Paul H

Paul Hedderman

Self Is a Parasite

Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Part One


(Text is from talks by Paul Hedderman edited by James Saint Cloud.)

The room filled with people arriving to hear Paul Hedderman. He was introduced and his talk began.

“I was in the lobby of the hotel sitting by the fire last night.

A man sat down in the next chair. Said he was in town for a seminar about ‘self improvement.’ Ha, ha, ha! So I let him know what I thought of that.”


Hotel lobby, the night before.

The fire cracks and pops. Paul sips his tea. Thought-trains move through the station of his mind, offering trips to What’s-Not-Happening, off into past or future time. He simply watches them as they go through.

A man enters the room. “Is this seat available?”


“Sure,” says Paul.

“My name is Hans. I’m here for a seminar. Self-improvement sort of thing.”

“But why do that? Ha, ha, ha!”

“What do you mean?”

“Self is the problem. Better just to let it go.”

“What?”

“You go to seminars to become an improved self. But why do that? The idea of being a self is what the problem is.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Self is a parasite.”

“It is?”

“Sure. It's taken over. You’re seeing FROM it all day long.”

“I am?”

“We never entertain the idea of being outside the realm of self-centeredness, because it’s taken root in us and we are identified with it. So all we can do is therapize and socialize it, so it doesn’t flip out at the next picnic. We just hunker down in the chronic effects of self-centeredness. Failing to see the self as the parasite it is."

Hans stares at him.

"I heard a lot of concepts in earlier days about how to make things wonderful. But I heard them as a 'me.' Which neutered everything and turned it into more selfing.

The mind is obsessed with the idea of being a self. And it doesn’t recognize: That’s the dilemma. Your attention orbits around the planet Self all day, because the self provides the gravitational pull to all the thoughts, making them about YOU.

If you realized they weren’t about the real you, they could simply come and go. Your attention would be freed up from the slavery of selfing and would attend to the conscious contact; there would be a recognition in and of itself. Traveling lighter — not by any procedures or practice, but by recognition of what’s so.

A thought is just a thought; but it changes dramatically when it becomes MY thought. The interpretation of the thought as being MINE is slapped on it. That's what the self does.

The reason I’m hooked on the narrative in my head is because I think it’s about me. By freeing up some of the attention from the selfing we become aware of the conscious contact itself. The enslavement can be over by simply entertaining you’re not the selfing. If you recognize you’re not the self, you will lose interest in all its activities.

You say you want to be ‘awake.’ But while you are adsorbed in the story of self you will be unconscious to the fact that you are ALREADY AWAKE. Then you may have the curse of thinking you want to BECOME awake. Reinforcing the idea that you are not awake.

The head is playing God. And it’s already beat you, since now it’s got you thinking you’re not awake. It’s going to play with that for years.

There’s no escaping WHAT’S SO. You can SENSE living or else you can THINK about it. That’s the choice.

This is not about acquiring knowledge. It’s about waking up to the essence of what we call living. If you identify as SELF, you’re going to inhabit the realm of WHAT'S NOT HAPPENING. The future and the past.

You have tons of old ideas about you. Unless you let go of these you are traveling very heavy.

You’re meant to be fluid. A very light boat that can navigate and handle different kinds of weather. You’re just an old tanker now. Each moment big waves coming in. You need relief.



But where do you go for that release? To your head! Which is the problem. The relief it offers is part of the bondage to self. We go to the problem asking for advice!

Realize you’re not in the problem. Never have been. That’s the solution. The lie is that you were 'in self.' But you never were. Your attention was hijacked, that’s all."

“Selfing?" says Hans, "Exactly what is that?”

“Obsessing with thoughts about yourself; making up stories about the feelings you’re having or not having. Attention glued to the screen of self. It can be released, for attention to return to the conscious contact, each moment’s raw pure experience.

Most of our time is spent emphasizing what’s-not-happening over what-is-happening. We’re using what IS happening to think about what’s NOT happening and to expectantly feel about what MAY happen.

All the while there is What-Is-Happening. Why not stay there? No longer as the wave but as the whole ocean that you truly ARE."

Hans looks away into the fire. "Nothing to strive for or attain? Perhaps if I map it out . . ."



"You don’t need a map to go to the truth. You are the truth! Consciousness is inherently available to us. That’s it. That’s the entrance way. But there’s no YOU that’s going through the door, because there is no you. The idea of being a you creates the idea of a door to the truth; that it’s always outside of your contact. The idea that you might suddenly meet up with the truth. No! You are that truth. You are consciousness, right now.

Truth is available at all times, but it’s not available to what you’re not. What you’re not will never access it, it’s impossible.

Your head believes you’re what you’re not, and causes you to be unconscious of the consciousness. Then the curse of 'spiritual seeking' takes you on a journey to become conscious of consciousness. How’s that going to work?

The true happening is awareness; and that’s always happening. The relief you are seeking is always available. You don’t have to go into therapy, work on your fears and phobias, no.

When you wake from the dream there’s an instant recognition: It’s a dream-tiger. The dream is what’s not happening.

There is no reason for a YOU to appear now. It only has to do with what’s not happening. All your anxieties are a product of what’s not happening. The you that is not.

You don’t get rid of the self. Because it was never there. You sense the appearance of a mental construct called selfing, but it was never there. There is no self. No reason to get rid of it. That’s the solution.

Whatever the mind presents, just rest in that. Don’t react. Then you’ll have immunity to what the mind presents. Your reactions will change and life will be totally different. Because it’s your reaction that gives self its meaning.

Life is 'what’s happening.' But when it’s a reaction, it’s 'what’s happening to me.'"

"It's all a bit new to me, you know," Hans gets up to go. "If you'll excuse me, I must be up early for my seminar. 'An Invitation to What Is SO,' by a chap named Hedderman."

"Ha, ha, ha. Just remember, you don't improve the self. You simply let it go. Just entertain the idea you’re not the self you think you are."


The Noun Illusion


LIFE IS A VERB, NOT A NOUN


Each moment Life streams through the gates of the senses, fresh and new. That’s CONSCIOUS CONTACT. Then the mind hijacks it, says, “I am what’s in conscious contact.”

A bird flies by.


There is simple consciousness of it; seeing happens.

Then the head says, "I am doing that."

WHO is seeing --- the sense of being the one seeing --- becomes more important than SEEING itself.



You’re not the seer. That is a STORY, an INTERPRETATION. The conscious contact is being claimed by the head. It puts you to sleep to the awareness that you ARE conscious contact.

Life is a VERB. It’s just happening. Not TO anyone. Just energy, ripping like crazy. But Self makes a NOUN of itself. A thing. The illusion of being a noun is that everything is happening from outside TO YOU.

