By Jay Cradeur

October 18, 2006

Often times I notice that my mind is raging.  Like a fiery inferno, it burns white hot with a blaze that seems inextinguishable.  The mind, well, at least my mind, seems to burn of a fuel that is inexhaustible.  Thought after thought after thought, groups of thought piled onto each other, all descend upon my soul, wreaking a havoc that is tortuous.  And yet, the torture is my choice.  While I may not be able to stop the thoughts, the burning cauldron of mind and emotion, I certainly do have the tools to put the experience in perspective and let the little bastards evaporate away.

There are two tools that are most useful.   The first is to bring myself back to the present moment.  By simply putting my focus on something, anything, that is right in front of me, I am able to reclaim my god given birthright to inner peace and stillness.  Just this morning, I noticed my mind racing about the upcoming day.  It went something like this:  “Four appointments today, let’s say out of those four, I will make two sales, that is X amount of dollars in sales and commissions.  What if no one buys…, what a waste of a day.  How many people can we get into the next Bridge event?  Oh yes, I have to call so and so today.  I should have called her yesterday.  I forgot.  What time is it?  Do I have to start getting ready yet.  I do need to go to Kinkos to make some copies before my first appointment at 10.  Etc.  etc.  etc.”

“It is maddening.  It is madness maddened.

“What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do!

They think me mad – Starbuck does; but I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened!  That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself!”

Captain Ahab from Moby Dick by Herman Melville

And the more I engage and listen to the fury of these retched and diverse thoughts, the more I feel myself pulled into the insanity.  This though cycle is fairly common early morning fodder in the furnace of my mind.  So what to do?   This morning, I put my focus on a eucalyptus tree. I simply looked at the tree and wondered what it might be like be a tree, a magnificent tree located right next to Highway 101 in Salinas California.  For decades, this tree has sat, day by day, and watched car after car drive by to destinations unknown.  And as I focus on the tree, located in the here and now, I once again feel a calmness grace me.

Perched Turnkey Vulture with Wings Spread – The Bridge Event, October 2007

The unflinching beauty of the here and now, the steady pulse of inner silence and peace, slowly work to cleanse my mind of its insidious thoughts.  In the moments of my greatest inner peace, my most solemn awakenings, my dives into the infinite, I have been present.  That is an unassailable truth!  When I am thinking, I am in the illusion that everything outside of me is real. When the mind fire is raging, and I am caught up in my story, my own illusion, my own private hell, there is nary any peace.

Focus on an object, preferably a living object, but any object will do.  It can be as simple as focusing on my computer while I type in these words.  It is a simple process of becoming one with.  I invite you to become one with, with anything, when you feel the mind sucking you down into the whirlpool of illusion.

The other thing one may do to slowly dismantle the illusion is to realize that you are not your story.  For example, I am not my sales job.  I am not The Bridge.  I am not a father, nor husband, nor some guy who writes things on the computer.  This is a fairly easy process when you are breaking up the illusion of the bad stuff.  In The Bridge, we talk about how we as men are not our childhood.  We are not born out of our relationship with our fathers.  That often unpleasant part of our lives in the past.  It is time to break free of that particular bond of illusion.  It is not here and now.  There is nothing real or true that does not live in the here and now.

However, one must also slowly and gently remind themselves that they are not the good stuff either.  You can’t not be the negative aspects of your story and hold the positive stuff in a different category.  It is all illusion, good and bad.  There is a tendency to only dismantle the negative, feel bad, part of the story.  And that is only half of the work.  You must detach from all the “good” stuff as well.  That is where the real heart of the illusion lives.  Most won’t ever go there, for it is far too painful.  It takes a process of ruthless annihilation, to truly and ultimately free yourself of all your illusions.  But, until you do, you will be in bondage, never free, and never able to feel the ultimate joy of complete surrender to the present moment.

“You can spend your life hacking away at the million-headed hydra of attachment and never make any progress, or you can follow emotional energy back to its source, its lair, and see Leviathan, enemy of light, for what it really is:  Your heart.  That’s what Arjuna saw.

That’s why Arjuna fell.”

Jed McKenna

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