Change Of Blog

Do forgive me my tomfoolery.

I’ve decided that WordPress isn’t the blog for me.

Because this blog is very young and still in it’s infancy I’ve decided to switch over to blogger right now.

I’ve spent the day sprucing up the new blog.  It’s far more in line with what I was looking to do – I hope you like it.

I’m ever so excited.  Check it out -

www.1000daysofpresence.blogspot.com

Woo!

Technical Queries

Hey guys…

While this blog is still new and I’m still able to do this without too much dicking around or disruption, I want to ask you a few questions.

Basically, I’m having some issues with WordPress.  Although everyone told me it was better than blogger, I don’t seem to have anything like the functionality I used to.

Specifically, I want to put in an email signup plugin so people can get updates of the blog if they want.  I also wanted to put in a couple of links to Amazon so people could get a copy of A New Earth or whatever straight off my blog.

I can’t see anything like this in wordpress.   The only email plugin for signups I can find seems to require a PhD in coding to make it work, and wordpress prohibits all affiliate links.

The email signup thing seems silly – does anyone know of one knocking around?

The affiliate link thing is likewise silly.  I understand no-one wants full-on spammy blogs.  At the same time I feel my commitment to 1000 days of this tomfoolery makes live links to Tolle’s work not only useful and relevant, but kind of important too.

I genuinely do want people to read his shit, to see what it is I see in it.  I want his stuff to get out there.  I want people to read it.  And frankly, I want a new hat.

For these two reasons I think I might be moving the blog back to blogger.

If anyone knows a way to put email signups on this blog without too much dicking around, I might be persuaded otherwise.  I’m not really feeling wordpress though.

So look – everyone told me wordpress was better.  Why should I stay?  What can I do on this that I can’t do on blogger?

WordPress is silly.

A Chunk Of Zen

This is interesting.  After just a few days I’ve started to notice something.

There was always a reactivity about me.  I was always good in arguments, so I could

There’s something about me now.  It’s hard to describe.  It’s the ‘presence’ that Tolle’s talking about, but there’s a difference to it.  anyone can experience that.  Just pick up a copy of Power Of Now – you’ll know what I’m talking about before you get to page 5.

It’s like a deep undercurrent of chill that flows through everything I do.  And here’s the thing – I have no control over it.  It’s interesting, because it’s not like “I am really chilled out” as such.  It’s like this project is building up an inertia of something inside me.

I can’t quite put my finger on how to describe this properly, I haven’t experienced this before. Here’s what I reckon might be happening.

Initially, when you engage with the work of Eckhart Tolle it’s fun to play around with all the little tools he gives you that give you glimpses of presence.

My favourite was always listening to silence.  It sounds like the kind of thing a hippie would do, and of course that is true, but it’s like a route to immediately experiencing the vastness of being, the dimension of the sacred, God, the Holy Spirit – whatever you want to call it.

Briefly, you know how words on a page are little black squiggles surrounded by a vast emptiness (relatively speaking) of whiteness?  Well all the noises you are hearing right now, from cars on the road outside to thrash metal music exist in silence.  Silence isn’t just the absense of noise – it’s the backdrop to noise which allows you to hear noise clearly.

Listen to it.  Take a few breaths and listen to the vast empty silence that lies beneath the noise you hear.

….

…….

………..

Cool, huh?  Yeah, it’s interesting.  Just one of Eckhart’s little gateways, things you can do to experience presence rapidly.

(btw – if that meant nothing to you, don’t worry about it.  Start reading A New Earth or something, you’ll get it soon enough)

They’re really important, these little gateways he has and I think are one of the key things that separates him from other spiritual teachers.  He can prove to you that he’s not just talking mumbo-jumbo.  You can experience the truth of what he’s talking about immediately and directly.

However – at the end of the day all I was ever able to do with that stuff was get me a glimpse.  I could hold myself in the place of ‘stillness’ as he calls it, and it was cool.