All day, every bit of conscious contact that is continually happening, your head is claiming it, as YOU being the one in contact.

The “self” is just a story the mind’s running. Nothing ever happened to Paul. To what I AM. I am the pure and simple AWARENESS of events.

Most humans are living in that world of WHAT'S NOT HAPPENING. Living in THE THOUGHT OF past and future. Producing a lot of anxiety. “What might happen to me?” The physical apparatus is reacting to that all the time. Stressed by living more than one day at a time.

Life is happening; it’s a verb. The verb is the reality and the noun is the illusion. You are looking at it from the point of view of being a noun so you’re missing it. That’s what your head is doing all day: INTERPRETING what is going on and making it into a story about something else. You lose the verbing of life as soon as the noun claims the experience as something that happened to it.

You say you want to be "awake." But while you are adsorbed in the story of self you will be unconscious to the fact that you are ALREADY AWAKE. Then you may have the curse of thinking you want to BECOME awake. Reinforcing the idea that you are not awake.

The head is playing God. And it’s already beat you, since now it’s got you thinking you’re not awake. It’s going to play with that for years.

There’s no escaping WHAT’S SO. You can SENSE living or else you can THINK about it. That’s the choice.

This is not about acquiring knowledge. It’s about waking up to the essence of what we call living. If you identify as SELF, you’re going to inhabit the realm of WHAT'S NOT HAPPENING. The future and the past.

A thought is just a thought; but it changes dramatically when it becomes MY thought. The interpretation of the thought as being mine is slapped on it. But that’s not living, it’s reliving – a self-centered system of thought and interpretation always going on.

You think you’re separate from life and it’s HAPPENING TO you. “I’m the noun that everything is happening to.” But there is no noun in living; it’s just verbing.

When you’re seeing with a noun way of looking you are interpreting life from a false center. And you don’t understand why you’re so confused. All the experiences of being a verb become something that the noun HAD. You're wanting the verb-ness of life, but you’re missing it. You’re saddled with this noun way of looking at things. There is the dilemma: You cannot see you've made yourself into a noun. The noun cannot get the sense of peace because peace is a living movement, not a stagnant thing you acquire or capture.

As a noun life becomes interpreted and you become a storage unit for the mind’s interpretation of life. You’re not experiencing a living moment, you’re rehashing an old moment. You live from memory; interpretation is constantly presented to override the living-ness of life.

As a noun the best you can do is to assume that you HAD an experience; you cannot be THAT in which the experience occurs. One is a movement; the other is a package deal. You’re either moving with things or you are packaging them up, “I know this and that; I’ve had this and that experience.” Taking the verb and transforming it into something you possess.

The mind’s interpretation is, “All right, I’m going to stick myself in front of that verb. Stick myself in as a noun and edit life, under the assumption that I am the doer of this verb. I am seeing, I am touching, I am feeling, I am hearing, and I am especially thinking about it all. The doer and the haver and the interpreter.

Exhausting! Trying to have control over it all. Grasping at some assurance it’s going to be okay down the river. Building dams and reservoirs.

What fuels the selfing is your attention to the thoughts, your obsession with them. But the thoughts are about a body, not about you. Seeing that, you can become disinterested in it. The energy gets freed up. Maybe you’ll even become interested in the source of life, called consciousness.

Perhaps you have an epiphany: Life with the absence of self. You get the flavor of the moment, life-as-it-happens; and it startles the self into submission. The self goes down, goes to its corner, has some water thrown on it; but it’s soon back in the ring again, saying, "Oh! I HAD the experience, this epiphany!" It pulls out a victory from the threshold of defeat.

Generally the epiphany ends when this selfing arises and interpretation begins. A couple of epiphanies like that and you’ll be a spiritual noun. Ha-ha!

But the epiphany may offer a glimpse outside the box of being a noun — a portal between timeless and time I call the “pause" or the “gap.” Attention gets out of the box and spreads out. An eternal non-time event in this linear story of time. Witnessing seeing, feeling, touching, tasting, and thinking as the eye would witness a passing bird. That’s conscious contact.

The mind’s reaction to conscious contact is: I am doing the seeing, touching, thinking. The mind’s major method of moving is CLAIMING. There is life; then the mind claims that life.

You can drop down into verbing and see the noun in action. See it on its throne. The verbing doesn’t stop; it’s always on. There is not a "past of presence" nor a "future of presence." There is BEING. Now.

You have tons of old ideas about you. Unless you let go of these you are traveling very heavy.

You’re meant to be fluid. A very light boat that can navigate and handle different kinds of weather.

You’re just an old tanker now. Each moment big waves coming in. You need relief. But where do you go for that release? To your head! Which is the problem. The relief it offers is part of the bondage to self. We go to the problem asking for advice!

Get a better self? When will that be delivered? Never now. Always put off. “When I arrive there, it will all be great.” And when you arrive? The happiness doesn’t arrive; and the mind blames you for it.

Selfing is not what you are. There is no noun happening. But when you look into the past, or look into the future, it’s all about what is happening to the self. It can worry the hell out of you.

Solution: Look at a situation and see no problem. Only what is now. Being-ness. With that recognition comes immunity from becoming a noun. The real flavor of life, just happening — not happening “to me” — this is the open secret, the gateless gate. Available at all times.

Realize you not in the problem. Never have been. That’s the solution. The lie is that you were “in self.” But you never were. Your attention was hijacked, that’s all.

You and I have tons of faith. But what vehicle do you put it in? Most of us have been putting it into the idea of self, of self-centeredness. This leads to fear, since self-centeredness is unreliable. You faith in self produces the anxiety that you try to deal with as though it’s real and solid. The same faith put into the infinite will create an ease and comfort. Traveling lighter.

The mind tries to write its relevance into the story. But things are just happening. It has nothing to do with the self at all. The head’s interpretation is causing travel to be very heavy. All based on the idea of being a self.

Self says it wants to “be free,” but true freedom is to be free OF IT: To be the verb of attention, pure and freed from self. Selfing needs attention; when the attention is taken from it, there is the freedom.

Something has been witnessing through you. If you knew what had been witnessing through you, it would take your breath way. You would just sit there in adoring gratitude.


Two Modes of Being

Text is from talks by Paul Hedderman transcribed and edited by James Saint Cloud as an in-print portal to Paul's his ideas.


Thursday, June 24, 2010
There is only Being, conscious contact, present action in progress: A VERB.

But the head has made a NOUN of it, called ME.

Being is an uninterrupted verb. There is no island of noun to climb up on.




You don’t leave the ocean of being, become a noun, and have a different experience of life, as island life. There is no island! There is only being.

