes, it feels weird even typing those words…And yet, I believe them wholeheartedly.

Because after fifteen years of immersing myself in all things spiritual, I’ve learned that that is what it all comes down to: Realizing that the vast bulk of who we are is that iceberg below the water line (our consciousness) and not just that tiny part popping through.

Thinking that the totality of who we are is, in my case that funny, male, athletic writer, is the central malady afflicting humankind. We get that taken care of and it truly will be a wonderful world.

How to let go

How do we let go of who we think we are to become who we really are? As I’ve written ad infinitum previously, we do the work of quieting down inside and observing that ego that we think is us…Again and again and again.

Now to the second sentence of Ram Dass’s teaching:

“Each time you let go of your ‘somebodyness,’ you can hear more clearly your ‘everybodyness’”

This one goes even deeper, believe it or not. How?

I’ll explain by relating something Neem Karoli Baba often said, usually apropos of nothing. It was two short words in Hindi:

“Sub ek.”

It means “All one.” What does that mean?

It means we are all one. We all come from that same One Source I referenced earlier.

And this isn’t some kumbaya “let’s all come together and live as one” hippie BS, either. I sense deep down that it is the truth of the universe.

We’re vessels for consciousness

That core essence or consciousness that we all share experiences life through us in countless ways due to our unique eyes, ears, genes, environments, parents and on down the line. And so at our deepest level, we truly are all one.

But thinking we are our egos, or our ‘somebodyness,’ as Ram Dass puts it, makes us feel separate. And alone. And scared.

Eckhart Tolle uses the metaphor of the lonely ripple in the middle of the vast ocean that is scared…because he doesn’t realize that he is part of the ocean. That he is the ocean. Such is the case with the mass of humanity.

But, Ram Dass said, the more we let go of that somebodyness, the more we sense our part in the everybodyness; that is, that we are all one.

The takeaway

The bottom line on all this? We are so much bigger, better and deeper than what we think we are.

Our life’s work lies in quieting our minds enough that we can know and live that reality.

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Our world is in pretty rough shape these days. I know, I know. People have been saying that every century for several millennia.

“Yikes! This Bubonic Plague is killing everybody! How could things get any worse?” said anybody in Europe in the middle of the 14th century.

Ditto in the early 20th century when twenty million people died in World War I. I could go on for 3,000 pages on this, but I’ll stop there.

And today?

Our suffering planet

Wars in Iran and Ukraine. Global warming roasting the planet. The usual mass suffering throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Brutal, insane dictators (not to mention the wannabes) oppressing billions of people for their own selfish gain.

What’s a spiritual aspirant to do?

Enter Ramana Maharshi.

I’ve been at this spiritual stuff for going on fifteen years now and a big part of that journey has been spent studying the greats. The ones who “got there.”

Of all the saints I’ve studied, only a handful truly blew me away.

Who was Ramana Maharshi?

Ramana Maharshi was one of those few.

Sri Ramana’s story is that one night at age sixteen he had a revelatory experience in which he sensed a force inside himself that he identified as his true self. He dropped his ego right there and then.

Six weeks later, in 1896, he abruptly left home and traveled to the holy mountain of Arunachala in southern India. He spent the final 54 years of his life as a renunciant and spiritual teacher in and around the city of Tiruvannamalai, which lies at the base of Arunachala.

My favorite modern teachers, Eckhart Tolle and Michael Singer, have extolled Ramana Maharshi repeatedly over the years. Time and again in my spiritual studies he has been praised as the most authentic of Indian sages.

Paul Brunton’s journey to India

Today’s piece is inspired by something Sri Ramana said to Paul Brunton, an Englishman who traversed India in search of authentic yogis back in the 1930s.

Brunton wrote about those experiences in his iconic book, A Search in Secret India, where he recounts spending significant time with with Meher Baba and several other renowned saints.

But the one yogi who blew him away infinitely more than the others was Ramana Maharshi. Brunton’s recounting of their conversations is profoundly moving.

In one of those conversations, Brunton pressed Sri Ramana about the state of the world. He asked if good times were ahead or “chaos and war?”

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For a Roman emperor who lived almost 2,000 years ago, Marcus Aurelius sure does get a surprising amount of attention these days.

This is mostly because of his prominent place in the pantheon of Stoic philosophers, along with Epictetus, Seneca the Younger and Zeno of Citium.