But it was like the stillness was still at the disposal of my darker self.  I’d use it, then congratulate myself for being such a good ‘Zen’ person or whatever.  The point is I could never sustain the deep level of presence.

I could have potentially got better at it (which is a very dodgy way of putting it Zen-wise) but I’d always just forget.  Life is very distracting and pulls at the attention in a million different ways.  And it always, in my experience, finds a way of getting under your skin in the end.

Whether it’s through a girlfriend or boyfriend, husband or wife, job, argument, friendship, vendetta – something will pull your eyes off the ‘Now’ in the end.  And suck you in and down and away.

That’s a pretty dark way of looking at it, I realise.  But it’s been my experience on a personal level.  I’m probably a special case (basket case) in certain ways, probably more volatile than average… but that’s what seems to happen.

Hey – don’t let this discourage you if you’re having personal success, BTW.  I’m just doing my experiment and it’s only been going a few days.  I don’t know if what I’m doing is better or worse than any other approach – but we’ll all find out in the end.

But anyway, I digress.  The point is that the presence was like something I could ‘do’.  I could ‘turn it on’ and revel in it if I wanted to.  I could understand it and articulate it, and analyze and number crunch – but of course in the end I’d always sink back beneath the waves of mental noise, slipping back into the pettiness and banality of regrets, judgements and pipe dreams.

Something different is arising in me.  It’s made of the same stuff as the presence I felt before – the main difference is that it’s a lot more robust.  I’m becoming extremely hard to shake, or to get an emotional reaction out of.

Of course, everything’s relative.  There are a lot of people who I’m certain have never heard the name Eckhart Tolle and are a lot more chilled than I am now.  But compared to the rawness, rage and reactivity that used to blast through me I’m like a totally different person.

And it’s interesting, because it’s not like I’m less interesting, driven or passionate than I was.  If anything the opposite is true.  There’s a clarity that surrounds me that wasn’t there before that means I see everything – both internally and externally – with a deep purity (I know this isn’t a great description, I’m doing my best) that I’ve never really seen before.  It’s cool.  Really cool.

It’s like I’m building up a big-ass chunk of Zen inside me.  A mass of presence.  And this presence doesn’t go away when I get distracted, when I get pissed off or annoyed.  It’s always there, rooting me.  Grounding me.

And so you know, yes my mind often throws up belief systems surrounding what I’m doing.  Labels, judgements, mini-ideologies from every angle you can conceive. I can only assume that there are several bubbling beneath the surface that I have no idea about.  Conceptual maps, ideas, judgements, moral extremes – all that jazz.

But here’s the thing, and I mentioned this before.  That shit happens anyway.  Certainly it happens to me, and has been happening to me since I can remember.

The mass of presence – that’s new though.  Haven’t had that before.  Groovy.

I suppose that if I were to be wildly optimistic what I would hope for from these 1000 days is that the presence will build to a critical mass and trigger the kind of conceptual-identity-dissolution that Tolle himself experienced.

It’ll probably just give me a slight German accent.

Only time will tell…

Second Thoughts…

There are a number of reasons why what I’m doing is a bad idea.

The biggest one is that the mind is constantly working, constantly analyzing.  I myself am more prone to this than most, but we’re all prone.

Eckhart Tolle occasionally says that if you fall into analyzing his stuff you’ll find it boring.  I’ve never had this problem.  If anything, the opposite is true.

I’ve always found deep insights into the nature of being and humanity to be the most fascinating thing around.  I’m something of a junkie for it.  I can rant for hours about the structure of moral rationalisation, or how we order the world around us to convince ourselves of things that deep down we know aren’t true.

I’m well aware of the human capacity for self-deception because my own is so highly developed.  This isn’t to beat myself up about it, it just is the truth.  In the past I’ve fought through crusade after crusade, switching one for another and making my life a battle for the privelidge of seeing myself as a hero, or a martyr, or a genius, or whatever.

We all do it.

And the thing is that I’ve done something like this before – never on this scale of course.  I’ve saturated my mind for weeks on end with Eckhart’s voice.  I’ve had mixed results.