It works like this: There is an experience — conscious contact. Then the mind claims to be the one who HAD the experience — wrapping all the little stories together into a big story of being a SELF that claims those stories to imply its reality.

This occurs because of identification AS the body. I seem to be looking through this body, so I take it as A BODY THAT IS LOOKING. The body is fitted with the idea of being “me.”


Now that conscious contact has been hijacked, I am informed every moment that I am a self WHO IS IN conscious contact (rather than conscious contact itself).

The counter evidence of this idea is available at all times through the conscious contact itself.

There’s a neuroscientist I heard speak once. He said there is an ‘experiential self’ and a ‘remembering self.’

Now to me there is no ‘self’; so I refer to an ‘experiential mode’ and a ‘remembering mode.’

What is well-being and happiness for one mode is not for the other. Here’s the difference:

The remembering mode is about what I’ve done and what I have, like the big game hunter with antlers over the mantle.




I’m happy because I’ve done this and done that. In this remembering mode there is on-going judging and comparison to see how good or bad one’s doing.

But the experiential mode doesn’t find happiness in the resume or the goals it’s attained. This mode is pure Being. Conscious contact. Its joy in life is in the process rather than the destination. The experiential doesn’t care about judging and comparing; it doesn’t have time for any of that because there’s no time for getting out of the experience and becoming an observer of it. There is in fact no time.

When the remembering mind takes over and it’s totaling up to see how good and bad you are, it’s totally insane. It has its own agenda. You may think it’s working for you, but you’re actually working for it. It’s using your life to interpret life based on its own views. Its desire to be right is incredibly powerful, as is its desire to be special. Nor does it care how its special: A 10-year prison sentence can be just as special to it as buying a house in Pacific Heights.

The thing for you to hear today is that there is no self.

There has to be a sense of being a self for the remembering mode. But there doesn’t have to be any sense of self for the experience mode.

In my younger years there was no idea of Paul; it wasn’t set in concrete yet. When I was playing there was no worry, would I be playing next week. I had no idea of next week. Absolutely none.




A light way to travel, yes? Wonder, awe, spontaneity.

Then we outgrow it.




Actually, we grow into something else which excludes that. What is it that we grow into? A REMEMBRANCE of a life. There’s judgment, good and bad; should’ve done this and that. There is a separation from the very EXPERIENCE of living into the OBSERVANCE of living.

What’s observing is not you. What’s observing is the conditioning. You’re looking through your mother’s eyes, your grandmother’s eyes, a teacher’s eyes, your friends’ eyes; not so much experiencing as thinking about the experiences afterwards. What does it mean? The mind gets into the story.

You’re never out of life. But you separate yourself out, so that there is an event going on but you think it is happening TO YOU. You don’t see yourself as proceeding THROUGH an event, so much as an event that’s happening TO you. Meanings are being inserted into life based on what thinks it’s living it.

If I see life as something that’s happening to me, that accesses lots of old files for download. The event is not seen as the event in progress but as a past event.

What to do? Get out of self?


Sounds like a natural response. But that response is part and parcel of the bigger problem called self-centeredness. The solution you apply to the problem is going to be an even bigger problem.

If you apply a solution to an imaginary problem what can you expect? A lot of something’s going to happen, but it’s not going to be what you thought. If you apply a solution to an imaginary problem what you’re doing is verifying the reality of the problem.

What solution that you think you’ve found has lasted? None. How can a solution work on an imaginary problem? The true solution is recognizing its imaginary; that’s the quickest way out. To realize you’re not in it. That’s the whole solution.

Self doesn’t exist. Only the process, the verb, exists. The problem is the illusion of being a self. The solution is to recognize you’re not the self or the selfing; then all the perceptions of illusion can keep appearing and creating an illusion – which you’re not falling for anymore! You are no longer playing at being a noun.



THE STOLEN EPIPHANY
PAUL HEDDERMAN IN PRINT
FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 2010




You’re a verb. Just awareness, what’s happening moment by moment.

Then the mind makes a thing of you. A noun.



That's where the problem starts. The mind is playing God with the movement of consciousness.

Consciousness becomes a commodity you trade, like stocks. You need a three-day retreat. Why? To have a story: Now I’m a spiritual person.

But how can a body ever become spiritual? It’s always going to become spiritual as a body. That defeats the whole purpose.

If you are spirit, why is there any need to become spiritual? You already are!

As a body it seems, “If I become spiritual, it will bring advantage. So let me try grafting some spirit onto me. Listen to talks by the masters and do some study."




When you’re sensing the presence of yourself, that’s the truth’s absence, literally. When you sense this (slapping the body) as being absent, that’s presence. It takes absolutely no time, there’s no practice, no debate. It’s obvious. It’s the sense of your absence.

Let’s say you have an epiphany. The heavens open up.



Did you make a reservation for it? Did you call up ahead of time? Put on the right music for the event?

No. It just burst through, interrupting your linear story of life as a noun, your sense of being a historical action figure.

The mental process has been stunned into stopping.

There are huge gaps in selfing. Anything can startle it into stopping. There is that pause, an eternal moment out of time. The whole thing stops and there it is, it opens up. And you get a free sample of the infinite. Whammo!

There came the epiphany. I bet when it ended it coincided with this thought: “I just had an epiphany!” Yeah?

The epiphany is an event. Then there is the mind's reaction to it. Claiming it.

The mind says, “I, this long-lasting independent separate entity, just had this spiritual experience.” Yes? It just neutered the whole event by claiming it.

The epiphany was not an experience you had, it was the absence of the selfing!

At that moment there was only awareness.

The moment was set free again, out of its box. Out on the wing.




The Trip to What's Not Happening
Text by Paul Hedderman / Edited by James Saint Cloud

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Thoughts are like corn kernels, and you’re the popcorn maker. There is heat and they begin to pop, and you become aware of them.




For a while the thoughts are just what’s happening, like trains going by. Then you inject all this buttery goo, making it about YOU. That’s when things get sticky.

Feelings and thoughts do not bring you any meaning. You are injecting them with meaning. How do you do that? By making it MY thought and MY feeling.

You open up the thought or the feeling as though it BROUGHT you the meaning, though the meaning is already in the files.

Let’s say I have a belief that I’m lazy. The thought comes, “I haven’t done anything today.” It could just pass. But I think it’s about ME. Then all these meanings download from my files. I follow it on the screen and it takes me into a story into the mystical place in which Paul is really bad, where Paul hasn’t done anything in his whole life and has no value whatsoever. It’s a trip into WHAT’S NOT HAPPENING.

People who go to Hawaii come back with a tan. But I go on this train trip to what’s not happening. Plenty of dilemmas out in the future and the past; so I return with anxiety, recrimination, and shame. The trip’s about ME and I have a great interest in it. Why? Because I’m identified with it all.

