Enjoy Your Life

by Namaste Publishing Staff

In an ancient Jewish work of wisdom literature, the author sums up his philosophy of life: "Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already approved what you do.”

This author hits on a crucial insight. The key to being able to really enjoy your life is to feel approved of, as if you really belong in the universe.

There is in many of us a constant background of self-doubt that gnaws away at our enjoyment of life. It’s a feeling that somehow we aren’t quite acceptable as we are. And when things go wrong––particularly at those times when we find ourselves on a helter-skelter of what seems like “bad luck”––it’s especially easy to feel disapproved of.

It’s for you and me, when we don’t feel totally acceptable, that Michael Brown wrote his wonderful book The Presence Process. It leads us step by step into an state of being in which we can simply enjoy the person we are. We accept ourselves, without reservation and with no holding back.

This is the opposite of what so much of religion has emphasized—that we aren’t acceptable. “Just as I am” isn’t good enough, we’ve been told. What’s been missed is that it’s our inability to accept ourselves that God “disapproves” of, not our acceptance of ourselves.

The realization that no matter what comes our way, we are loved and accepted in the created order is one of the most life-changing breakthroughs we ever make. It brings a settled sense of worth, which wells up spontaneously within us. This acceptance of ourselves proves to be the antidote to all the self-talk many of us indulge in about how inadequate we feel.

It’s this settled sense of our acceptability that enables us to follow the advice of that Jewish author of Ecclesiastes. “Let your garments be always white,” he urges. “Let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the fleeting days of life that have been granted you under the sun. Whatever it is in your power to do, do with all your might."

There are some time-bound cultural images and values in the language, the result of the passing of two and a half millennia since he penned this advice, but we can still hear his message—to make the ordinary, everyday things of life the vehicles of a grand celebration of our existence.

Do whatever you do with all your might. Really be present in your living. Give your whole being to it.

In other words, don’t measure your life primarily by money or power or education. This author had all of these things—mansions to live in, parks with lakes, a staff of entertainers ranging from dancers to musicians, a wealth of learning, a private wildlife park, and every luxury he desired. But they weren’t where he found fulfillment. He found fulfillment in the joy of experiencing each simple moment of his life in its fullness.

It’s a matter of how aware you are in all of the little things that make up the backdrop of your life—how much you relish a good meal, being among friends, watching a sunset, observing the trees bursting into foliage in spring or changing color in fall, hugging your loved ones, and making your primary relationship, if you have one, a grand romance.

Fulfillment comes from the process of living, when you engage wholeheartedly in this process, simply for itself and not for some specific outcome. As you live out the process, accepting life each step of the way as it unfolds instead of fighting and resisting and feeling badly about how things are going, you find meaning one moment at a time.

Non-acceptance, because you have a concept of how you are supposed or not supposed to be, ruins the spontaneity, blocks the flow, dams up the joy. And then you find yourself in pain, as either “everything seems to be going wrong” in your life, or you feel “empty” or “bored” with everything.

The twentieth century philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich says of such moments of painful realization, “Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted.’”

The message of The Presence Process is that you are accepted. And it will show you how to live every moment of every day in the fullness of the acceptance stumbled upon by the author of Ecclesiastes all those centuries ago.

Middle East Muddle

By Namaste Staff Writer

Norman Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute—according to BBC World News, perhaps the leading authority on the United States Congress—stated on BBC World that although only 15 members of the Republican Party crossed sides to vote against their President on a non-binding Iraq resolution, “While the overwhelming majority of House Republicans voted with their party, with their President, against this resolution, had there been a secret ballot vote the majority would have voted for it.”

The Middle East is in a sad state today because, everywhere we look in the world of politics, pretence trumps Presence.

This is not a partisan matter. It happens on all fronts, continually. There were both Democrats and Republicans who voted for the war, who in their hearts suspected there might be a better way—but no one wanted to “appear” unpatriotic.

On the same day as the House vote, in New Zealand protesters against the Iraqi war were arrested on the occasion of a visit by the Australian Prime Minister John Howard. A banner captured by the camera read, “Howard Racist Scum.”

How authentic are we when, claiming to value people by being non-racist, we devalue others? Polarized views of our fellow humans, no matter how deeply we may disagree with them, reflect as much a lack of Presence as those who are racist lack Presence.