The reason I did it is that I’m prone to deep depression.  I’ve been on and off Prozac for a few years, which I suppose makes it official.  The smallest glimpse through my last blog will show you some pretty intense posts, and the last year has taken me right to the edge a few times.

Whenever I’d listen to Eckhart it was like plunging a red-hot sword into a pool of water.  I could almost feel the hiss and bubble as my mind rapidly cooled.

But no matter how soothing his words, how profound his teachings, my mind would whirr and buzz and weave a web of thought and judgement.  I’d construct a philosophy around his ideas, go on missions in my head to “destroy my ego” or “transmute my pain-body”.

I’d go hell-for-leather at it, then get depressed and frustrated as initial insights and successes descended into chaos, confusion and failure.

Still, initial successes that in the end led me back to square one.

I don’t know how much of that was down to the old life I used to lead.  Trying to reach a profound level of chill in the situations I’d put myself in was often like trying to build a house of cards in a hurricane.

That’s of course not to say that I’m retreating to a zen mountaintop.  Actually, the point of this whole thing is to see what happens when I load myself full of Tolle in the context of a more or less ‘normal’ life.  I have a 9-5 job, I have friends I go out with, I have TV shows I like (Supernatural is great, IMHO) and all that jazz.

At the same time, I found myself crashing out emotionally over and over.  It hit a point where it became apparent to me that, in the words of Marilyn Manson “all the drugs in this world won’t save you from yourself.”

So I decided to listen to Tolle every night when I slept.  Instantly I was more chilled, less volatile.  Then I got an interview, and took the job.  I really enjoy it, by the way.  Great fun.  At this stage normality’s like a novelty to me.  I feel so official, I love it.  The work’s good fun too.  Creative, interesting.  Not too stressful.  It’s cool.

Then I started listening to him in the day.

Then I sat back and reflected on my options.  There is a deep anger and agony in the centre of my chest.  Tolle’s voice chases it into the background, but it’s always there.  It’s like all my nastiest, weakest traits and it’s gone unchecked for a long time.  It’s been feeding for a long time.

Thing is, no matter how much I may agree with what Tolle says, agreement won’t save me.  No matter how deeply I may be able to understand or articulate his thought, I’ll still get sucked right back into shit when left to my own devices.

The thing is, I don’t think I’m going to be able to significantly chill if left to my own devices.  No matter how many flashes of insight I get, no matter how deep they are or how profound, no insight is going to save me.

And why?

It’s simple, and really quite prosaic.  Truth is, because I’ll just forget.

Given a week on my own I’ll latch on to some other mission, some other answer.  And I’ll follow that will-o-wisp into another patch of quicksand.

This way I don’t need to remember anything.  Eckhart’s always with me, keeping me on track.

The other thing is this – that in doing this I’ll create what I used to call a Zen Ego.  I don’t really like the use of the word Ego in this context (even though I was using it to refer to a conceptual sense of self before I even read Tolle).  Not because it’s inaccurate, it’s a great word to use.

At the same time I think it’s all too easy to conflate that word Ego in the sense that Tolle uses it with the word ‘arrogance’.  You hear the word Ego and you hear the word Egotistical, but the Ego that Tolle refers to is a much broader concept, a much deeper concept.  It doesn’t just refer to arrogance, but to any sense of who you are based on ideas in the mind.  Arrogance can easily rise from this – but so can deep self-loathing, so it cuts both ways.

A Zen Ego therefore is not a Zen Arrogance.  It’s a conceptual identity based on ideas gleaned from Tolle.  Easily done.  So how to avoid it over the next 997 days?

The answer is, again, simple.  I can’t.  I really don’t think it’s possible for me to do this and not build a conceptual identity out of the concepts I’m pumping into my head.  It will happen.  Over and over.

My theory, and in some ways my bet, is that there will be another process going on under this.  The truth is, I’m going to build an identity around whatever I’m doing, be it my job or whatever harebrained project I’ve dreamed up next.

