Cover candidate – - and samples
Scoll below to the last blog entry to find the
Your Path
Each human being is unique, none are identical.
We are absolutely, totally, wondrously, unique.
Extracts intended to attract a Publisher
THE POWER OF YES IS A NEW unpublished book about how an attitude of YES to everything in life changes the very nature of being.
The first part of the book explores how anger itself isn’t some great neurotic fulfiller of ego tantrums. It’s not “letting off steam,” or anything healthy. Anger is in fact a suffering which we inflict upon ourselves at the ego’s behest. Anger doesn’t even appear if we’re YES to the feelings which the ego and conditioning are trying to cover over.
The text takes a look at how all emotional outbursts and unconscious ways of avoiding discomfort keep us from feeling our own lives.
Next, most importantly, the difference between the words FEEL and EMOTION is explored, particularly how societally we embrace a basic confusion — while we mean to support healthy FEELings, we unintentionally support negative EMOTions instead — because the two words are confused. For instance, if a person is insulted they may FEEL hurt, but their emotion may be anger. While these two may be a far cry from each other, it is quite hard to discuss, discern or heal while still interchanging the words FEEL and EMOTE. Often a well-meaning person, run out of words, will say, “You have a right to your anger.” As If! The beauty of THE POWER OF YES is that it shows the simple lovely beautiful path to clarity — and ninety percent of the work is done just by learning 1. we too have been confusing the two words and 2. by differentiating the two, we shine a new sun of enlightened vision on human existence. It’s quite easy (and amazing) to see the dark cul-de-sacs we’ve driven ourselves into. Why oftentimes we end up somewhere less-than-clear — and usually because we confuse two words and lives lives of confusion we didn’t even know we had. But when it’s seen it’s Oh Yeah, That’s It! THEN we understand how it works, THEN we can stop saying NO’s we didn’t even realize we were living. Life moves forward, again.
The end result of saying YES to life are beings awakening to who they really are, what they really experience, what they really think and feel. They begin to live.
The final sections describe one man’s helpful tools on exploring the very thing a YES awakening illuminates right in front of you: enlightenment.
I pretty much have the material nearly ready for print.The next stage is to arrange for publishing and/or printing. I’m still writing full-time and I’m staying with a friend in California.YOU can help by either offering to EDIT or proofread.I’d like to get into San Fransisco, too, to do book-signings at book stores and some evening and weekend relaxives.
Michael Walsh
mwalsh7782@yahoo.com
Preface
Preface
Many of the people who reviewed earlier drafts of this book have asked me whom I was writing for, who were the target group? Well, it’s not targeted for beginners. It’s not targeted for the casually enlightened, not even for the fully awake. It is targeted towards any person who is active in his or her own awakening right now. The first half of the book can be described in two sentences: Live all your life with YES. Start Feeling, stop emoting. The second half of the book is a reference, as much as anything else, about spiritual awakening. Integrative Awakening. It is not a teaching or a path. It is not a trip or something to learn. It is simply an exploration of those areas in life which are connected with becoming more expansive.
My sense is that every single person who reads this, even fully awake enlightened beings, will read things which touch their core being. If this is true, the book is a success. My aim is to shine light on the path and the path is an un-ending path. If you aren’t dead, it’s still in front of you. Even I get something more reviewing these, my own materials. You see, it’s an opening of an area inside of ourselves – - it is not about simple facts one can learn and be done with.
ABOUT ME
I have been exploring reality, consciousness, since I was a boy. I did it the way some people explored the world. Some gurus and enlightened ones explored human potential much the same way the Robber Barons explored industrialization: head on. Such gurus end up on the top of the Consciousness spiritual heap. The Robber Barons were completely divorced from the toiling masses and it took social labor upheaval to even get them somewhat realigned with their fellow man. The guru too can end up aloof, not so much aloof to their fellow man, but aloof to the very world that consciousness lives in, the life of the world is consciousness. Both the Robber Baron and the hermit spiritual master end up separate, at the top, yes, but separate.
I took a different path. Part of me wanted to do it the old way, but I recognized that as the same part of me which as a boy wanted to be King, wanted to stand on a hill and shout, “I rule the world!” It is futile for a boy and it is futile for a man. Alexander never returned to Greece.