What is Stoicism?

It’s a very cool philosophy that I wholeheartedly believe in. What is stoicism? This definition from AI seems as good as any:

A practical system of personal ethics teaching that inner peace and flourishing come from focusing exclusively on your own rational choices and virtuous actions while calmly accepting whatever external events lie outside your control.

My favorite example of Marcus Aurelius’s staying power in today’s world comes from the guy who created and starred in my favorite sitcom of all time: Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry recently told an interviewer that Meditations, Aurelius’s main text, had captivated him.

Seinfeld on Stoicism

Here’s how Jerry describes the Aurelian philosophy:

“Everything that you’re worried about is going to be gone like that. The people that are criticizing you, they’re going to be gone. You’re going to be gone. All this hand-wringing, worry, and concern over ‘How are people viewing me,’ ‘Someone said something bad about me’ — and you get so upset about it — is wasted time and energy. Your only focus should be on getting better at what you’re doing. Focus on what you’re doing, get better at what you’re doing. Everything else is a complete waste of time.”

Sounds good to me.

But I came across a Marcus Aurelius quote recently that blew me away even more than the above. Here it is:

“If you seek tranquillity, do less.”

Six words. A ton of wisdom.

I see two powerful takeaways from this for we modern humans.

Doing less doesn’t mean laziness

First, let’s address the obvious. By “do less” Marcus Aurelius didn’t mean that the road to inner peace lies in sitting on the couch watching Gunsmoke reruns while devouring an endless supply of Lay’s potato chips.

This was a decidedly unlazy guy who in his twenty years as emperor fended off several outside invaders and instituted landmark social and legal reforms all while finding the time to author, in Meditations, one of the greatest works of philosophy ever written.

What he did mean is that the path to serenity comes through simplicity. In all things.

Another way of putting it is that peace comes not from doing, doing, doing, but from being, being, being.

My Stoic mom

My mom unknowingly took this to heart in her life. This manifested as a fried egg on toast for breakfast, a brisk walk, some gardening and, of course, tending to the myriad needs of her six children. A happier, more peaceful person you’d never meet.

What this comes down to is needs and wants. Those who have a lot — wagyu steak only, the perfect shade of white for the kitchen walls, the finest of the finest sound systems for the house — will be hard-pressed to achieve equanimity. Those with few, like my mom, have a much easier path to tranquillity.

There’s a second piece of the Aurelius quote that also hit me. It has to do with work. How so?

Work: Do more by doing less

It has to do with how most people view performing work. They think, because they’ve been taught, that being busy, busy, busy is the way to go. Focus on just getting as much done as possible.

That is not the way to peak performance. What is the way?

As Marcus Aurelius said: Do less.

Zoom out, then zero in

By that I mean zoom out to the 30,000 foot macro view and determine the few truly important areas to focus on. This is what most successful workers do. It’s called working smart.

What I’m doing here is taking Aurelius’s quote and replacing ‘tranquility’ with ‘peak performance’ and ‘do less’ with ‘do fewer, but more important’ tasks. Tranquility begets peak performance when we focus on the important.

When we act as busybodies, we’re normally just allowing our overactive minds to run the show. We ‘do’ more, but accomplish less.

Not surprisingly, people prefer working ‘harder’ because it’s actually easier. Than what? Slowing our minds down so we can determine what we really need to focus on.

Covey’s four quadrants

The author and educator Stephen Covey expressed this most powerfully in his book First Things First. In it, he described the four quadrants of work tasks people encounter.

-Quadrant 1: Urgent and important.

-Quadrant 2: Not urgent and important.

-Quadrant 3: Urgent and not important.

-Quadrant 4: Not urgent and not important.

Obviously quadrants three and four are pointless.

The surprise is that he says we should organize our work lives such that we spend most of our time in quadrant two. It’s about focusing on planning and strategy over running around all day like chickens with our heads cut off.

Hope that all makes sense.

The takeaway

The bottom line is that Marcus Aurelius was right. Good things happen in life when we do less and simplify matters.

We perform better at work and, more important, we experience more peace, which, in my book, is the most important endeavor we humans can pursue.

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Most people walk around every day a slave to their inner maniac. What do I mean by inner maniac? Most of you know exactly what I mean, but I’ll explain it anyway.