The analytical identity will happen.  That’s a given.

But here’s the thing.  I reckon that Tolle is a special case.  The man sweats Zen.  He oozes chill, he oozes presence.  I believe that there’s a chance that even while my mind twists itself around his words, his presence itself will undermine that twisted process.

Given enough time.

Truth is, I don’t know if it’s going to work.  I think there’s a chance that it might.

And no-one else will be my guinea pig.  So I’m doing it.

After the 1000 days are complete, we should have a pretty good understanding of the process.

I’ll keep you posted.

1000 Days Of Presence

There comes a time when you’ve got to face the fact that the common denominator in all the fucked up situations you get into is you.

I could list the crazy shit I’d done, but there’s really no point.  Suffice it to say that I could go toe to toe with anyone you’ve ever met for having a weird-ass past.

I’ve made some strange choices.  I’ve done some dumb shit.  I’ve been a pretty intense guy.

I’ve got a story I could tell you about me in the past, about the mental stuff I’ve done and been.  It involves drugs, sex, and rock and roll.

Problem is, I always had an ambition.  Deep down somewhere in me since I was a young kid I always wanted to be a philosopher.  Not to ‘think deep thoughts’ as such, nor for the mystique of the thing, although to be honest I have gotten lost in both those sillinesses at various points.

No – it was because every now and then I’d get a glimpse of something.  Or more specifically every now and then I’d see the world from a certain angle and everything would make sense.

I think it’s hard to describe what philosophy meant to me, but I’ll try.

For me, philosophy was the only possible answer.  You see, once, when I was young, I looked around the world in which I lived and saw something unifying all the people in it, myself included.  And that unifying force wasn’t good.  There was some common darkness that united all humanity in a veil of delusion.

It was like a mesh of moral judgements that only existed in our minds.  Like each person contained a whole constructed universe of division.  Like everyone in the world, or at least everyone I could see, even (especially?) on the news or in positions of power.

That all humanity was subject to some kind of elementary flaw – a flaw that was completely universal and highly specific.

That was the kicker, for me.  That the fucked-up-ness of the world was not random.  I mean sure, the ways in which that fucked-up-ness expressed itself seemed infinite, and infinitely cruel.

But it seemed to me then that the basic mechanics of hatred were completely universal.  It was the same mechanism, the same process.

And I resolved that if I could get to the bottom of that process, then maybe – just maybe – I could do something for the world in which I lived which would actually help it.

Now before you get all gung-ho, don’t get me wrong.  I could talk for days on this subject – it has been the grand obsession of my life.  The truth is though that it’s led me into some twisted places.  Just as hate is hate is hate, no matter the context and no matter the scale, obsession is obsession is obsession.

I have been obsessed for a very long time.

A lot of my life I’ve been indolent.  Wasting time for timewasting’s sake.  You see one of the things about an obsession is that it gives you huge energy when you follow it, but everything else seems pointless beyond measure.  I’ve spent a lot of time in trivial pursuits and I’ve not done many basic things that I really should have done.  To give you an example I’ve beaten a vast number of computer games, but I’ve never learned to drive.

I don’t mind that much.  I live in Edinburgh.  It’s a lovely city for a walk.

The times in my life I haven’t been wasting time, I’ve moved with furious energy.  All-consuming, burning energy levels.  Like a kamikaze I’ve thrown myself at things and very often those things have broken me.

Don’t worry, I’m not bitching.  All my really deep wounds are self-inflicted.

But recently, about a year ago now, I was introduced to the work of a man called Eckhart Tolle.  He’s a German, a man who I would classify as a philosopher.  A real one.  The kind I’d always wanted to be.  The kind I’d always thought of myself as.

I remember the first time I read something he wrote.  I was in a hotel room in London, with a bunch of strangers I was trying to impress.  The book was ‘Stillness Speaks.’  My friend Owen had been telling me to read Tolle for ages and, lacking anything else to do within reaching distance of my hand, I picked it up and opened it to a random page.