My path was exploring my self, not for power or even success, but just as: “What is?” As to the world, I was willing to take my lumps, be moral, be immoral, be happy, be sad. And boy, I did do it all! I’ve kicked cold turkey. I’ve wandered the ruins of Ephesus, stood on a mountaintop retreat and watched airplanes climb out of the valley. I’ve been a bootlegger, a beggar, thief, hermit, logger, hunter, junkie, pacifist and tyrant. I’ve written books never offered to publishers. I’ve fathered children and lost them. I’ve played in depression so absolute I hadn’t the energy to go get the gun. I have achieved such degrees of awakening that I was operational on levels the world calls paranormal. I have participated in the healing of damaged souls and I have wrecked my own. I know a lot and can go into the space to get the rest. I am a limitless being who still participates in the world.
I can sum it up. I am a human being who has decided to say YES to life – - to simply be aware of the being I am being, and then live from there. This is the biggest game on the planet – not “becoming enlightened,” but living engaged in the world, awake.
You will find some of my personal quirks herein, but I promise to try to keep them down to a dull roar. What I really want to share is a viewpoint of deciding to explore all of oneself, continuously expanding. All levels – - BUT from YES, living first and foremost as YES and then exploring ALL ELSE! This book isn’t so much of a how-to but more of an overview of areas one might want to explore. My path was unnecessarily harsh. But if you find some of the signposts I’ve placed to be helpful, then I’ll feel grand.
Please be sure to read the section “Myths Of Enlightenment,” because letting go of your personal myth-beliefs is far more important than anything I’ve written other than learning to say YES to life. Honest! Because living YES you will have awakenings, some will wake up entirely – - and then, what’s next? There are no temples here to “take you in” and listen to every word. You’ll still be in your jeans, in complete freedom, yes, but still in the world. Whatcha gonna do when awakening comes to you? That’s the game now. Living life awake, present and real.
The Universe is happening in a rush of magnitude as big as all itself. If you’re like me, and you don’t want to miss anything, read on. It’s a slow acceleration at first but leads to rocketing into the universe of your own consciousness and beyond – - experiencing realms where the Earth shakes and is still, flying though every conceivable wonder and beauty. The energy and vastness of the cosmos. Sitting vibrating with it, humming with the life you are, this moment, being, seeing, living the ever-present NOW.
Godspeed.
Michael Walsh
Christmas 1998
Updated 2007
Introduction
Introduction
This book is about the nature of the evolution in human beings. Personal evolvement.
| Personal evolvement. |
Two aspects.
First is addressing old retrograde patterns, habits and conditioning. Such as reversing beliefs, commitments and cherished identities.
This ceasing mere survival automatically puts you, by pre-adaptation (humans are far more able to do things than they need to do) in stasis or moving towards a higher level, what is called here, awakening.
The second aspect is an outgrowth of the first. Once you stop saying NO to life, living with a negative attitude, only just trying to get on in life, then YES becomes more and more of a way of “BEing.” You accept life and what comes. Life is then a welcoming, a desire to open spaces and seeing what else might happen. When life is YES, surrender is not uncommon and ego deflation in depth is the norm.
The first half of this book is discovering the YES to Anger, then YES to all emotions and finally YES to everything that comes to you in life – - the power of YES.
The second half of this book is not about a life in stasis, but instead, a non-ending evolvement.
|
||||||||||
Integrative Awakening is my best attempt to point at a non-system where one does lots (any) of things which promote evolvement towards natural awakening, just that. It’s idea is of doing things in all four areas (“integrative” you see) which will lighten up any being: Mind, Body, Belief (conditioning, primarily,) and Spirit. Integrative Awakening suggests some practices which apply to those four areas. I’ve left out things of which I have not personal experience, no talking with crystal chandeliers or joining the kids on the oujiee board or dressing up in costumes. I pretty much stick to what I view as adult stuff, such as mindfulness, self-inquiry and being truth-filled. I don’t have anything to do with rituals as they feel too much to me like joining a game of football where the owner of the ball makes up his own rules. “Here’s the way it is.” But I do feel being and doing things with others is often important. Nor am I interested in other-sensory phenomenon, as I already have my hands full with what’s going on here and now in the world I’m designed to fit! I have indeed had some phenomenal experiences, including post-death, but I don’t surely know what to make of them and if I start trying to figure it out, I’ll be like most everyone else, being led around the nose by rampant thinker-mind(s) having fun like a pack of monkeys put in charge of the knick-knack shop.
No, I’ve written pretty much about normal things, things which have been written in other places and in other times. The simple American-English truth about discovering a life of YES and then it’s attendant awakeness is mind-boggling enough! Shall be begin?
