Disengaging Autopilot
Aloha!
It’s New Year’s Eve and a beautiful clear 71º morning where I live in magical Mānoa Valley on Oʻahu.
My life has really become so simple. No doubt it’s as a result of those five years of living, working, and studying at Karmê Chöling meditation retreat center (KCL). It was an experience like none other in my life. While ruminating on my time at KCL, it came to me that every one of you probably knows a different me from OUR time together: the High School or College me; the hula dancer me; the co-worker me; the Shambhalian me; the Morning Glass me; the gay me, the Hawaiʻi me, The Los Angeles me, the San Francisco me, the Barnet me…
But those me’s no longer exist; they’re just memories. Memories that you may or may not lay-over or project onto reading these newsletters or when we talk or see each other. Nonetheless, I’m still just me – constantly evolving as I have my entire life.
This “now-me” evolution is all about living what I’ve learned from 50 years of personal study, investigation, and research into 23 of the world’s belief systems, philosophies, and religions. I started at age 16 wanting to know Truth and, in reading and hearing the reviews of wisdom masters today, it appears I’m on the right track.
So why not share it in a way that’s unique to just my experience?
That is my sole purpose now.
Even though I have always been a spiritually-minded bloke, I guided the majority of my earlier life according to “traditional” social norms but always with a flavor of having grown up in Hawaiʻi. We all conform to social norms to one degree or another. How can we escape them? Western culture has railroaded its way into our lives. And, after all, everyone else is doing it, right?
But what I learned from my research is that way of living isn’t innate and, on some level, I always knew that I was living my life on conceptual/ego mind autopilot. For much of my life, I aligned myself with the corporate hive-mind then had to try to balance that with more meaning outside of work to “manage” the stress. It’s a kind of metronomic way of living, isn’t it? On the left is work, on the right is deeper meaning and/or experience. Tik, tok, tik, tok…my life went; constantly back and forth between the two – never merging.
I had bought into the corporate psychological definition of “work-life balance:” work like a maniac 40-60 hours/week then do something in your personal time to recover from it: go to church, time with family and/or friends, play sports, get a hobby, go shopping…But that’s a corporate psychological idea of work-life balance not REAL work-life balance because we still struggle, we’re still anxious and depressed, we’re still emotionally reactive; therefore, we still suffer during our precious little personal recovery time outside work.
For an authentic work-life balance experience, the two must merge throughout the entire day. To eliminate struggle, anxiety, depression, emotional reactivity, and suffering, we must have BALANCE all day long. And, according to the 23 belief systems I studied, BALANCE is what is missing during our work day times. We must include deeper meaning, we must include spiritual experience throughout each entire waking day.
What some people label as “spiritual” is simply a number of inherent and natural qualities that come with being born human: Our original mind (the heart-mind), awareness, curiosity, humor, primordial confidence, feeling (an action verb), insight, imagination, etc. In other words, we entered this world as spiritual beings. This is not just the belief of one religion, it is the collective understanding of the oldest indigenous wisdom traditions.
The conceptual/ego mind – the mind we’ve been conditioned to use throughout our entire day – doesn’t come online until age 2 or so and is not consistently active until age 5 or 6. It then isn’t fully developed until age 25. By that time, we’ve been socialized into being fully reliant on it.
Before losing ourselves to the conceptual/ego mind, we lived fully from our heart-minds, we lived spiritually; feeling our way through each moment.
Western culture, over the last two centuries, has become more and more conceptual/ego-mind driven. As a result, according to indigenous cultures around the world, we, our country, and the world are experiencing struggle, anxiety, depression, emotional reactivity, and suffering.
When we begin to uncover, remember, and utilize our inherent human qualities again – called “living ALOHA” according to Hawaiʻi’s wisdom-holder Aunty Pilahi Pakī – we experience peace & harmony: the flow of life. The more we each experience peace & harmony, the more we treat ourselves with kindness & compassion. The more we treat ourselves with kindness & compassion, the more we treat others and the planet with kindness & compassion.
At that point, we are literal beacons of ALOHA. That energy then radiates out and positively affects everything in its path (proven by quantum mechanics). This forms the basis of working together cooperatively – free of ego – on any issue that is for the highest good of all sentient beings and the planet.
The greatest addiction that you’ve never read about – because the people who are addicted to it don’t know it – is the addiction to thinking.
It’s actually addictive. You can’t stop thinking: it’s like you can’t stop drinking, can’t stop smoking, can’t stop eating – you can’t stop thinking.
Thinking is the greater addiction than any other. It’s an addiction because 1) it’s a drug (you get hormonal hits of adrenaline and cortisol), 2) it’s been around for so long, and 3) it’s a pseudo sense of self.
Despite the fact that it is the cause of struggle, emotional reactivity, anxiety, depression, & suffering, there’s a great reluctance on the part of most people to let go of thinking because, in most people’s conceptual/ego minds, doing that is equated with the state of sleep.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
Mindful presence is what remains which reveals our inherent qualities once again. From that space, we can begin to live our lives in balance: grounded in our innate spiritual feeling Self while accessing the conceptual/ego mind when needed. This is true co-creative power and the basis for freedom & immense wellbeing.
And, even though we may be addicted to that conceptual/ego mind, there is a way to recover from the addiction in order to live primarily from our heart-mind while being able to access the conceptual/ego mind when necessary. THAT is what my course is all about.
The year 2024 in numerology is an eight-year. The number eight in numerology is all about abundance, success, karmic lessons and stepping into your power. Next year is more achievements-based, it will be the year of taking responsibility for your own actions and putting in the work to create the life that you have been dreaming of. May you find a path to finally transcend struggle, emotional reactivity, anxiety, and suffering this year and live life authentically.
Aloha,
Kit
