Kate Gustin - The No-Self Help Book: Forty Reasons to Get Over Your Self and Find Peace of Mind

Drawing on psychological research and clinical experience, Kate Gustin offers a profound understanding of our truest identity underneath the minds story, helping us connect with the peaceful, interconnected consciousness at our core. The No-Self Help Book is a refreshing and timely antidote to the rampant loneliness of our times.

Marci Shimoff, #1 New York Times bestselling
author of Happy for No Reason

Kate Gustins The No-Self Help Book is a new approach to emotional healing that provides simple, clear-minded lessons on getting away from the negative, bullying voice of the constructed self. As you learn to ignore the false narrative, youll see yourself through new eyes as you discover that youre not who the voice inside you says you are, or who you pretend to be. Instead, you discover the authentic being within each of us who is capable of relaxed joy and awareness.

Anne Lamott , author of Almost Everything

If you were to try to define yourself, how would you do that and what would your SELF look like? Treat yourself to the concept of NO SELF and discover how you are not just your minds stories.

Sharon Salzberg , author of Lovingkindness and Real Love

Kate Gustins quirky and compelling book subtracts the self out of self-help! She communicates a powerful and ageless spiritual truth in a way that is accessible, humorous, and compassionate. Highly recommended!

Mariana Caplan, PhD, MFT ,
author of Yoga and Psyche and Eyes Wide Open

Kate Gustin has written a book that is at once insightful, refreshing, playful, and truly wise. The No-Self Help Book goes to the very root of our unhappiness and insecurity: as long as we think were separate from the rest of life, we arent enough and will remain stuck in the prison of our minds. When we learn to see ourselves from the illuminating perspective presented in these pages, we can understand that from the beginning we were always enough just as we are. Then we can play at being who we truly are instead of taking ourselves so seriously. How liberating!

James Baraz , cofounder of Spirit Rock Meditation
Center in Woodacre, CA; coauthor of Awakening Joy

Publishers Note

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books

Copyright 2018 by Kate Gustin

Non-Duality Press

An imprint of New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

5674 Shattuck Avenue

Oakland, CA 94609

www.newharbinger.com

Cover design by Amy Shoup; Acquired by Elizabeth Hollis Hansen;
Edited by Jean Blomquist

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file

To the Great Mystery,
with gratitude
from a spiritual being having a human experience.

(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

A human being is part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the resta kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusionto try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.

Albert Einstein

Foreword

Lets start off with a question to help you slap yourself across your face, in the most spiritual way imaginable, of course. Who would you rather live your life as?

1. Who you think you are?
2. Who you want to be?
3. Who you actually are?

Tuck your answer under your mala beads for just a second; well look it in the eyes in just a moment.

Hell isnt a fun place (just in case you thought otherwise). Theres a lot of opinions about what hell is, ranging from being in an eternally overheated sauna, to being surrounded by noise when you just want to meditate or meditating when youre just craving noise, to being depressed or feeling empty inside. Yet, I dare say, whats more hellacious than all those terrible places that we visit from time to time is that trump card of hell we deal ourselves from the deck of life: trying to be someone youre not.

Nobody knows the purpose of lifeuntil this paragraph. (Just pretend I know this; itll make this paragraph seem more impactful.) Maybe the purpose of life is for you to live your life. In other words, for you to deal yourself the heaven-on-earth card of graceful permission for you to be you . Similarly, maybe the purpose of a trees life is for it to be the unique tree that it is. Not for it to think that its a different kind of tree. Not for it to try to be a dolphin. And not for it to think it should be a dolphin tree or any other variation of the self-created hell that it might bring upon itself by trying to be something its not. The sooner the tree can cut through the psychological scar tissue of thinking that it is something its not, the sooner it can step into the peaceful flow of living its life by allowing itself to be what it already is: a tree.

You are a tree. Thats who you really are, a tree. Just kidding, youre probably not a tree. Yet it wouldve been really convenient if you were a tree, because I think the tree analogy wouldve ended with a lot of literary authorityby me telling you that youre a tree. But this book that youre holding was probably made from a tree. Now you probably feel fully integrated with the tree metaphor, so you can realize you are not the tree literallyyet metaphorically, you definitely are the tree.

What was your answer to the slap-in-the-face question? Many of us are convinced that we are who we think we are . Like theres some kind of magical correlation between our sense of certainty around who we think we are and the truth of who we are. How much thinking, interpretation, stories, and reinforcement do you put into trying to be who you think you are? AND (written in all-caps so you know its the beginning of a challenging proposition) what if who you think you are, your sense of self, isnt even close to who you really are? What if the sequoia believed with 100-percent certainty that it was an apple tree?

Or what about the option of putting your life force into living as who you want to be ? This option is a glorious one, especially for us self-helpers who have taken steps of personal empowerment and probably have at least three vision boards in our trophy case. The excitement around deciding who you want to be and going after it with all of your intentionality, affirmations, and beliefs is sexy as hell. Yet no matter how sexy, its still hell because it isnt you. The sequoia who wants to be a millionaire circus clown is still torturing itself with the betrayal of not allowing itself to discover and be who it really is.

What about the least ego-gratifying option, living as who you actually are ? Maybe its the most obvious choice to direct our mind and body resources in order to have a beautiful life, and thats what makes it the hardest to find. You were hiding in plain sight all along, but your awareness was blind to your obviousness because it was looking outward, into the thought fields and imagination, to your seductive minds story of who it thinks you are or who it thinks you should be. Slicing through the stories and ideas about who you are, as well as your allegiance to them, means you transcend the hell of indifference of just settling for who you think you are. And you transcend the purgatory of arrogance that accompanies thinking you should be who you want to be or who others think you should be. It means you arrive at a place of humbleness in which you dont try to define who you are; you curiously discover who you are. And its a place of courage where you dont just try to mentally comprehend who you are; you live who you are.