Here Now
Everything in this book only applies to this Present Moment, the one you are living, right here. Now. The real you, each moment, present. Everything else is either a distraction or an impediment. Even the story of what is happening just gets in the way; like someone talking during a movie.
It is true you are connected with all these things, the whole universe in fact, but until you realize this, it won’t make any sense. So long as there is separation, quit looking to the future, to the past or anywhere “out there.” Look within. Seek yourself. This now.
Everything that ever happened, happened right-now. You can’t do anything five minutes ago. Go ahead, try it. Right now, do something five minutes ago. You can’t. You can’t do anything five minutes from now. Go ahead, try it. Right now, do something five minutes in the future. You can’t. You can’t even do it just one second ago or one second in the future. It can’t be done.
Okay, now do anything now. Do it. Blink or something. See? You did it Now. Everything you could possibly do right now you could. (Which in a sense almost makes everything else bogus!) (hmmm . . . everything that isn’t Now must be in your head!) (Well, let’s look at that later! Back to the main plot . . . )
So Be Here Now. Literally. Get that trick in and it’ll save you fifteen years of meditation.
My Guru
My Guru
You see, I’d love to tell you a story about a dusty poor homeless man I met in Vietnam who became my guru and who I’ve never seen again. He began and ended in my life in three minutes and continues on here now forever. Do I love him? Oh Yes! How I love him! He is Me, you know! How could I not love him? I die for him every day, I die for me every day, I don’t wait for Jesus to do it, I die for myself as often as I can! My guru doesn’t want love for me, or anything good at all — he just loves me. The most he’d ever give me is *maybe* a cigarette, but even that, only for the fun of it, for old time’s sake. Does my guru love me? Do I love my guru? Barely. There is so much else! So many other beings! Look! Right here! Right now! Look! The universe is peopling another being right now! Yikes! It’s YOU!
Our Story
Some years ago I was in dusty Vietnamese village, no stores, I wanted a cigarette. There ahead, a man on the side of the road, no shoes, just shorts, sitting and opening a pack of Marlboros. With gestures I ask him for one, he is smiling, he gives, he lights my cigarette, I smile back and continue up the road. One hundred yards on, I realize, “That is a homeless man in a beggar-rich country, and he gave me, the rich affluent American, a cigarette without asking for anything in return!” I turn and see he is still standing there, back there, smiling. I start walking back towards him and his smile increases, with mine, our smiles growing with each other — I walk up to him and we are grinning now. *Grinning.* I am seeing his eyes becoming watery. He*totally*gets*me*getting*him. And tears are coming to all eyes now and my hand pulls out two months his-income and give it to him, his hand takes it without even looking down and the love flowed, *flowed*. He his destitute, homeless and absolutely alone in the same world I am in, and what matters to him is that I see him nearly as much as he saw me from the first moment. When I looked back from a hundred yards away a second time, he was standing relaxed nearly into the earth, money almost dropping out of his limp hand, at-one with the sight of the back of the American he still tells stories about to this day.
My guru.
Anger is useless and nothing healthy.
YES To Life And Yes To Anger
Twenty years ago at the end of an anger outburst, I “caught myself short” spontaneously and observed myself in detachment. I noticed that I was feeling violent and upset — and at the same time I was hating all the powerful sensations which were going through my body and my mind. I was agitated and uncomfortable. Usually in such rage I would have said to myself, “HE caused this, it’s HIS FAULT. If he hadn’t done that yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah.” But I had already walked away, my adversary cowed, from an argument I didn’t much care about anyway. My body was shaking, with a head full of racing thoughts, and when I started thinking about what had happened, I was almost ready to turn back looking for more trouble. Nearly stumbling, I stamped my boot in frustration.
I felt miserable, lots of adrenaline coursing through my veins, my mind repeating and repeating negative-charged thoughts that the anger emotion seemed to nail down inside my head. It was terrible to watch myself, once I wasn’t attached to the anger, it nonetheless had it’s energy still coursing through me.
Striding away on a quiet path through the trees, I realized I really disliked the affects of anger. I hated it!
Anger hurt.
I stopped and the thought came to me, “I’ve just realized that anger is the most intense mental unpleasantness that I can remember bringing on myself.”
Very curious, “Most intense?”o
Then suddenly, for the first time, I noticed that being angry was in fact a form of self-suffering, a form of suffering.
Suffering.
Wow.