The freedom comes when you lose interest in the dilemmas.

How do you lose interest? By entertaining the simple message, “I’m not that.” You simply witness what is.

Something shows up, and after that something else. A thought or feeling comes into awareness, does its little acrobatic act, then the circus packs up and leaves.




Then you’re conscious of the next event, and the next. It’s a very smooth clean way of living, yes? Very fluid.

In a while, if you don’t get engaged in the contents, you may become engaged in the CONTEXT — in the consciousness of what’s WITNESSING everything showing up — the station — instead of getting on the trains of thoughts and trains of feelings coming by, for them to carry you away.

The activity of trains is not to stay at the station; they go. They pick up passengers and they take them somewhere. But you are the central station, the awareness, through which the trains constantly come in and go out.

When you’re identified as a long-lasting independent separate entity it makes you a passenger at that station. Your drive is to get on a train in the hope that it’s going to take you somewhere. You have hopes and expectations and conditional desires that society has built into you, with the hope of arriving somewhere by doing or having. Having two kids and a picket fence and so on.



These trains will come and we get on them and we call them the journey of life. Sometimes the trains are locals to a heaven, and the next stop is to a hell, and it goes on like that.

Now in a sense all of these thoughts and all of these feelings and all the experiences you have everyday have been anchored into being by one act and one act only: Consciousness OF. You have been conscious of every experience that makes up your life. Without consciousness there could not have been any experience that might have been noted.

So here we are at the station, which is consciousness — the sphere where experience is happening. Consciousness through this interface seemingly comes in contact with our world. By becoming conscious of thoughts there forms a sort of mental experience. It takes your attention and puts it into a realm of mind that no one else can go to; YOUR own realm of mind. Your own little What’s Not Happening.

Rarely is your what’s not happening matching someone else’s what’s not happening. That’s why communication here is very, very difficult, since people are talking about what’s not happening. Their condition last week, or what they hope will happen. Their whole state of being isn’t being; it’s a state of was-ing and will-ing.


The only true stated communication is being now.

Every train is witnessed by consciousness. Each one came through the station. Trains to Philadelphia, trains to Boston, trains, trains, trains. It doesn’t matter their destinations, they’re all witnessed by the station. The station is the one stable thing for all the trains.

So you’re like a station. You’re the interface for this world, for this experience.

Every train with all its feelings and thoughts is noted — but only as it’s going through. Once it’s gone through its not the station’s business anymore, which is constantly awake to what’s happening. It’s also awake to the mental experience of what’s not happening. But it doesn’t get on any train that goes through the station. It cannot give up its station-hood to become a passenger on the train.

It witnesses all the acts of you as a long-lasting independent separate entity which is just a mental process called selfing, getting on trains and getting off trains, having great expectations and great disappointments, and so on and so forth. All of the activity of selfing is being witnessed by the station. The station would no longer be the station if it got on the train. It would become a passenger.


Our state as the station, of being a witness, has been forgotten. This consciousness has forgotten its own nature and has become identified with the projection of a mental process. The mental process that I like to call selfing because it’s a verb, not a noun. It’s not real. It only seems real by its sense of continuality.

The sense of being a noun is that of being a passenger. The passenger is going to be totally affected by what train he gets on, or what train someone else gets on. I should not have gotten on that train, etc. on and on and on and on. Selfing, selfing, selfing.

You will give the trains all the meaning they have. You do not know what comes with you when you get on that train. A lot of old ideas, a lot of beliefs; you are a catacomb of conditioning called the idea of being a self. And that gets downloaded on every little trip you take as a passenger.

I can try to figure out which trains are the good ones, practice deciphering the hieroglyphics on the side of the trains so I can ascertain which ones might take me to heaven or to hell. That activity is hellish, so obsessed with trying to figure things out. There’s no lightness in that, it’s really heavy.

Maybe I go looking for the Schedule of All Schedules! Maybe a really old one from a cave in the Himalayas that will tell me about all the trains, when they come in and where they go. Even so I’ll still be a passenger, without a sense of the true quality of my nature, which is consciousness, the station. Of witnessing.

I’ll judge the train, that it’s to blame that I didn’t get where I wanted to go. Everyone said it would get me where I’m going! Something must be deeply wrong with the train — or else with me.





If you feel the sense of separation and you have a belief that there is an eternal light, you’re going to write a story that you must have done something not to be in that eternal light. You’re going to feel deeply shameful and guilty about your condition here, and your life will be a giant dance, an attempt not to feel the unbearability of being the maker of all this. If it all pertains to you you’re going to feel responsibility for everything you see around you.

Being at the station is like a long pause. The pause to me is like an eternal moment. There is no time in a pause.

So entertain a pause. You can live in that pause. That’s the station. It is a recognition of what’s obvious, here in the moment. Your mind, when introduced to what’s obvious, has the ability to be convinced by its own recognition that this place is totally crazy and contrived, that it’s a dream. An active realization takes place. Because it’s so easy to see what’s not happening for what it is – what’s not happening!

The simple recognition that your mental experience is truly not happening on the level you think it is, that’s your release. Your relief.


The Ocean and the Waves

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

A mind identified as a wave is in denial of the ocean.

It's that simple.




All there is, is consciousness. All you are is THAT. That space in which everything appears, moment by moment streaming through.

But our minds become identified with appearances. The mind has become identified as the body. We’re like a bunch of waves looking at the other waves, totally consumed in a wave world of our own interpretation, when all there is is ocean.




"That wave’s faster than I am. That wave is getting to the shore before me. I want to pick up the shells. I don’t want to break in Stinson Beach, I want to break in Hawaii."

There is a seeing that is available at all times. No matter what your head is telling you about what’s looking, underneath all that is pure seeing. All the time. Every moment. Seeing is not defined by your idea of what looking is, with all the opinions, pontification, judgments and critiques of how you’re doing and not doing.

As Buddha said: when you feel, feel. When you taste, taste. When you touch, touch. When you smile, smile. When you think, think. This is conscious contact.

The conditioned head acknowledges the conscious contact, consciousness moving through the body, then it claims it: Paul is seeing. Paul is hearing. Paul tastes that burrito. The object has claimed the movement of subjectivity through it and now claims the expression of subjectivity as “mine.”

This selfing is such a small mental process. Its whole claim to fame is being a body. From this appearance of the body it produces the effect of being a self. Like an intoxicant. Everything it entertains is entertained as the self, which limits what it can entertain. Everything is perceived as to how it pertains to me. In the process there is a denial of THAT — the ocean — though all that is, is that.

You cannot entertain the truth as the self because you cannot make the truth an object. It’s the subject of all subjects. If you want to be a self it has to be an object to you; and that’s why you’ll never know the truth.