I don’t remember what the first line was, but I remember it stunned me.  It was rare that I would be impressed even in the slightest by someone else’s philosophy.  But in one line it was apparent that Tolle had been looking at exactly the areas I’d been looking at – the lies we tell ourselves, the divisions in us, the deep reasons behind all conflict.

And in the same line it was apparent that he’d gone further than me.  There was a sense in my mind like “this is something new.  Haven’t seen this before.”

There was a clarity to it.  A deep clarity and truth that shone from his words.  I’d never seen anything like it.

I buried myself in the book.  On the way to the airport to fly back to Scotland I bought myself a copy of The Power Of Now, Tolle’s first book.

By the time I got home I realised that he’d written the book I’d been trying to write for ten years.

I started delving into his thought, delving into his ideas.  This was deep, way deeper than anything I’d seen before.  He was tapping something primal, something profound.  It wasn’t like he was really clever and he’d ‘worked out the answer’.  It was like he was living the answer, sending messages from the other side.

Every sentence in his book hummed with life and power.  I read all four of his books.

Well, that’s not really true.  I’ve never been able to make it through The Power Of Now.  I always get halfway in then have to put it down with my mind blown.

But I made a simple error.  I approached it like a philosophy.  Like a system of thought.  And it is a system of thought – Tolle constructs an incredibly coherent picture of the world around us that is as comprehensive as it is fascinating.

As a philosopher I’d always chased epiphany, chased that one insight that would make everything clear.  Each time I’d hit it, get to that ‘eureka’ moment.  Each time things would make sense.  And each time the simplicity would once more descend into complexity and chaos.  I’d lose it again.

This post is dragging out too long, but I wanted to give you some background on why I’m doing what I’m doing now.

You see, Tolle’s philosophy is worthless, as is my philosophy.  What I’d always said was that beyond the world of moral division in which we lived there was another world, a deeper nature.  A deeper morality that ebbed and flowed way below the level of what we normally understand by use of the word ‘justice’.

That state I called ‘compassion’.  Eckhart Tolle refers to it as ‘presence’.  My idea was that if I could find a way to destroy the fake it would expose the real.  What I failed to take into account is that destruction itself is part of the veil of delusion.  That destruction itself was the very core of the universe of morally charged fiction which was and is destroying humanity.  For a decade I fought fire with fire, and all I burned was me.

To mangle the truth into something that makes sense in human terms, Eckhart Tolle has discovered the answer to philosophy.  And it’s not something you need to understand with your head – or something I need to understand with my head.

It’s something I need to cultivate.

I’ve always been the kind of dude who tests stuff.  If I’m going to believe in something, I’ll live it.  It’s not because I’m brave.  It’s because I’m genuinely interested in whether what I believe is true or not.  And if it’s true, living it to the hilt will be a blast.  If it’s not true, living it to the hilt will mess you up hard and fast.

At least that’s the theory.

So from today I’m going to be putting my money where my mouth is as far as Eckhart Tolle is concerned.  I have an mp3 player.  Ironically enough, it’s a Creative Zen player.  It’s full of Eckhart’s audio stuff.

For 1000 days – that’s about three years – starting today, I will be listening to Eckhart Tolle at every available moment.

The rules are simple.

When I’m at work, at my desk, I don’t listen to Tolle.  If I’m going out with my friends, I don’t listen to Tolle.  If I’m in the shower I don’t listen to Tolle, until I get some waterproof headphones.

All other moments I have Tolle in my head.  When I get up in the morning I listen to him on the way to work.  On my lunch breaks at work I plug straight in.  When I leave work I put on the headphones and listen.  I continue to listen until I sleep.

When I sleep, I sleep with Eckhart Tolle playing all night.  Then I get up in the morning.

I repeat this 1000 times.

This is the blog diary of 1000 days of presence, 1000 days of light.  I’m pretty damaged goods, pretty dark.

We’ll see what happens.

Stay tuned…