We could call it many things. Our inner neurotic. Inner lunatic. Inner Sensitive Sally. Ego. I heard Mickey Singer use inner maniac in a recent talk and laughed when I heard it so I’m going with that.

Our inner maniac is our personal self. Our ego. Our inner critic who criticizes ourselves and everyone else. It says things like,

“I mean how big a bitch does someone have to be to say something like that?”

“I’m not talking to that jerk until he apologizes.”

“I can’t ask her out. I’m not good enough for her.”

I’ve written often about the fact that we are not our inner maniac, that we are the consciousness that is aware of that inner maniac. That idea is at the heart of Eckhart Tolle’s, Michael Singer’s and most spiritual leaders’ teachings.

People think their inner maniac is all they are

The biggest problem in our world is that most people think they are their inner maniac. They aren’t aware that there’s anything else to them. Just that voice in the head babbling on and on all day long, every day.

Since you’re reading this, I assume that you are one of the fortunate few who is at least aware that there is a deeper dimension to you than just the inner maniac. That in itself is a profoundly important step forward on the spiritual path. How is that?

A two-step life journey

One way to boil down the entire spiritual awakening journey is to reduce it to two steps. Step one would be simply becoming aware that you are not your inner maniac, as I wrote above.

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The quality of every human life is governed by the interplay of two entities: The conscious self and the egoic self.

Unfortunately for humanity, in most of us that interplay involves the ego dominating the conscious self, which manifests as a planet full of fearful, worry wart Earthlings.

What are these two entities?

The egoic self and the conscious self

As I’ve written many times, the egoic self is the voice inside your head constantly tormenting you with those unwanted, involuntary thoughts. It’s the harsh, relentless critic talking at you inside your head all day. It’s the you of your past and the you of your perceived future.

Your conscious self is the you that exists only in the present. It’s the you that exists when your mind is not busy chasing useless thoughts.

It’s also the “you” that is in charge when, for example, an athlete is “in the zone,” making every shot on the basketball court or every putt on the green. That athlete is not thinking about anything when they are performing at the highest level. They’re just allowing their conscious, present selves to take over. Just ask Michael Jordan or Serena Williams.

The no-thought, conscious self is also present when we watch a sublime sunset and feel nothing but peace and bliss inside. Because we’re experiencing that sunset in the present moment. Not thinking about how beautiful it is. Just a thought-free experiencing of how beautiful it is.

The Lawrence Taylor-Don Knotts Theorem

Because the interplay of ego and conscious self is so central to our well-being, understanding that dynamic is of paramount importance. To that end, I came up with the Lawrence Taylor-Don Knotts Theorem. Here’s how it works.

First, why is it that the ego is so dominant for the vast majority of the eight billion people on planet earth?

Suffice it to say that for a few hundred thousand years our homo sapiens brains evolved to thrive in the hunter-gatherer environment we lived in. We spent all day, every day roaming around in nature.

Agriculture=no more roaming around

Then roughly 7,000 years ago, agriculture took hold which allowed humans to stay put. For a multitude of reasons, this threw our brains into a distracted, anxious tailspin that has worsened with each passing millennium.

So let’s picture the powerful, dominant, egoic self as Lawrence Taylor, the best defensive player in the history of the National Football League. Known as LT, Taylor was 245 pounds of raw, athletic ferocity who struck fear in the hearts of NFL quarterbacks.

Now let’s call the conscious self Don Knotts, the hilarious actor from the Andy Griffith Show in the 1960’s. Knotts was five-feet six inches tall and weighed 120 pounds soaking wet.

How Don Knotts beats LT

How in the world does the diminutive Don Knotts have any chance against the mighty LT? It’s simple: He uses mindfulness and meditation.

And by that I mean Mr. Knotts remains calm and present through any kind of LT ego noise. Like what?

Your wife yells at you. You get impatient at the slow grocery store checkout line. You get an anxious thought while meditating.

Turns out that every time we meet one of these triggers by relaxing through the disturbance, what we’re doing is putting our skinny, Don Knotts, conscious self through a mini weightlifting routine.

What happens when we relax and notice

And when we do that on a regular basis, over the weeks, months, years and, yes, decades, here’s what happens: Don Knotts slowly but surely transforms into 180 pounds of rock solid muscle. This manifests as a more present person less plagued by egoic turmoil.