What’s missing from both the House members and the protesters is the authenticity that alone can change the course of the world and steer it toward peace. Being against each other achieves no enduring results—whether as elected officials or as protesters.

As long as the approach we take to issues on our planet is heated, instead of coming from the calmness of Presence, there will be no lasting peace. This is why, for thousands of years, no sooner has one conflict been solved than another arises. We lurch from conflict to conflict, blaming and opposing, because we are locked in inauthenticity. The result is drama on the world scene.

The fact is, neither the politicians nor the protesters are able to act wisely, calmly, authentically. At this stage in our development as a species, we are driven far too much by our emotional neediness and reactivity to be able to make wise choices.

Says Michael Brown, author of The Presence Process, “Our dramas are the ‘acts’ we use to gain attention and acceptance from others.” Whether in the voting chambers of government, or protesting on the streets of our cities, we are incapable of making sound decisions when we are addicted to drama. We are too concerned with ego—with how it would “appear.”

The Presence Process is a cure for drama. It’s needed now on our planet more than ever, because the stakes have become potentially lethal for our species.

The agreement brokered this past with North Korea on the nuclear issue is one that observers say could have come quite a long time ago, had been serious dialogue instead of posturing. Posturing is drama—staged behavior that masks our inability to be authentic.

And now, with Iran, we are playing out a similar drama, and they with us.

Michael Brown explains, “Our calculated drama is successful in that it makes us acceptable to the adult world, but in the same breath, it renders our authentic self unacceptable to us.”

It’s the inability to truly love and accept ourselves that causes us to see a visiting prime minister, a president, a politician of a particular party, a race of people, or those of a different religion as “the enemy,” instead of as real individuals with whom we need to interact as authentic adults and not through posturing.

It’s easy to blame the politicians for the current mess in the Middle East. But the politicians are no more to blame than we are, for they are merely a reflection of our own unconsciousness.

The Middle East muddle is a “messenger” to each of us, seeking to awaken us to authenticity in the way we deal with each other. It is a reflection of our own internal worlds.

How can we effect change?

It requires no more—and no less—than becoming present ourselves. As each of us becomes authentic, responsible, free to make truly beneficial choices, this “ups the ante” for everyone around us.

Solely by becoming present, we invoke presence in others.

As Jesus said, the kingdom of God spreads like leaven in bread dough set to rise. Authentic change is a process of osmosis. It “rubs off” onto others when it’s genuine.

If we want to change our world, the answer lies in each of us investing ourselves in a serious way in becoming present. It has to become the single most important task in our lives.

That’s why, throughout much of 2007, Michael Brown will be touring North America, speaking to groups and sharing with them the path to Presence. Sign up for our RSS information service, and you’ll know instantly when new venues are added.

Learning from the Buddha

by Namaste Publishing Staff

The yogins to whom the Buddha first went seeking serenity weren’t interested in the ordinary things of everyday life. Their goal was to abolish normalcy and expunge their ordinary selves.

The Buddha became proficient at yogic meditation, rising to the highest levels of trance.

But the Buddha was also an astute observer of human behavior and human nature. Consequently, he paid attention to his experiences and drew lessons from them.

The Buddha noticed that as long as he was in trance, he was fine. He felt peaceful, relaxed, at ease. This is the way he longed to feel in everyday life, and why he meditated so much.

The problem was, whenever he came out of his state of trance, he found that he was just the same troubled person as he had been before entering trance. He was anxious, worried, fearful. Trance didn’t transform him. It failed to bring him a lasting peace that transferred into the rest of his life.

Spiritual growth requires honesty. It demands self-confrontation. We have to observe what we are experiencing, pay attention to it, and face up to the challenge it presents us with.

So the Buddha abandoned his quest for deeper and deeper states of trance. Instead, he became a monk, living a life of severe austerity.

The Buddha had come to believe that craving things was the root of the dissatisfaction we humans experience. There could be no inner peace as long as we were always restless, searching, seeking to get.

So the Buddha isolated himself from all that might cause him to crave things. He spent a lot of time in seclusion. During this period of his journey he moved out into the forest, sleeping in the open even in freezing weather. He was trying to kill his craving for material satisfaction.

