It’s Time I Stop Pretending It’s Anything Less Than This
I’ve been hiding because this felt like too much to claim, holy s**t
I’ve been hiding. And I’ve been hesitating to speak this. Not because it isn’t true, but because it’s felt like too much to claim.
For a long time, I’ve spoken about this work - Inner View - as if it were a method. A way of seeing. A structure people could understand. But the truth is, it was never this.
There’s something that happens when people sit with me. A presence moves through, a kind of stillness that unravels identity. People can drop into this palpable stillness, beyond the usual and over complicated experience of the mind.
They remember who they are before their name.
Before their story.
Before their pursuit.
Sometimes they cry. Sometimes they just go quiet. Sometimes they speak. Something changes. Not in thought but in being. A significant shift. And the setting of a different course. Sometimes it’s subtle. Sometimes, it’s unmistakable.
And it’s not because of anything I say or do but because of what’s not there. Because of what’s been let go of. Start with no-thing, and let it. Presence itself in that moment has been allowed to do what it does so well given the chance.
People don’t just experience stillness in that moment, they begin to remember it in themselves. They can go back into the world and sit with others differently. Start to act differently. To live differently. To be of greater service to others now knowing what the stillness of undivided attention is.
And it’s not because they’ve learned a method, but because something essential was uncovered. Something that has never not been there. Something that has significance for all of us.
I’m speaking from a direct experience, not a borrowed philosophy or tradition. I haven’t studied or followed anything. What this is emerged from having sat so utterly still for so very long with so many people. It is un-mediated, un-trained, un-borrowed.
This exists before anything.
Before any method.
Before any description.
Before any thought.
Before any step towards.
There is no way as such. I’m not teaching anything. What people realize from this stillness is theirs. It’s their own original and uniquely profound experience. It’s the essence of them beneath it all. The essence that belongs without condition. That is entirely creative. That allows life to live itself through them, and to recognize the unconditional interconnectivity of all things. It’s the essence that is never not there. That is never beyond reach because it’s never not there.
This seems to carry a different kind of weight.
I’ve tried to hide this. Or disguise it at least. To stay behind the camera. Behind the words. To make it acceptable. To make it understandable. But it’s an opposite. And beyond the capacity of words to do it descriptive justice.
Many have told me that there’s a distinct purity to this. I get this. I understand this. I admit to this.
It seemed too much to claim but it’s time I stop pretending it’s anything less than this.
Holy s**t.
An Unintended Admission Video
I was on zoom with Mark McCartney - What is a Good Life podcast - last week. We weren’t podcasting. It was a just because encounter. For some reason I pressed record on my camera. It turns out these few minutes might be why. It mirrors the passage above. An admission of hiding and what comes now.
it can be
the same
for everyone
when you sit in stillness
and look directly
into another’s eyes
for long enough….
you literally see
your
‘self’
Thank you for putting words to this gift that you have been graced with. I’ve recognized this about you from the very start, even though I’ve not (yet!) met you in person. 🙏💖 Thank you also for sharing your gifts so generously with us. 💗🙏