And what about our egoic selves? What are we doing about that troublemaker LT while we’re building up Don Knotts through mindful practices? This part is critical, so please laser in.

You’re not building up your Don Knotts/conscious self so that he can become strong enough to step into the ring and beat the heck out of LT.

Because you don’t beat LT by fighting him. In fact, fighting is exactly what the LT/egoic self wants. LT’s lifeblood is drama and conflict.

Beat Your Egoic Self By Not Engaging With It

So the central question is, how the hell do you deal with this egoic insanity?

As I said above: You simply notice LT when he appears, in the form of egoic reactions and relax as best you can through that disturbance. You don’t try to fight him or change him or tame him or judge him or get mad at him or do anything to him… You just notice him.

That’s it? That really is it.

Example: The jerk at work

How does that manifest in our day? Let’s take an example. You get pissed off at a guy at work for sending a snide remark your way during the meeting with your boss. This schmuck never misses an opportunity to undercut you.

On your drive home from work, all your drama queen-egoic self wants to do is dwell on this jerk. So what do you do?

Here’s how we want it to play out in our head:

LT/Egoic Self: “I can’t believe what that jerk Jerry said in the staff meeting.”

Don Knotts/Conscious Self: “I had a thought about Jerry’s remark in the meeting.”

LT/Egoic Self: “I mean, what a dick!” Silence… “Hello? Anybody home? Let’s go! This guy Jerry’s a total loser…let’s dish! I’d love to grab him by the lapels and smash his face in!”

Don Knotts/Conscious Self: “Thinking bad thoughts about Jerry.”

More silence as we keep relaxing through this…

LT/Egoic Self: “Come on, I’m starving, man! Throw me a bone here…Oh, no, I’m drifting away! Say something! AAAHHhhhhhh!”

And the bad thoughts about Jerry drift away, biting the dust because the conscious you refused to engage with the egoic you.

It’s crucial to note that we’re not avoiding these thoughts by saying,

“Yikes, these are disturbing thoughts. Just go away.”

We’re also not suppressing them with,

“Jerry’s not such a bad guy. He’s just got issues.”

What we are doing is actively paying attention to the disturbing thoughts and feelings, while at the same time not engaging with them.

When Knotts Gets Stronger and LT Gets Weaker

The more we do this in our every day lives, the stronger Don Knotts gets and the weaker LT gets. And how does that manifest in our lives?

We worry less. We ruminate less. We feel less anxious. We don’t lose it when someone cuts us off in traffic.

Realistically, most of us aren’t going to eliminate our egoic selves. Not many people have.

Maybe the Buddha did. Perhaps a fortunate few others over the millennia have. Someone like the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle has come pretty close.

50/50 is massive benefit

Well, that’s probably not going to happen to me, or most of you. But if we could go from 98 per cent egoic/two percent conscious, to 50/50 that would be an enormous game-changer.

Not just for us, but for our kids, spouses, siblings, friends, coworkers, and yes, for humanity.

Virtually every spiritual tradition, whether it’s Hinduism, Buddhism, Eckhart Tolle, Mickey Singer or Ram Dass’s teachings and countless others, comes down to doing this one thing:

Observing, and not engaging with, the egoic self when it arises so that it gradually loses its power over us.

Or, as Eckhart Tolle teaches, it’s about dis-identifying with the egoic self.

The takeaway

I created the LT-DonKnotts Theorem to help crystallize for you how this uber-important dynamic works:

The scrawny, Don Knotts, real you becomes strong as an ox by relaxing and noticing the ferocious Lawrence Taylor when he arises. That’s it.

Over time, this results in the ego going from dominant master ruling our lives to more of a distant voice we hear but can easily ignore.

And that, my friends, is the pot of gold at the end of the spiritual rainbow.

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I love writing about worrying. Why? Because it is so influential in so many of our lives, and not in a good way.

It’s corrosive, destructive and can hijack our lives…if we let it.

Many of you have heard of the great quotes about worrying.

Like this one from Mark Twain:

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, most of which never happened.”

Or this one from Thomas Jefferson:

“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened!”

And what I consider to be the most important and relevant one, from Eckhart Tolle:

“Worry pretends to be necessary, but serves no useful purpose.”

This last one carries within it the crux of today’s article. It’s about the truth of worrying, which is obvious: It doesn’t do us any good.