There were periods when the Buddha lay on a mattress of spikes. At times he held his breath for so long that his head felt like it was splitting in two. He gave up eating solid food, subsisting on such a meager caloric intake that before long his bones stuck out, his hair fell out, and his skin became withered.

All of the Buddha’s extreme efforts proved to be a waste of time. In terms of killing his craving, they were a failure. As for bringing him inner peace, they were as fruitless as meditating himself into deep trance.

At the end of six years, all this devout man had achieved was weakened health. Instead of becoming free of suffering, he had in fact created more suffering for himself.

Because the Buddha was honest with himself, he didn’t keep telling himself that someday his practice would succeed if he could just be committed enough, rigorous enough. He had gone the limit. No one could possibly do more. Finally he admitted that what he was doing wasn’t working.

And that’s when the light went on for the Buddha.

There sprang into the Buddha’s mind a recollection of an event from when he was a young boy. It was time for the annual plowing of the fields, and he went with his father to the ceremonial event. As he watched the grass being torn up and the lives of the insects being disrupted, he experienced a sadness. Then, out of nowhere, the beauty of the day simply took hold of him, despite his sadness, and his spirit soared with ecstasy.

In the midst of his sorrow for the insects, the Buddha was experiencing the sheer joy of this lovely day. He didn’t create this sensation, didn’t ask for it—it simply came upon him. It was a foretaste of enlightenment.

Now, after his years of seeking, the Buddha realized that enlightenment is natural for humans, if we don’t suppress it. It arises spontaneously, without effort. All it involves is allowing ourselves to become fully present in each moment, as happened to the Buddha on that day in childhood.

Enlightenment is seeing with open eyes. It’s hearing with open ears. Far from escaping the world either through meditation or isolation and deprivation, it’s plunging more fully into life. It’s connecting profoundly, intimately, with what’s happening in our lives at any given time.

The paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin said it well: “Purity does not lie in separation from, but in a deeper penetration into the universe. It is to be found in the love of that unique, boundless Essence which penetrates the inmost depths of all things, and there, from within those depths, deeper than the mortal zone where individuals and multitudes struggle, works upon them and moulds them.”

Michael Brown’s The Presence Process takes into account the hard lessons learned by the Buddha. It provides us with a simple ten-week process for entering awareness—without struggle, without deprivation, without even trying to control our thoughts.

All it invites us to do is to become aware. As we become present in our experiences—fully aware—the joy of being, the deep peace of eternity, and the love that generated the universe well up within us. We are living in an enlightened state, and life is truly wonderful.

Two Fallen Stars

By Namaste Publishing Staff

“I wanted to be someone,” she said.

She became Playboy’s Playmate of the Year. She married a billionaire, Texan J. Howard Marshall II. She was an occasional actress and starred in her own reality TV show.

Though her life was one of fame, played out as a regular feature of the tabloids, Anna Nicole Smith apparently never became the one thing worth being in her short life—her own precious self.

Dead at age 39, she leaves a daughter, Dannielynn, only five months old, the subject of a paternity suit. A post mortem has so far failed to turn up the cause of the glamour model’s death, though an overdose has not been ruled out.

Anna Nicole reached out to for an identity borrowed from riches and fame. But her personal life was marked by struggle. Not just the paternity suit, with three claimants to fatherhood, but also her very public struggle with weight, and an unresolved struggle for her second husband’s estate.

Anna Nicole’s life was also marred by tragedy. Three days after she gave birth to her daughter, her son, age 20, went to see her in her Bahamas hospital room. He died in that same hospital room from an overdose.

Though she was surrounded by people who wanted to be in her company, and was seemingly never alone, Anna Nicole appeared incredibly lonely. In this, she mirrors so many who long for fulfillment but don’t find it.

When the void in our lives is huge, it doesn’t matter how much fame, glamour, wealth, or popularity we garner. Nothing outside of us can satisfy such an emptiness.

In the same week that Anna Nicole’s death occurred, another celebrity—of a very different kind—hit the headlines. American astronaut Lisa Nowak, 43, married and a mother of three, has been accused of attempted murder. It’s alleged she plotted to kidnap Colleen Shipman, wife of astronaut William Oefelein, driving hundreds of miles wearing a diaper so that she wouldn’t have to take bathroom breaks on her quest.

