Finally, after ALL THIS thinking...

I was really blessed last Tuesday to get to attend this talk!  It was recommended to me by an awesome someone I didnt know very well, and not only did she recommend that I go, I even ran into her right before the event and she kindly reminded me.  Even had I forgot, another friend of mine also knew about it and invited me and even offered to pay my way in!

Thanks so much Chantel & Jimmy!

It was apparently impossible to avoid.  I was supposed to be there.  I know that for sure.  I guess so did they!  There were about 40 people there I would imagine, all sitting on chairs in a relaxing yoga studio.  There were people in their twenties and people in their sixties, it was fairly diverse in ages but everyone there was super nice and super interested.

Paul began to talk and his personality and charisma started to shine through.  His accent sounded like he was visiting from New York or New Jersey, yet he had a warm welcoming tendancy to use "yeh?' after all his statements just to keep you caught up with him, which is something I normally hear a British person do.

Coming from an addict and alcoholic, it seemed even more substantial because of where he came from to get to this point.  He actually found this path through the twelve steps.

Having not written anything down (I should have brought a notebook!) Im gonna do my best to go over what he spoke of and trying to weave my understanding of it along with it.

Paul started out talking about what bondage truly is, and how it is attached to our SELF we are, how we are obsessd with ourselves and in order for our false sense of "self" to live, it has to appear like it IS us through our thinking.

An idea.  A Thought.  

But from who?  We have to then own it by making ideas and thoughts and feelings "our" thought, or "my idea".

The self, the ego, the thinker, the separate human being, the individual.  Anything that you identify with, really.   So identification causes bondage because as soon you identify with something, make it yours or call it "my" or "mine" than you have missed the point and the non-real part of you (the ego) is trying to create your reality by thinking of the past and the future and all the limited things that it can only think of and keeps "you" out of the moment.  

It is not you.  

We are not our thoughts, our thoughts are crazy.  We most certainly are not just our bodies.  

Yet we are obsessed with self.

If we are observing this mind having these thoughts about who we think is ourself...who or what is that? 

We are the ever-expanding infinite light of GOD and we are all one and the same thing.  All separateness is illusion and when you step back and observe the psychotic ego as a tool to use, not to use you - you find that sweet spot of wholeness, great truth and pure loving joy that truly exists in our hearts and souls knowing...that sweet, yet, so hard-to-find spot that so many are trying very hard to find.

But that is the trick or the heist as Paul refers to it.  Your idea of reality and your power to be present in the moment (all there ever is) are hijacked by your thinking mind making you believe that you are not who you really are.

But thats where this all feels like the "veil", the "curtain", the illusion!

You cant find it by seeking it.  You cant look for it, or see it or hear it.   Its not somewhere you can even look or go.  You cant do anything to find it.  You don't have to.  It is you, and when you realize what you're not, what you are will become clear.

As soon as you start "doing" something (looking, reading, thinking, talking, worrying, saving, etc) about any other moment other than now, you have missed the point.  (And the moment).  Being the noun in your story is not going to get you anywhere.  (And oddly enough you don't need to go anywhere, so at least that's simple).  

When you become "The Doer" you become bound.  Your false idea of yourself (your thinking mind) attaches or bonds itself with ownership to anything it can in order to make you believe that it is you; because you see your experience as yours.   

You cannot find freedom from invisible slavery, because you are tied to all these things. You cannot escape self with self!  They have become your identity and identification with form equals slavery.  It is a mental slavery that has no way out.  It is only in.  

If you are a slave to your obsession with self and you think that is you because it only appears to be, and you have racing thoughts and think only about the things "you know", and whats not happening - then peace will elude you because you are fooling yourself about who "you" are.  

So...Who Am I?

All these years spent defining who I am and what my individual traits are and how I "fit in" or don't, or what it means to be different, or alone or independent, all these things dont really mean fuck all.  I mean they do on certain levels, but really they are all just obstacles in the grand illusion where everyone only appears to be separate.  

Oh. That's just howwww it seeeeeeeems.  Right. Right.  

I am not an "I"  unless it is to create and decide what "I AM"

I am not or never have been alone.  I am not and never have been out of the moment.  I am not limited.  I am not a body.  I am not my mind.  So then, I put it aside and cannot repeat the many "I's".

Paul also said that "I can only teach what I am not".  Which I didn't get at first, but now see this way:

If you only teach what you know you are, then you identify with that thing, and those knowings only lead back to identification and mental slavery and suffering.  

If you already know something, than you are blocked off from learning about it.  You can only teach what you don't know.  And you may not know what you are, but you do know what you are not.

There is an order and placement to these steps that you must 'apply' correctly to 'understand' in an enlightened sense- because you are actually enlightened by the process of the aha! that hits you with the light of just how fucking silly it actually is to listen to the things our self-centred mind will try to make us believe! 

Its not the thoughts that are the problem, its that we think we are ones thinking them.  If you do not make them yours then they come and go with way less weight.    

Paul made all this sound so dumpster-politics that a three year old mexican border-town-child should be able to understand it, which- is sort of true.  Its the most complicated simplicity because only the mind complicates things.  But achieving the simplicity of it all is the real struggle and the REAL reward.  Its hard to 'believe" until you do it.  

Surrendering your 'identity' into the flow and really basking in your connection to everything.  And being able to do so at any time.

Enlightenment and peace of mind isn't something you go get or achieve or are missing, it's something you are.

You cant just think about it, there is no way to only think your way to freedom and into enlightenment.  

Just thinking about it will NEVER work, ever.  

You cant get there from here.

So tricky, and fascinating, and tricky, but tremendously enlightening. I feel like this guy really understands how people "think" and the false"self" pretends to be something that makes us believe we are that, when in fact we are definitely not that at all. 

We are so much more!

We are what we're looking for.

artwork M Varga

Im gonna watch many more videos on Paul, this is very inspiring and Id really like to absorb all I can,  This feels very very important for me.  His website is http://zenbitchslap.com.