What we need to do

And that leads to the one thing we need to do if we are to curb the insidious invader of our souls, worrying. Which is this:

We need to acknowledge and embrace the fact that worrying is harmful to us.

Huh? What the hell does that even mean, Gerken?

What that means is, most people don’t look at worrying that way. They hate it and they know it sucks, but they don’t go to the next step which is to actually do something about it.

Three reasons we worry

Why don’t most people do something about their worrying? I see three reasons.

First is that they conclude, incorrectly, that worrying is just part of life and is inevitable. It’s not. We don’t have to worry. Period. Full stop.

Second, we worry because we think it will do us some good. Examples? I have to worry about my:

-Client presentation

-Tennis tournament match

-SAT test

-Overall financial situation

Why? Because worrying about these things will give me an edge. The fear will light a fire under my butt and allow to perform at my highest.

Wrong. Fear and worrying do not offer the path to the highest level of performance.

Calm confidence trumps worry

What does? Confidence. Calm. Presence. Devoting all of our energy to the task at hand. Not worrying about it.

What would that look like in the above examples?

-Focus as hard as you can on the details and quality of your client presentation.

-Put all of your attention on match preparation, like hydrating, stretching and visualizing shots you’ll hit.

-Concentrate as much as you can taking practice SAT tests and honing in on areas you need to improve on.

-Place 100 percent of your energy on making the money you need to make in order to ease your financial situation.

The third area where we allow ourselves to worry is the most insidious and involves some tough love. Please hear me out.

Seeing worry as virtuous

It’s when worrying actually makes us feel good about ourselves. I’m sure you see where this is going.

The most salient example is the tortured, worrying mom. This too often translates to,

“I just love my kids so much that I can’t stop worrying about them.”

Is their best friend treating them well? Are they going to flunk math? Does the boyfriend have pure intentions? Are they going to get into the college they have their heart set on?

This often bleeds into the people around you who say,

“Wow, what a great mom. She suffers so much for those kids.”

Now, before all the moms out there jump on me, you have to know one thing: I am and always have been a major dad worrier.

I’m a major dad worrier

I’m in the same boat and have done the same thing with silently patting myself on the back for torturing myself by worrying about my three kiddos.

That’s why this subject is so near and dear to my heart.

As many of you know, the worry subject has been front and center this past week with my eldest heading off to college. It’s been hard for him. Nothing serious. Just garden variety homesickness.

And I have to check myself from drifting into incessant worrying. How do I do that? It’s not rocket science, people. It’s all about reminding myself of one thing:

Worrying about Hank hurts me and serves no useful purpose. If it helped him in any way then great, I’d worry. But it doesn’t.

The win-win of not worrying

And something else to drive into your noggin is the fact that not worrying is a win-win. How?

First, because we don’t tie our stomach up in knots worrying.

But win number two is even more important and it’s this:

The more present we are and the less we act out of fear, the more helpful we can be to our loved ones.

Bottom line: When we freak out and worry ourselves to death over our little ones, we aren’t doing anybody any good.

Stopping worrying is hard

Having said that, stopping worrying on a dime is difficult, if not impossible. Most of us have been doing it our whole lives, thinking it’s either inevitable, helpful, virtuous, or somebody combination of the three.

The point of this article is that it’s none of those three things.

Step number one on the road to less worrying is acknowledging that.

I hope you’ll take this to heart. Think of how much anxiety you’ll cut out of your life if you cut down on your worrying.

The takeaway

Let’s end by going back to Eckhart’s powerful quote, which captures this whole point:

“Worry pretends to be necessary, but serves no useful point.”

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All of us mere mortal Earthlings get put through the emotional gauntlet in life. Unless you’re Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, it’s going to happen.

What I’m going to explore today is a healthy way of dealing with those rollercoaster rides.

My son left the nest

I’ve employed this strategy in small snippets in the past several weeks and in major doses since Monday. That’s the day that my oldest child, Hank, like a chick flying out of the nest, flew off to Seattle for college.

It’s been hard. And painful. As I wrote a few weeks ago in an article about impermanence, Hank is, quite simply, a wonderful human being. He came out that way.

And yes, I’m sure that sounds like a biased dad spouting off, but I’m confident a wide cross-section of people in his life feel the same way.