To become an astronaut ranks among one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of humanity. Despite her stellar career, Ms. Nowak hadn’t found the satisfaction we all crave. In the end, her emotional needs drove her to utterly illogical behavior.

How does someone get to the place that they are a star, with a cult-like following, and yet their personal life is in disarray?

If you don’t find fulfillment within yourself, you won’t find it anywhere. You may get a temporary transfusion of satisfaction from the world outside of you, but it’s not going to last. It isn’t solid—it’s a mirage. That’s because it’s not flowing from your own center. It’s conditional, dependent on the outer circumstances of your life.

The simple fact is, if you don’t go within, you go without.

The journey within—a journey that can “save us from ourselves” by introducing us to ourselves—is articulated for us in Michael Brown’s book The Presence Process. As certified Life Empowerment Coach Dana Carrero of Philadelphia writes, “The Presence Process by Michael Brown is the most profound book in its genre that I have ever experienced. The ideas presented, though deeply thought-provoking and far-reaching, are surprisingly accessible through the author's skillful use of metaphor, word reversals and phonetic dissections that make the text uniquely engaging and easy to absorb.”

Not only is Michael’s book easily accessible, it’s life-changing. Ms. Carrero explains, “If one commits to the 10 week Presence Process procedure which is straightforward and simple to follow, real and lasting, life altering results can truly be experienced.”

You don’t need to visit a counselor in order to benefit from The Presence Process. This is a process you can use in the privacy of your own home.

However, the book is also a useful tool for counselors, says Ms. Carrero: “As a counselor, life coach and meditation facilitator, my intention, through extensive study over many years, has been aimed at dealing correctively with issues in the human condition that block or hinder one from reaching their fullest potential. But only since reading and facilitating myself through The Presence Process have I discovered that by merely being a companion to those clients willing to take on the 10 week Presence Process for themselves, the most beneficial and sustainable results are achieved. The bottom line is there is great benefit for all of who are willing to become self-facilitators, fully responsible for their life experience. And The Presence Process delivers the ultimate ‘How To’ for doing just that!”

Whatever your walk of life, The Presence Process can enable you to find the fulfillment that eludes even the rich and famous when they haven’t discovered the essence of their being.

Disillusionment with People

By Namaste Publishing Staff

Have you ever been really disillusioned by someone you imagined to be an incredible person?

We live in a culture of “stars.” In the movie business, in the music industry, on the speaking circuit, in sports, in politics—everywhere you look, society promotes stardom.

And everywhere you look, you also see “fallen stars.”

Of course, the promoters like to create stars because it’s lucrative. Turn someone into an idol and you make a lot of money off them.

The danger for us is that we can borrow an identity from stars. This happens because what we haven’t discovered in ourselves, we seek from others. But we are borrowing from a dream world, for the lives of the stars are not what we imagine them to be.

No one is the “star” we dream she or he is!

Spirituality is about ending our need for stars in our lives and finding our own wonderful “star” within. When this happens, we are able to appreciate the “star” in everyone—including those in the movies, politics, or on the sports field. Only now, we appreciate people for their humanity and their talents, which we enjoy, and not because they are supplying us with a transfusion of identity.

The Presence Process, brought to us by Michael Brown, is about authenticity. It’s about no longer living in a dream world but about becoming real—and seeing others as real.

In fact, only to the degree that we are ourselves real are we capable of tolerating another person as she or he actually is. This is because we are all both wonderful and flawed.

We are complete, and we are simultaneously in process of bringing this completion into everyday life. As the name of Michael’s book implies, it’s a process.

Once we see our own amazing self, and also how dysfunctional we can be at times, we can accept others when they don’t match up to our dream of them. The dream is shattered, but only so that the real person can be discovered and embraced. We no longer demand they be a certain way for us, but instead become grateful recipients of who and what they actually are.

So it’s vital that we experience disillusionment with others. Disillusionment is a gift. Without it, we won’t be forced back into ourselves, where alone we can discover what it is we have been seeking in someone else. It’s in being let down by another that we have a chance to find our own two feet and, as Michael likes to say in his book, “show up” in our lives.

