Cheri Huber - 11 Mar

Copyright 2015 by

Cheri Huber, Ashwini Narayanan, and June Shiver

All rights reserved

Published by Keep It Simple Books

Designed and Illustrated by June Shiver

Cover design by Marie Denkinger

Table of Contents

Here in humble submission, in order to experience this most perfect now I deeply bow and sacrifice all thoughts, all tensions, all pressures and desires.

- The Daily Recollection

The incessant conversation about an imaginary world is the con artists primary weapon for tricking us out of the present.

Here is an illustration.

I save and save for a much-needed vacation on an island with endless white beaches and drinks with umbrellas in them. I arrive. Its gorgeous. But all I hear in my head as I walk on the beach or sip my drink is, I cant believe youre spending all this money. This is crazy. Itll be over soon and youll be poorer with nothing to show for it. You could have invested the money and had something for your retirement. What happens if you lose your job? The economy isnt all that good. Other younger, smarter people are hungry for your place in the company. And on and on it goes

The only part of the story that isnt imaginary is the person not enjoying the vacation! Everything elsethe job, the economy, the future, retirement, and how it could come to pass happened in a conversation . Attention was on an imaginary world, and the person was conned out of an immediate experience of a walk on the beach. Its not that any of those future predictions might not come to pass; its simply that they are not happening right now.

We are duped, fooled into ignore-ance of the present, of all that we can be and experience. After falling for some imaginary scenario and then coming to, we realize we were scammed and that there was no truth in any of it.

We have to get out of the conversation!

This is a fairly simple concept to grasp, at least intellectually. Theres a conversation in my head that my attention is on 24/7. That conversation determines my relationship with myself, everyone else, and life in general. So I need to stop listening to it. Okay. Got it.

Actually, no, I havent got it.

What I have is only an intellectual understanding. What happens in an intellectual understanding is that the con artist co-opts the message, keeps right on talking, and we go right on listening and believing. There isnt a blip in our devotion to the self-improvement programs we are hoodwinked into believing we need; the feeling bad for being criticized; the trying to meet the ever-changing standards of the voices; the arguing for our world view; or the defending, colluding, hiding, rationalizing, and in every way choosing the conversation over being HERE.

Thus, our practice focus is to

1) realize there is always a conversation,

2) recognize the one were in now,

3) drop it, and

4) direct attention to the life experience we choose.

Seeing the bamboozle, we can practice a behavior change that transcends it.

Often, people are surprised that it takes concerted, focused effort to live HERE. If the present is our natural state, shouldnt being here be easy?

Well, yes, it would be if we hadnt been so thoroughly conditioned into falling for the con game. Being HERE, therefore, has to be a moment-by-moment practice, a lifelong commitment.

Fortunately, the practice is joyful!

Language is representationalwe talk and think about things. Words represent things; words are not the things themselves. Just as the menu is not the meal, words are at a distance from the thing, much like the finger pointing at the moon.

Life, the Intelligence That Animates, the Authentic Nature of All Being, directly informs us constantly , with no gaps in the communication. When we are present, we receive Lifes information through insight and intuition. Clarity comes to us directly, arriving as lucidity that the brain then translates into words.

As an everyday example, we all have remembered something important just in the nick of time. Dont forget your umbrella, as we reach for the car door. You left your keys on the table, as we walk out of the restaurant. We might not hear words when the information drops in, but the information drops in clearly.

Every quote we read or hear that gives us a moment of ah ha or ah, yes or uh huh is the experience were talking about. For a moment we are taken out of a conditioned orientation and we glimpse the eternal. If theres anything that can be called a Zen moment, thats it! The veil drops, the curtains part, and we catch sight of that which contains what we customarily see as reality.

If were present for it, we realize its a whole-body, whole-being event. It is an experience of immediate, direct understanding.

We all have the capacity to receive and embody the Intelligence That Animates. We can practice tuning in to innate Intelligence, the source of wisdom, love and compassion. It is, after all, what we are.

This way of being in the world is not customary. From a young age, we are taught to abandon our natural authenticity and to consult instead the ego-survival system as the authority on how to live.

In the words of Jacob Needleman, the ego, our ordinary initiator of action, is an ephemeral construction, which in the unenlightened state of awareness represents a kind of blockage or impediment to the interplay of fundamental cosmic forces. Because of our identification of ourselves with the ego, what we ordinarily call action, or doing, cuts us off from the complete reception of conscious energy in our bodies and actions.

In other words, identifying with the conversation in conditioned mind cuts us off from accessing the wisdom that we are authentically.

Most of us cant simply drop the conversation in conditioned mind and step into the spaciousness of the present moment because the con game is taking up all the space. A crucial step on our way to being in the moment is to learn to direct attention away from the conversation in conditioned mind and turn attention to the Mentor.

What is so we call thisherenow. The Mentor is the voice of thisherenow. We use the Mentor to point to the wisdom, love, and compassion that is the Authentic Nature of All That Is. The Mentor articulates a direct experience of Life to the authentic human incarnation present to receive it.

The Mentor is an unconditionally loving friend, the wisest of coaches. We put Authentic Being in the form of a person so that the experience is not nebulous, just as we put conditioning in the form of a con artist. When were talking with the Mentor, we can feel the authentic nature of the relating. Its a palpable experience. Its how we experience what we truly are without any of the personal that ego is always attempting to insert.

Until we have done a good deal of Awareness Practice, our deepest and most powerful relationship is with the con artist. Now we must build a new relationship with thisherenow, with the Mentor. The new relationship is loving, compassionate, kind, and caring. The old relationship is harsh, judgmental, and punishing.

Is the relationship with the Mentor permanent? Who can say? What we know is that, as far as we can tell, its an essential step for most people to get out of the quagmire of the con games hateful, conniving, and wholly artificial world.

A word to the wise: If we want to speak from thisherenow, we need to let thisherenow do the speaking. To prevent us from experiencing the Mentor, the con artist will attempt to impersonate the Mentor and will learn Mentor language and tone of voice. The con artist will use everything to scam us. We can just know that.