My strategy

So, what’s this grand ‘strategy’ I’ve been employing for dealing with the Coney Island Cyclone rollercoaster ride that has been thrashing my emotions around so ruthlessly these past few days?

First, strategy sounds admittedly antiseptic when used in association with emotions. I use it only to give some teeth and firmness to what is usually a mushy, intangible topic.

The strategy is, in short, to feel what I’m feeling when I’m feeling it. It is to actually focus my attention on those tough feelings when they arise rather than push them away.

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In my long journey traveling the spiritual path I’ve found that there are two main areas of benefit: making regular situations better and making stressful, upsetting situations less stressful and upsetting.

My experience has been that making the bad less bad has given me far more benefit than making the normal better.

What this usually entails is learning and practicing how to respond rather than react when something upsets us. Like when your spouse says or does something that absolutely infuriates us and we stop, breathe, take a few seconds…and then respond. Rather than…

Losing our shit and lobbing every low blow we can at them, which can result in a multi day cold shoulder stand off…or worse.

The problem is our short fuses

Every single one of us knows the conundrum here: That fuse that gets lit inside us when we get triggered is so damn short that we explode before we can respond! Usually in less than a second.

The work lies in lengthening that fuse enough that we have time to put it out before we rein holy hell on our spouse, work colleague, mother-in-law, etc.

The long-term solution to this problem is letting go of the ego that is the source of the explosion. Ideally, we get to a place where there’s nothing anyone can do or say that can trigger us into exploding because we’ve let go of our ego.

We need a practical strategy

In the meantime, we need to employ effective strategies for staving off the explosions and the resultant wreckage that often follows.

My strategy when devising strategies is always to start with the practical and logical. Just because we’re dealing with spiritual matters doesn’t mean we need to look for the ethereal and metaphysical for solutions.

In this case, practical starts with asking: What could I actually do to give myself a chance at not snapping right in the moment of upset?

For me, that’s having something I’ve already thought through at the forefront of my mind. I call it a go-to.

So we tell ourselves,

“Okay, next time I get all spun up, I’m going to do my utmost to go immediately to X.”

What is that all-important ‘X’ we should go to? There are many options. It could be:

“Accept.”

“Don’t resist.”

“Breathe.”

All of those are great, but they aren’t what we should go to first. It’s a question of order.

My middle of the night racing mind

This all came to me in the middle of the night a few days ago when I had a bout of racing mind syndrome. Anybody else ever had that? Ha ha. I haven’t met anybody who doesn’t get this at least occasionally.

My go-to was,

“It’s alright. This is just your mind going off on its own; it’s not you.”

And that’s a good go-to for that situation. But it didn’t work very well.

Why?

It’s about what we do first

Because I needed to do something else first. That something else is the point of this article.

It’s one word.

Relax.

Some of you might be thinking,

“He’s mentioned relax a zillion times in different articles. What’s different here?”

What’s different is that it occurred to me that relax needs to be our go-to for every stressful situation we face. Every one of them.

Triggering causes physical reactions

Why? Because when we get upset, we react physically. We release hormones like epinephrine, norepinephrine and cortisol, which speed up our heart rate, increase blood pressure and tense up our muscles.

“Accept,” “Don’t resist,” and even “breathe” are responses that require some level of thinking to set in motion.

But what we need is a mostly physical go-to right when we get triggered. It’s the only chance we have to nip all those hormones in the bud.

Relax is physical

Relax is that physical go-to. We know exactly what we mean when we say this word to ourselves.

It immediately conjures slower, deeper breathing and a general relaxing of our muscles. Closing the eyes can help us better focus on relaxing.

I don’t care what scenario you find yourself in, relaxing is the best thing to do right off the bat.

Your boss insults you in front of your colleagues? Relax.

Your teenage daughter says you look fat? Relax.

Your mind starts racing at 3 a.m.? Relax.

You hit the fifth red light in a row? Relax.

Bottom line: We need to feel relaxed inside if we are to respond rather than react to stressful situations.

Mickey Singer’s take on relaxation

My favorite spiritual teacher Michael Singer goes as far as saying that relax is the most important word in all of spirituality. I agree.

Best of all, it’s the greatest win-win available to we mortal Earthlings. How?

Win #1: When we relax through a stressful scene and respond from a place of presence, we achieve the optimum outcome and avoid disaster.