There is no object called Paul as a subject. There’s just subjectivity. That’s the truth.

Everywhere cannot be recognized by a special somewhere. It’s impossible. It’s the recognition that you’re not this, the body, that affords you the vision of seeing from everywhere. Things that were confusing get very clear.

“You” become irrelevant. Hallelujah.

As a wave there is concern about where you’ll break. But as the ocean? Obviously not. Appearances change but the quality of ocean remains. Just a movement of mind called selfing. Appearing to be a self. Appearing, appearing, appearing. When in fact nothing has changed.

The mind requires relevance. Always doing and having, to attain value for itself. When you were a kid you didn’t need to accrue value; it’s when you grew into selfing that you decided you had to make yourself into something.

Did you think that way when you were three years old? Were you having these incredible convoluted moments? "I have no value." No. You were too busy playing, running around, immediate and spontaneous. The narration had not begun. The introspection had not yet begun. This whole partitioning of everywhere into all these special somewhere segments had not begun. The gated community of the special somewhere wasn’t built yet.

Qualities of that unadorned life were wonder and awe, which seem infrequent for most adults now.

So let’s say you find out the trouble is self. Do you sign up for the two-year course, “How to get over the obsession with self”? Wouldn’t that be obsession with self? Self can’t get out of self. How could a product of a mental process ever leave the mental process? How could a wave ever leave the realm of waves? It’s meant to arise and to depart.

And all the fears that accompany that nature of coming and inevitably going are deeply embedded in that condition, the fear of dying, because your waves will be over then.

How many waves have broken out in the ocean? Billions and billions of them. As the ocean ceased to be? No. You want fear to be removed? Remove what thinks it has the fear!

How you remove it is to realize it was never there to begin with. What works for me is to realize I’m not a self. It gets me out of the whole thing. Released from the need to seek a way out of it.

It’s really incredible when you parachute into this moment. Just drop in and you’re totally here.


No idea of any place being better than here, or reflecting that once there was ever a greater here. Dismissed from the mental experience, conscious of conscious contact. It is a very satisfying event.

Everyone here thinks they are an individual wave in the ocean. And of course we have our wave worries. "Who’s going to beat me to shore. I've got a lot of kelp in me, how did I get that? Did anyone see me from the beach? Am I a cresting wave or a droopy wave?" Attention and interest totally consumed with wave qualities.

All those ideas of being a wave are produced by the mental process. The mental process is telling you how to be a wave. Re-presenting what it’s like to be a wave. What it was like to be a past wave. Definitely, what it’s like to be a future wave.



All the while there is forgetfulness of the essence of every wave, which is the ocean.

Coming to a meeting as waves to discuss the topic of the ocean is in a deep sense hilarious. Because all you need to do – is nothing. All the doing is an activity of being a wave. The wave trying to grasp the essence of the ocean is only reaffirming its wave-ness. Defining the ocean as, “I’m separate; I'm not THAT.”

Which is self's true security! It will adore the ocean as long as it can do that as a wave. It may consider one wave like a Jesus or Buddha and say, “Oh yes, he or she was the ocean,” as long as it’s not now; we don’t want any live ocean at the moment. Because then we would see through the game of being a wave.

So we’re not discussing the qualities and depth of the ocean – only questioning, “Are you a wave?” If you realize you are not a wave – slap! – you’re immediately the ocean! Inherently you’re not a wave; you’re an expression of the ocean. Space expressing itself as appearances.




To another wave you are a wave. That’s the way a wave sees another wave. The act of seeing waves as waves is an active denial of the ocean, attention on what it’s like to be a wave but not what it’s like to be an ocean.

As soon as you see with the possibility that, “I may possibly not be that,” what may occur is that the truth will ring true. There will be a sense of ocean while there is the appearance of a wave. They’re not exclusive.



When the wave recognizes it’s the ocean that doesn’t stop it from being a wave. The wave can continue to be wavelike; but now there is a sense of being the ocean. Allowing the wave to travel lighter. Actually enjoy its waveness.

In the presence of the wetness, the immensity of the ocean, all the worries about being a wave become dismissed. You see the wave is a little bogus presentation.

Waving and waving and waving. Seeing only appearances, taking this wave to be real. Living on the surface of the ocean as though there were only what was appearing there. So concerned with what is going to happen to me – which is an appearance.

All the worrying you’re doing about "you" in the future is about a complete stranger. The person you’re so concerned about won’t be the same person then. The concern about you, even a second from now, is about a complete stranger!

What’s going to happen to you is, you’re going to disappear. Oh shit!

Yes. The narrator is going to come to an end. It’s going to run out of time and it’s going to disappear. Ha ha ha ha ha ha! It’s not looking forward to that event, if you’ve ever noticed. It starts yapping and gets really solemn worrying about death.

Once you recognize the ocean, it doesn’t negate the appearance of the wave. We simply recognize it for the appearance it is. The appearance rises and has its little life moving toward the shore and breaks on it. A moment in the ocean. No ocean died; the ocean did not disappear, only an appearance of it did.

When I pick up the chair you don’t see any remnants of the chair. You may see its effects on other appearances, perhaps marks on the floor, but the space is as though there never had been a chair. It didn’t take weeks of practice to realize there was never a chair; it’s just immediately as though there was never a chair. The chair is just an appearance in space, like the wave.

What we are is that space in which everything is allowed to appear. And everything that appears has a nature: it’s going to disappear. Every wave is going to crest and break.

It’s like light on water. Your mind likes to follow that light. It gets engaged with the blips. And while engaged with the light on the surface it doesn’t sense the wholeness.

The light comes and goes, varying according to circumstances. A little dance on the infinity of the ocean. Not even leaving a footprint on the floor.

What a great bit of news! When you see yourself taking yourself too seriously, have a good laugh. Ha ha ha!

In recovery one looks at obsession with self. What I choose to call identification. The mind is identified with this appearance, being Paul. Totally engaged. It’s forgotten its nature of being an ocean.

I don’t try to show you a picture of the ocean, saying, “Look how big and wonderful it is.” Because every time you’re looking at it, you’re looking at it from the point of view of being a wave.



I don’t care about the beauty of the ocean; I want to question the wave. If I’m not the wave – boom! I’m the ocean.

You may decide, “I want to feel the ocean as a wave. I want to become the ocean as a wave. I’ve been practicing at this temple for 20 years.” The Temple of ocean-ness, while you are a wave.

But the wave is persistently established AS YOU. That’s the denial of the qualities of the ocean. You don’t see the wave as the deterrent. Not that you can’t get the ocean. You ARE the ocean.

What’s the dilemma here?