Said Dietrich Bonhoeffer, rector of an underground seminary during the Nazi era in Germany, who was eventually martyred by the Third Reich, “The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both.” The shock may be painful, but it’s necessary.
As long as our relationships with each other are built on pretense, instead of the presence and acceptance of real people, there really is no relationship at all, just a pipedream. We are imagining connection, but there is no genuine connection; it’s just fantasy. There can be no authentic relationship as long as we are trying to get something from another to meet a need in ourselves.

When we don’t make someone an idol, a source of identity, we don’t go through the experience of having them fail us. As long as someone is a mere dream and not real for us, they will always ultimately fail us.

Find it in yourself, which is what The Presence Process will enable you to do, and there is an amazing leveling of the playing field. You stop looking up to others, dreaming of them, imagining them in unreal ways. Instead, you see them in their humanity—and in their divinity—and you value them as real individuals, and appreciate them for having the courage to engage in the process of emerging as their own true star.

Rustproof Your Retirement

by Namaste Publishing Staff

A man was on the witness stand and an attorney asked, “How old are you?”

“Thank the Lord for His goodness, I’m eighty-two years old,” was the reply.

“Would you repeat that please,” said the attorney.

“I said, thank the Lord for His goodness, eighty-two years old.”

“Just answer the question!” the attorney snapped. “No other remarks are necessary. Now, how...old...are...you?”

“Like I told you, eighty-two,” said the witness, “thank the Lord for His....”

The attorney objected and the judge pounded his gavel and said, “The witness will please simply answer the question and only the question with no additional comment, or be held in contempt of court! Is that understood?”

The opposing counsel rose and addressed the court. “Your honor,” she said, “may I ask the question?”

“By all means try,” said the judge.

“Sir,” she said, “thank the Lord for His goodness, how old are you?”

“I’m eighty-two,” the man answered, his face beaming.

We smile at the stereotype of elderly people who aren’t quite in touch with our modern ways of doing things. To the young, the aged are sort of like a separate species, not quite with it any more.

When Adlai Stevenson was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, he was a constant target for autograph seekers. Once a small, elderly woman on the edge of the crowd held out a piece of paper. “Please, Mr Ambassador,” she said, “your autograph for a very, very old lady.”

“I’d be delighted,” said Stevenson. “Where is she?”

It’s a good question. Wherein lies age? What makes a person old? What qualifies us as over the hill?

It’s all too easy to evaluate our age against an image of what is supposed to be the case at a particular milestone.

The passage of time is natural. We are all born, age, and die.

Psychological time, however, is something different. When we live in psychological time, though physically we are here in this moment, mentally we are somewhere else.

As a consequence, many of us come to that time in life when we tell ourselves we are “past it,” never having experienced what it is to be truly alive.

Really living is something we’re supposed to experience at some other age. Children constantly receive messages that suggest real living is something that happens “when you grow up,” “when you can drive,” “when you get a job,” “when you get married,” “when you have a family of your own” or “when you retire.”

The emphasis isn’t on what is happening right now, but on a concept of what life is eventually supposed to be.

I was talking to a little guy a few days ago and asked how old he was. His mom chimed in, “He’s four.”

The little fellow corrected her. “I’m not four,” he said indignantly. “I’m four and three-quarters.”

If you're less than ten years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions. Why can’t the years just go more quickly?

Then you get into your teens. How old are you? “I'm gonna be sixteen.”

And then you become twenty-one. You have arrived.

Everything so far is about anticipation. The world is your oysters and you’re set to discover its pearls. Life is about to happen.

But then you turn thirty, are pushing forty, reach fifty, make sixty, hit seventy—and before you know it you are counting in fractions again. “I’m ninety-two and a half!”

Psychological time—what we tell ourselves about the passage of time in our lives—can keep us from ever really living. We go through the motions, but our focus is on what’s coming next. So we miss this moment.

It’s a question of being present in our lives as we live them.

To be present, really alert and aware, is the only way to rust-proof your retirement. This is because, by living each stage of life fully, you don’t enter retirement with the feeling that there’s so much you missed out on.

It is never too late to begin living fully. At any age, Michael Brown’s book The Presence Process, coupled with his CDs, is a wonderful way of removing ourselves from psychological time and coming fully alive in everything we do.

Grace Hansen got it right when she said, “Don’t be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin.” Your life can begin right now as you embark on The Presence Process. Live it fully, and you rust-proof your retirement.