Win #2: Relaxing when we get triggered allows us to actually let go of the egoic baggage/Samskara that has been stuck in our lower selves, wreaking havoc on our lives. Each time we relax and let go we lighten our psychic load and become more peaceful and present.

As for the “how to” of it, there’s nothing magical involved. When we get triggered we relax.

Commit or it won’t happen

Most important is making the commitment to actually do this. We need to be vigilant about it. And give significant attention to it. Without that, this will be just another spiritual teaching that dissolves into the ether after a day or two.

Start by committing to just one day. Wake up in the morning and have a note by your bed that reads,

“Today I am going to RELAX immediately whenever anything stresses me out. Then I’ll respond with presence.”

It’s helpful to think about two or three things that stress you out on a regular basis. Could be your spouse/significant other, traffic/commuting to work, your boss’s comments, your thoughts racing in the middle of the night…

Just think of a few of them, no more than two or three, then visualize them happening. Then see yourself relaxing in response.

If you’ve already played it out in your mind, it will be easier to do when it actually happens.

The takeaway

This one is so simple, but so valuable!

Commit to it. Practice it.

Relax when you get triggered.

The pay off will be exponential.

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Most people on this planet are stuck in their heads most of the time. Thoughts about the past, worries about the future, and just plain trivial nonsense dominate most peoples’ moments.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that past years have seen an upsurge in public awareness that this state of affairs is not a good thing. For millennia before this, people accepted that their minds were who they were and didn’t see this as particularly concerning. The boom in meditation and mindfulness has the world trending in the right direction.

The faulty understanding of dealing with the mind

But many wading into the incipient stages of these practices have a faulty understanding of what the true game plan is.

They identify, correctly, that the mind and all of its injurious, involuntary thinking is the main culprit. They then deduce, logically, that the way to approach this problem is to try and conquer or control this mind that has caused them so much grief throughout their lives.

How does this strategy manifest? In meditation, people say to themselves, “Okay, let’s focus on stopping my crazy mind from thinking…”

This may work for a short while, but then the thoughts inevitably come charging back with a vengeance.

How we go wrong in mindfulness practice

In practicing mindfulness, it comes out when, for example, someone is out in nature and says,

“Wow. What a beautiful sunset. Let’s just stop thinking and be present with it…”

This also ends in frustration and increased thought traffic.

Or when their spouse says something that infuriates them, they stop, close their eyes, and say to themselves,

“Okay. I’m not going to let that incredibly stupid and insensitive comment rile me up. He/she probably didn’t mean it the way I’m taking it. Just chill out…”

That’s not mindfulness. It’s suppression.

Observe, don’t conquer

The point is that the human mind cannot be wrestled into submission by direct action. It’s simply too strong.

So, what is the best strategy for slaying our noggin dragons?

To observe your thinking mind.

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I’m not a Buddhist. I’m not an anything for that matter.

My MO has been to survey the totality of the spiritual landscape and embrace what makes sense and is useful.

But boy do I love me my Buddhism; specifically, its core tenet of the Four Noble Truths.

Those four are commonly known as:

1) All of life is suffering.

2) We suf…

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Thousands of books about work, work habits, what to do, what not to do, have been written by a plethora of brilliant minds over the millennia, especially in the last fifty years. I’ve read some (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey comes to mind), but certainly not all.

For my money, the most profound advice of all regarding work comes from a short passage in my favorite book of wisdom, the Tao te Ching, written 2,500 years ago by Lao Tzu.

From Chapter 24:

“He who clings to his work will create nothing that endures. If you want to accord with the Tao, just do your job, then let go.”

That’s it. Just do your job then let it go. What does that mean?

What it means for writers

Let’s start with what this would mean for a Substack writer. It means work your ass off on the article you’re working on. Put in all the blood, sweat, toil and tears you can muster to make it the best it can be. Then submit it and move on to your next piece.

What shouldn’t you do? Check your stats page every five minutes to see how many reads you’ve gotten. Or call every friend you have and see what they think about your latest feat of brilliance. Or spend ten percent of your time writing and ninety percent pushing it on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

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I tend to use an unscientific and unprofessional word to describe anxiety: It sucks. One major reason it sucks is that anxiety can be hugely difficult to eliminate, especially the free-floating sort that has no easily discernible cause.