With the identification in place that I’m a wave the only thing the ocean can be to you is an experience. The mind wants to have an experience of the ocean, but if push comes to shove it’s going to hang on to the idea of being a wave.

People practice for years and have a lot of experiences of the ocean, but always AS a wave. You get bored: Let’s just go to Norstrom’s and shop. Because the denial is in place. Because we never questioned it. We take ourselves to be this real solid wave and the ocean as a topic we may entertain. Meanwhile the wave continues.

But the wave isn’t going to continue. It appeared because of certain conditions and is going to disappear when those conditions change. And we live as though we are the one solid long-lasting thing here.

The special somewhere is trying to take on the qualities of Everywhere. You cannot take on the qualities of Everywhere as a special somewhere. You ARE the Everywhere.

For the special somewhere to take on the qualities of the Everywhere is to extract the Everywhere-ness out of it.

What’s appearing seems so incredibly important. But what’s appearing is not incredibly important – not to the space. And if you’re truly THAT . . . Ha ha ha ha! To give all of that up for this (thumping the body) – it’s like that movie in which Nicholas Gage decides to give up being an angel in order to make it with Meg Ryan. (Probably to get divorced two years later.) What an insane arrogance of appearances!

Like a freakin’ angel would give up its angelhood to come here, to get some ass? The appearance think it’s so much cooler to be an appearance than all of THAT. Give me a freaking break. The Archangel Michael ought to slap some sense into him. "Come on, Bro. You’re delusional. You want to appear and disappear?"

The wave can have exquisite suffering: All those crazy ideas that you can entertain when you believe you are separate from the ocean. Believing love has to come from outside; that peace is something you can do and have, you have to do something to get peace.

Talk about consumerism! We’ve become consumers ever since we became identified as this head. Seeking constantly. Consuming experiences. Believing the more experiences we have the more we’ll have of life. But experiences come and go. They are an appearance to an appearance.

And if we keep on identifying with what we’re not? It’s exhausting being separate. Do you know how much work your mind has to do to be a wave? It’s got to be on it all day long. All day meanwhile the wetness of the ocean is seeping through its little concept of being a wave.

When the truth comes through, not to you but through you, it’s set down as a “spiritual experience.” A pause. Moment of respite. “Oh, what did I do it for that to happen? I’ll go over what I did that feels so good.”

You didn’t do anything! Your true nature seeped through, that’s all. Wetness becomes a commodity that dryness tries to find. Or sell. Or privatize. When it is our inherent nature to be wet! As your nature continues to seep through, the wave will dream itself out of the dream of being a wave and the ocean-ness will be more and more obvious. There will be more wetness in it.

There is a subservience to the mental realm. The mind is re-presenting conscious contact as you being the one that’s conscious, which is causing a total experience of unconsciousness. Totally unconscious to the fact of ocean.

All day, totally in the appearance of being a wave. The life of a wave re-presented constantly. “I could have been bigger, I should have been smaller.” It goes on and on. Your interest is absorbed in it. Unbelievable. All the attention thrown into me.

What do you need to do about it? Absolutely nothing. Just become awake to it.

It’s really just getting disarmed in a sense, all your little mechanisms. Putting down the grasping. Noticing what’s obvious. It’s consciousness. Seeing.

Because the mind says, “I’m seeing,” that doesn’t mean it’s true. Just a mental process claiming the seeing. The little mind can claim the big mind. The big mind is just seeing. Always available at all times. No matter how much clinging, how much claiming you do, the one moment it’s entertained not to be you, it all stops.


Planet Self

Tuesday, August 10, 2010





ENSLAVED TO THOUGHTS?

You have lots of thoughts about you all day. The gravitational pull that keeps them close is from the Planet Self.



The mind is obsessed with the idea of being a self. And it doesn’t recognize: That’s the dilemma.

Your attention orbits around the Planet Self because the self provides the gravitational pull to all the thoughts, making them about YOU.

If you realized they weren’t about the REAL you, they could simply come and go. Your attention would be freed up from the slavery of selfing and would attend to the conscious contact: A recognition of life in and of itself. You’d be traveling lighter — not by any procedures or practice but simply by recognition of what is so.



The reason I’m hooked on the narrative in my head is because I think it’s about me. By freeing up some of the attention from the selfing there is awareness of the conscious contact; then the enslavement is over. Once you recognize you’re not the self you will lose interest in all its activities. Simply by entertaining that the selfing is not “you.”

You’ll lose interest in obsessing with the thoughts, making up stories about the feelings you’re having or not having. The attention that’s glued to the screen of selfing will be released; it will be available to the conscious contact — each moment’s experience.

Most of your attention goes to what’s NOT happening (the past and future) instead of what IS happening. When that devotional practice of selfing is dismissed you can attend to what IS happening: The conscious state of what you are — conscious contact. You’ll be aware of existing. The I am.

When that “I am” is in place you can have an immunity to all the “I am nots.” Simple as that! Just an entertaining of the I am gives you recognition of what “is.”



When you are identified as a self, you are living as though you were solid, a thing --- a NOUN. Which gives you the inability to recognize the active experience called living. You accept an interpretation by the head to replace the living-ness of it.

You think living is about something that has happened, or something that may happen. You think living is about having expectations, withholding yourself from this moment in favor of a mystical moment that will be better than this moment, because it seems like there’s nothing happening in this moment. From what point of view? From the point of view of the self as a noun!

Life is a verb — appearing every moment new. Always happening. Otherwise, it would be called “was-ing.” or “will-be-ing.” Selfing works wonders with this; you could “was” yourself into a great mythical past or “will-be” yourself into a hopeful (or fearful!) mythical future. But all of nothing’s happening.

In selfing life is happening TO you. Self has become such a strong reference point that everything that is happening is now happening TO you.

That’s a huge interpretation, and when you interpret life you miss it. It’s impossible not to. You cannot corral a verb. You just go along with it.

You don’t have to CHANGE the fact that you’re living totally in interpretation. Attend to the awareness; and that awareness will stop your attention from giving up to selfing. That whole production will move to the background; and the background, which is the awareness, will move to the foreground. The emphasis will shift. And you’ll travel lighter.

Just entertain the idea you’re not the self you think you are.

Self-centeredness binds you to things, and a meaning is given to those things so that they can affect you. Circumstances don’t bind you; the self-centeredness binds you to the circumstances.

A thought is just a thought; but it changes dramatically when it becomes MY thought. The interpretation of the thought as being mine is slapped on it. Now the thought, whose nature it is to come and go, doesn’t go by so quickly anymore.

A thought comes into awareness. You hear the thought. But how you hear it is, "I’m the thinker of it." The thought becomes observed as being mine. The act of identification. My thought.

