On reactions, and on a personal note, I recently met a woman who within the last year had experienced a sudden awakening. All her life she had suffered from anxiety, and then one day she didn’t, ever again. Some time after her awakening, her 12 year old daughter commented, “Mom, what happened. You’re so chill.” I take that comment to imply that Mom no longer reacted to the 12 year old daughter’s shenanigans. I asked Mom about meditation. Before her awakening, she didn’t know what meditation was, and still doesn’t meditate now. Rather, she pointed to a wasp and said, “I could watch that for hours.”
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September 4, 2025
Tags: inner work, non-reacting, reactions
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September 3, 2025
The personal self is a bundle of habitual reactions. To react is to be expelled from the attention space.
It is the work of a lifetime to live without reactions. Non reaction enables direct reading of, and engagement with, sensing and feeling. A whole universe opens to one who is free of habitual reactions. This is what it means to be realized. Not some super-duper higher state of bliss and omniscience.
How to be free of reactions? First you have to see them in your behavior, your gestures and postures. Then sense them in the body. Then see the judgments and justifications which prolong them. Then cease to react to the judgments and justifications. Then, silence. Is this work ever finished? I don’t know. But an island of equanimity can arise where you can be reliable enough to work inwardly.
A bonus: Equanimity accesses more attention. Reaction loses it.
If you wish to be useful as one who works inwardly for the benefit of the world, you must begin the journey as soon as you can. Perhaps you will then be able to work before you die. Life is short. The way is long.Tags: inner work, not reacting, reactions
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February 19, 2024
The most deadly of all thoughts is that life is, can be, or should be, fair. Everybody gets what they get.
We expect, we hope, like trying to move a mountain. Life cannot be pushed but it can be invited.
Everything is unfinished business until it’s finished…which is when you no longer trip over it. If something grabs your attention, divides you, causes you torment or dissatisfaction, it is not finished. When you deeply appreciate what you have, when you accept that you, and everyone else, gets what they get, the reactive phase of your life is finished and what remains is love.
While you accumulate, you accumulate. Accumulation is not accommodation. You look for experiences. You are troubled by what you do not have and what you do not understand. You do not have enough. Your life is a struggle of should, would, could. When what happens today is exactly enough, you have finished the phase of accumulation and you got what you got. You see that you get exactly what you need every day and you see that everyone else does. You can begin to reduce your accumulation.
If you think that you deserve better, that’s where you are. If you blame me for your behavior, blame away until you have finished. Am I responsible for your reaction to me? Not in the slightest. Your reactions are yours. My role in them, if any, is my material to work with. We each get what we get.Tags: fair, reactions, work notes
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February 12, 2024
To work on self is to work with my reactions.
Our life presents us with the challenges we need to confront in order to gain freedom from our reactions. We are responsible for these reactions. The responsibility for them cannot be displaced.
Nor are we responsible for the reactions of others to us. If we take responsibility for our own reactions, we will end up treating others with grace and precision.
How to begin this work?
Do not blame others for your reactions.
Be aware of the physical gestures, postures and sensations of your reactions in real time. After the fact is far less useful.
Do not analyze your reactions. Simply observe them. You can recognize them without thinking about them.
Your observing needs to become impartial. This specifically means to observe without derivative or secondary reverberations…judgments or justifications, shame, guilt or other forms of self-expression or self-importance. Laughter is allowed.
When observing becomes impartial, refrain from expressing your reactions. Hold the energy of them. Neither express nor repress.
To be without reactions is to be without an important source of energy. Do not wish for this too soon. If you arrive at this state, known among Sufis as Kemal, much is possible but very little is wished for.Tags: impartial observation, Kemal, reactions, work notes
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July 27, 2019
One of the insights of this work form is that humans are largely repetitive and predictable, stimulated by externals. The challenge is to see this without judging or justifying, simply as fact and then perhaps with compassion. Ordinary struggle against habits—trying to prevent reactions because they are ‘wrong’, or defending them as ‘right’—does not seem to change them or lead to greater freedom.
What does it mean to find freedom from the mechanical? Does it not mean that what we do can be done not as a habitual reaction but as an expression of love, compassion and joy? Perhaps freedom is not so much doing different things as it is doing things differently, making use of daily life to reveal the good in us. Preparing a meal, having a conversation face-to-face—these are the acts that have the potential to be liberated from our mechanical tendencies, where freedom can be found.
Tags: freedom, habits, mechanical, reactions
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July 3, 2019
In our work, there is great emphasis on impartial observation of self. What is observed? Sensations, emotions, gestures of hands, face and voice, behaviors that arise habitually in reaction to what happens around us.
This is not metaphysical, not observation of thinking but rather knowing my physical reactions, neither judging nor justifying them.
As with any endeavor, this can become habituated too. I tend to observe the same things again and again. Of course, there is truth to this…we are repetitious creatures, creatures of habit. But perhaps it is also true that I need to look for the unexpected, the unknown states that escape attention.
Could I suggest that you look for the sensation/emotion of covetousness? In my view, it is one of the strongest and most consequential of inner conditions but it is no longer commonly part of our vocabulary and moral compass as it once was as the 10th commandment of Moses.
There seem to be two dimensions of this state. One is that I may be covetous, I want something that belongs to another…a skill, a possession, a relationship…it could be anything that brings enjoyment to another. Coveting is not simply wanting something for its own sake but also being willing to take from another…it is envy not only of the thing itself but also the enjoyment of it by another. In fact, the one who covets is governed by wanting what others have, not by inwardly searching for what is of value to himself. It is a kind of short cut to satisfaction that tries to mimic what others have discovered and achieved.
The other dimension is experienced by the one whose possessions are coveted. A common reaction is to sense that something I have is causing another to be aware of what they do not have. Was my enjoyment too obvious? Can I diminish or hide my enjoyment, even deny it, so that others will not want what I have?
It may be that covetousness is not part of your experience, in either dimension. Can you find out?
Tags: covet, habits, impartial observation, reactions, wanting