But there is one type that we can discern the cause and that we can exorcise and tha…

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Happiness is a tough topic. Why? Because what we deem happiness to be guides how we live our lives. And there is much disagreement over what happiness is or should be.

Here’s what the late Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh believed:

“Many people think excitement is happiness. But when you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on peace.”

Now do you see why happiness is a tough topic? Because what we believe will make us happy is what we pursue in life. And Thich Nhat Hanh is saying that pursuing excitement will not make us happy.

What I mean by excitement

Since excitement and peace are just a collection of letters making up two words, let’s define, using examples, what we mean by both.

I believe excitement arises from things like getting that big promotion at work, buying a flashy new car or even something like, “Oh my God! She agreed to go on a date with me!”

Do any of these occurrences make us feel peaceful inside? No.

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I wrote an article a few years ago about the very first lines of my favorite book of wisdom, the Tao te Ching. They go like this:

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

The point of the piece was that the higher truths about God/The Tao/Universe/Nature can’t be un…

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I believe the Tao Te Ching is the wisest book ever written. Thought to be written in China by Lao Tzu some 2,500 years ago, the Tao is a guidebook on how to live life.

What does Lao Tzu mean by the Tao? Here’s the definition given in the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

“The unconditional and unknowable source and guiding principle of all reality.”

One could say that God and the Tao are interchangeable. Or the Tao and nature. Or this: The Tao is what existed before the Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago.

The passage I’m writing about today is chapter 33. This is it:

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.

Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”

What Lao Tzu is saying here is that the riches of life are found inside us.

When I come across wisdom like this that was imparted so long ago and that resonates with me, you know what I do? I lean in. And I listen.

Putting chapter 33 into action

What would listening to this Tao nugget entail for us?

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That Buddha was one wise dude.

His main teaching was that suffering comes from wanting things to be a certain way. Stop doing that and the suffering falls away.

So powerful. So simple. So true.

But as impactful to me is his emphasis on the concept of impermanence. What is that?

Here’s how Mr. AI explains impermanence:

“The Buddhist teaching that n…

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My favorite spiritual teacher Michael Singer has offered his tug of war teaching in several talks I’ve listened to. As usual, it is pithy, powerful and wise.

Let’s get into it with this from my AI pal:

“A tug of war is a competitive sporting game where two teams pull on opposite ends of a rope, each trying to drag the othe…

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If I was back in my Hollywood screenwriting days and was writing this article as a movie, I’d title it: “Letting Go of the Ego 14: Resistance Kills.”

Why fourteen? Let’s face it, I’ve written a lot about letting go of the ego, something I have zero misgivings about. It’s foundational to our well-being.

We’ve all accumulated and stored all sorts of egoic gunk throughout our lives and unless we do the work of letting it go, it just sits there. Doing what? Running, and often ruining, our lives.

Meditation won’t get you there

I don’t care if you meditate five hours a day, unless you let go of that baggage (called Samskaras in Sanskrit), it’s not going anywhere. Scars from parents’ divorces, bad break-ups, pressure to “succeed” heaped on you by overbearing parents, siblings and friends…

It all has to go.

We’ve attacked the “how” to let go from several vantage points in previous articles. Today’s teaching is, like the others, simple and invaluable.

As is the case with so many of the teachings I have learned from the likes of Ram Dass, Michael Singer and Eckhart Tolle, the key to this one is awareness.

As Tolle eloquently put it:

“Awareness is the greatest agent for change.”

I’ll keep using that quote until my fingers turn blue from typing it.

Awareness is essential

Why is awareness so central to spiritual growth? Because unless we’re aware that something we’re doing is harmful to us, we’ll never do anything to correct it.

Such is the case when our emotional/egoic baggage is poked. How so?

Let’s take a simple example. Your dysfunctional parents drilled into you from day one that you were not the sharpest tool in the shed.

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Today’s piece is going to be another in a long line devoted to illuminating something critically important, this time understanding our minds.

The whole point of articles like this is to clarify and heighten your understanding of something that is absolutely essential.

Featured today is Joseph Goldstein, someone I’ve be…

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Happiness. It’s a loaded word. Call it contentment. Inner peace. Whatever we call it, let’s all agree that it is what all humans want in life.

The core problem most people have is they pursue paths that don’t lead to happiness. Society, our parents, our friends…they all send us in the wrong direction when it comes to bei…

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