The MY connects it with the file system called Paul. Paul has a lot of files about life related to Paul. As soon as the thought becomes identified as MY thought the file system gets opened, pulling up old ideas and downloading them into the thought. The binding agent isn’t the thought; your claiming it is the binding agent.

Now you’re bound to that thought; and instead of going on its way it’s orbiting around you. The Planet of You provides the gravitational pull that keeps the thoughts circling.

If you lose interest in the idea that you are that planet then you will lose interest in the THOUGHTS ABOUT YOU as that planet --- releasing the thoughts from their gravitational orbit so that they can come and go, and they are freed.

The Solution

Thursday, August 12, 2010
It’s not so much that we are IN conscious contact; we ARE the conscious contact.




The basic fact of living is the awareness of it. There is only consciousness.

When we forget that we ARE conscious contact there’s trouble, because life is no longer experienced as what is simply happening, but as what is happening TO ME.

All the thoughts that are happening in your head are a product of the system of self centeredness. Whatever has happened in your life, self takes advantage of it. Polishes it, cherishes it, makes it the basis of its story. No way it’s going to let loose of it. It receives whatever your life comes in contact with and takes advantage of it.

You realize finally there is no need to be liberated. All that needs to be liberated is you, from the idea of being a noun.

There is an event going on, you think it is happening to you as a self. You don’t see yourself as proceeding THROUGH an event, but as an event that’s happening TO you.

When you think life is happening TO you, thousands of files download. This system of self centeredness gives meaning through you to life. You see the meaning as though it’s real and solid and outside of yourself.

There is life. Then it becomes my life. My self. Creating this huge movie about me.

Trying to get a solution? To what? To get out of self? Sounds like a natural response to a situation that’s unbearable. But the response is part and parcel of the bigger problem, called self-centeredness. It’s called duality. Your getting out of it is being in it also.

I attempted to get better through spiritual practices. I was in that marketplace quite awhile. I figured that was the only place to find value in life, those practices. Always seeking for 10 years or so, but formulated in self-centeredness. All to be a BETTER SELF: “I as Paul am going to do something and have something for Paul to be better.” That’s the only way I could think; I didn’t know any better. I couldn’t think outside the box, because if you THINK you’re still in the box. All the thinking I could entertain was defined by self-centeredness.

Then I met someone who talked about this position of the pointless point. I entertained the possibility. I got the flavor of it, I sensed it. Once I entertained it, it became the last answer for me. Maybe I’ll get a new answer, but I haven’t for years.

Now Paul doesn’t have to be so busy with doing and having, getting better and worse. It’s produced good things in my life.

We are overwhelming what’s happening with what’s not happening. It’s amazing if you turn on to entertaining something that is true, what it can produce. In self-centeredness there is only a very limited range of possibility. It’s the same old same old. You’ve been into every nook and cranny already.

If you apply a solution to an imaginary problem (self) what can you expect? A lot of something’s going to happen, but it’s not going to be what you thought. If you apply a solution to an imaginary problem what you’re doing is verifying the reality of the problem.

What solution that you think you’ve found has lasted? None. How can a solution work on an imaginary problem? The true solution is recognizing its imaginary; that’s the quickest way out. To realize you’re not in it.

You lose total interest finally in being “liberated,” because you realize there is no need to be liberated. All that needs to be liberated is your freedom from the idea of being a noun. That’s it; that’s as far as liberation needs to go.

Selfing says, I want to be the awareness. No you frickin’ don’t. You don’t want to be free. You just want to have a better self. Want everything to get better just as you are.

That’s the whole solution. The recognition that I was never in what I thought I was in, and I was trying so hard to get out of it. I stopped; I was out of it by not trying to be out of it.

Someone will say, maybe you can help me get on to that awareness thing, maybe I’ll feel better. The lie is that you can ever be “off” the awareness.

Consciousness is a constant state. It doesn’t have to get ready. It doesn’t take a vacation and come back. It’s always on. No entrance point, no exit point. You’re on the ride, there’s no getting off.

Feel the energy. Be the verb. We’re trying to signal you, through the wall of the noun that you’re really a verb. That’s all that’s happening. Trying to tickle the verb through this shell of a noun.

Do you want to be the thing that can be aware half the time, or do you want to be the awareness?

You can’t serve two masters at the same time. Serving the one master frees you up to travel lighter. Serving the other master wants to exclude you by HAVING you, as a noun.

You’re being taken over by the parasite. Of course you want relief! The stories aren’t you; but if you decide to believe they are your attention can be drawn into them. And you’re stuck.

The mind feels very safe in the idea you MIGHT be conscious one day. “When I do such and such then I, as the mind, will allow myself to feel how conscious I am.” But never now; it’s always put off. Because being conscious, NOW, would be the end of self.

Self doesn’t exist. Only the process of living, the verb, exists. There is selfing, but there is no self. Selfing is not a problem; what is the problem is the illusion of being a self. Selfing will keep happening. The real solution is to recognize you’re not the self or the selfing; then all the perceptions of illusion can keep appearing and creating an illusion – which you’re not falling for anymore! Because you are not playing at being a noun, which is the biggest thing it makes up.

Self lives in a world of options that are not correct. It believes I can become spiritual, but inherently I am not spiritual. I can feel peace or get peace but I can also lose the peace. I feel connected, and I also feel disconnected. It entertains possibilities based on duality. That’s what it does. But in fact, the conscious contact is choiceless; simply what’s happening.

An interpretation of the conscious contact includes the idea that it’s possible to be in it --- or out of it. Which is a lie.

You know FROM the truth. The self thinks it can know the truth because it plays the subject and makes truth the object. But that’s not what’s happening. The truth is all there is, and I’m seeing from it right now — but not as a Paul; that’s a story ABOUT the seeing. Self loops everything back to itself in a loop of self reflection. You get absorbed in that because you think it’s you.

So now a question, a self inquiry, a good little tool. Try it.

Knock on the door. Ask, “Who am I?”


The Attention says, “It’s me.” If you continue to do this, you run into pure awareness.

The Attention that’s been playing at selfing all day says, “Oh I have to answer the door.” But it doesn’t go as self, because it’s not self; it is Attention.

So Attention leaves off selfing and goes to answer the door. And when the door opens you see — the you that was looking-for sees what’s looking — and it ain’t you!

So there’s a stop, a pause, and you get a free sample. It will startle the selfing into submission for a second, perhaps, and there will be a pause in the selfing. Because selfing is a verb it can be stopped; you can throw a wrench into it.

One part of your energy is always looking out, observing things. Another part of your energy is going back into self. Referring all the contact back to ME, saying I am what is in contact, I.

So we’re going to ask who am I. The selfing, busily being the I, goes, “I heard the door,” and turns to it. And because it’s not the self, but the awareness, awareness meets the awareness. Bingo. There’s your freedom from the bondage of self.




When you no longer pontificate about what’s happening, then you are in conscious contact. Where the rubber meets the road. There is life, happening. I don’t know what happened yesterday, and I don’t care; the context of this day was enough. There was one thing that was always going on, which was the verbing of it. Always the sense of being. The sense of movement. Of presence. The generator of life humming in the background.

We might say, awareness is you; but that’s stretching it. There’s just awareness. This whole act of sensing the being of it is the joy.

Like Jesus said, “You are the light of this world, but you’ve put a basket over your light.” The basket is the idea of being a self.



THE BOWL
PAUL HEDDERMAN IN PRINT
SUNDAY, AUGUST 30, 2009


"You have not had awareness. Awareness has had you."

--- Paul Hedderman




The Bowl:


Take a bowl. Put things in it; make soup. Does the bowl change? No, no more than the bowl of sky does when the birds and stars move through.

No more than the mind does as thoughts flow in and out. This emptiness the mind is so afraid of --- this is really HOME.

You ARE that SPACE: The conscious awareness of what’s appearing each moment. But you identify with a mental process that says “I” am the soup.

“Why is life happening to me this way?” Because you’ve construed yourself as a part of the soup when you’re really the context, the bowl. Life seems to be happening TO you, as the soup; a whole drama of not enough spice and so on.

Freedom is the CONTEXT of life. What you incorrectly call "self'" is the CONTENT. You see life's content but miss the context in which it's held --- the freedom that is 'prior to' the self. You see the stars but give little attention to the sky in which they're held.

The ego uses seeking as a stratagem to hide your true identity. It knows you won't "find" what you already are!

Your life becomes a storage unit full of past and future thought --- though life is meant to be NOW, with thoughts passing each moment freely through.

You have not had awareness, awareness has had you. You're in the soup: Thinking that's what you are as you stir the thoughts and feelings that fill the bowl.

Your thoughts want you to believe you are a separate long-lasting independent entity. The body becomes the focal point of this ruse. My body. My this, my that. See how much heavier the thoughts become with the 'my' thrown in!

What happens when you stop taking marching orders from thought? Self is no longer in the center. There is a shift as the 'my' comes out.

Will you put Life into so small a cage, like a small bird? It’s the nature of the bird to fly. Then it becomes YOUR bird. So you have a caged bird; but is it a bird now anymore?

Out at the rim of the bowl (outside the content) life awaits, always available. There you realize the thoughts are not you. They are passing, like the birds.

Do you follow the birds home, to peer into the bowl of their nest? Then why do it with the thoughts?




Simple witnessing, as the eye would witness a passing bird: That’s conscious contact.

Being a self is an exhausting job! Why grasp at life? Release all that! Set attention free — to be a hawk high overhead. Attention spreads, one with its source.


/////////////


"People kick up dust, then complain that they can't see."

Thoughts:

Flypaper.
Buzzing a lot
but not going anywhere.

--- Paul Hedderman

What is YOUR Experience with Paul?

Sunday, September 5, 2010
Have a comment concerning Paul's work?

Please email James at:
thealicecode@gmail.com.
to have your comments added to this page. Travel light!


Comment by James Saint Cloud:

There is a theory, that of so many millions of people on the planet there is a Buddha produced, a person fully awakened and aware of what is SO.



Paul Hedderman would be appalled that I might nominate him for such a role, though he is right there on the ballet, IMO, along with the likes of Eckart Tolle and Jeff Foster, to name but two.

I name Foster and Tolle because I read their books before my acquaintance with Paul and I knew the message they bore was absolutely true and urgently in need. But it is only now, AFTER exposure to Paul, that as I re-read Foster and Tolle I realize on a truly profound level what they were telling me. I have no doubt that Paul’s talks have been THE KEY to unlock the meaning to full view. To open the door for life beyond the self.

The styles are different, of course. Paul can sound coarse with his New York verve. But Paul’s message is everywhere to be found in theirs, and theirs in his; and I have no doubt at all of this: It is Paul’s rendition that has brought theirs to life for me.

..................

From Damien Thornber in Perth, Western Australian:

I remember hearing Paul talk in a workshop in 2005, later I happened to sit next to him at a dinner event, I overheard the discussion he was having with a augmentative doubter and was impressed by his unrelenting calmness and his persistent ability to draw the discussion back to the root problem by challenging the doubter to question ‘Who was asking’ instead of why the conflict existed. “Who are you to presume to know the answers” the doubter expounded, to which Paul answered “I don’t know, but I know who I am not”

I was so impressed by his radical views, I organised to fly him to Perth for some talks. I had been thinking about what he said so much that when I picked him up at the airport I felt like the Deli Lama had arrived, I excitedly told him Paul I am so excited about being with around you I am sure I am going to become more spiritual now. To which he said, in his humble manner “well this is the part where I disappoint you”

I sat in on many of Pauls talks while in Perth and as he was leaving I’ll never forget, I said ‘Paul how can I live this in my life’, he said “YOU can’t, and that’s the good news”

In a panic like a lamb about to lose his mother, I said ‘but Paul how do I practice everything you have taught me’. He said “Damien you don’t have practice anything, just entertain the possibility you are already that”

I don’t think I have looked at anything the same ever since that day.

My favourite Paul Quote is “if you only ask yourself one question in your life make it this one, who’s asking the question”

Thank you James Saint Cloud for making these talks available! You have just done the world a great favour.


Comment by Tom M. in Chicago:

Hi James,

Saw the invitation to comment and had to write about my experience with Paul's message or rather "invitation".

It has been a breath of fresh air to "entertain" what he is putting out there.

I've been in recovery for many years and since so much of our lives was spent manipulating others, many recovering alcoholics have developed a very low tolerance for bullshit.

Fortunately, there's none here and he doesn't take himself too seriously. How can he, when he tells us there is no "self"?
I've read a lot of top tier spiritual stuff and am always amazed at how they seem to point toward the same thing.

First heard him five years ago when someone gave me a CD. of one of his talks. All it said was Paul H.

It hit me right between the eyes but I had no idea who this guy was or how to learn more. A couple of years ago, through a twist of fate, I found his website, attended some of his talks in Chicago and have been able to access and download his weekly meetings.

Yeah, there's no doubt the style is a little coarse but I'm accustomed to that.

I'm still pretty much acting as a "separate wave" and find myself listening with "sheep's ears" but I'm open to the possibility that I might be the "ocean" and that I already am a "lion". What could possibly be more valuable than that?

Can't recommend it highly enough!

Thanks for your work on the website,

Tom M.
Chicago