I choose to live as a conscious being, one who chooses to live in self-awareness, own and be responsible to and in my life, so this was a bit of challenge. Anger? Let go of anger was an obvious logical solution, but stuffing anger and being a suppressed person was not remotely acceptable as a choice, either. I began to methodically watch myself and others, when they were in their anger. I didn’t see any having fun, they appeared unhappy. Although rare cruel persons may enjoy dispensing anger/hurt, they are the rarity and have nothing to do with healthy living. Meanies are unfortunates who cannot or will not take ownership of their own lives. Pray for them, if you will.
I wasn’t interested in what anger does or serves in life, I wanted to learn the “how’ of it and what I might learn – - what parts I might be denying with hidden NOs and then what I might integrate, with YES, into my own consciousness.
I saw a contradiction: healthy angry people are not having fun nor even having a satisfactory personal emotional result, but instead are unhappy, were experiencing degrees of unpleasantness, NOT the peace and happiness we say we all seek. Often, this was deep unpleasantness. A question began to clarify: Why the hell were modern people bothering with anger in a lives where we are left to our own devices? I studied these things, human nature; the way we work.
In time, I began to notice further aspects of anger. It had never taken note of this before, it was a little like exploring something unfamiliar, though anger itself was certainly familiar. I saw I could get angry sitting alone merely re-hashing some earlier incident. Then I realized, in surprise, that Hey! I was creating the anger right there right then in that moment, it was not some item carried around like a tiger in a cage. Yowza, I saw that all anger which I’ve experienced I had in fact created myself. Nobody made me angry.
I also saw, even early in this investigation of emotional outbursts, that I always had this choice. No-one else “made” me angry. For years I’d already had the ability to detach from anything. I never much enjoyed anger, and I often walked off when confrontation was brewing. I have great confront, can face about anything, but my view was “Why bother?” Confrontation usually led to unpleasantness, people are so invested in being ‘right’ and having their way (even myself, of course.) And even if I feel the argument worth it, arguments still don’t work for me. If I’m ‘right’, well, I must have thought I was ‘right’ anyway, so the wins felt useless. If I was ‘wrong’, I just humiliated myself (or worse, I won the argument and later felt to apologize.) Looking around at how other people are, and remembering many other arguments and results, it was plain to see anger’s nature is to feel unpleasant in the moment, and, further, I saw that it is a universal form of suffering.
But people put themselves into it anyway. They voluntarily became angry, when moments before they may have been perfectly content.
But anger was something that happens, an action. An activity is not permanent, but temporary and something one does. It’s not something you are.
Again I realized a deepening truth: there is no such thing as an “angry person.” There are only persons who have in some way, for some reason, decided to be anger, to emote anger. To act angry. They chose to feel, to expose themselves to, the entire gamut of unpleasantness. Wow again. They, in a way and for reasons I couldn’t see, were making themselves this way. I wondered about this, how they could choose to experience this. I knew that when I created inner anger I also experienced real hurting inside. And the pain went on for some time afterwards, and I had the sense that the anger had INCREASED the hurt inside.
So why was this happening? Better question, what was the mechanism?
I looked.
Here is what I’ve found.
Anger is merely an avoidance. Anger happens instead of feeling OR expressing a hurt we’ve been feeling, or are about to feel. Anger is the result of saying “NO” to experiencing painful feelings – feelings which we are unable, or think we are unable, to cope with right now. More precisely, all emotions are the result of refusing to experience our feelings. We believe emotion is healthy processing of life but, believe it or not, emotions are more like turmoil. We do emotions because we believe that we can’t cope, or simply want to avoid. We accept turmoil as preferable to going into feeling, believing afterwards we’ll remain stuck with these feelings. We believe both our old patterns and mainstream society’s limited beliefs of ignorant psychology about this for two reasons.
- — The first reason is this: we’re not going to let go of our emotional safety net without a replacement option. At this point, we haven’t even begun to look at this. Even having read this far, few people will have already decided to dive in to this self-evolvement and dump the emotional circus. It’s a brand new idea – stop emoting? Hello? What’s that? How will I cope? We don’t realize yet that feeling feelings lets them move, pass on and tear us, whereas emoting stuffs them deeper inside us as permanent baggage to carry around forever until they resurface and blast us through another storm, again anyway.
– The second reason is that we don’t realize that the healing is in feeling deeply, not emoting. Almost none of the us has studied and understood the difference between the two words: feelings and emotions – even though they are distinct words with very distinct meanings. Take a look and you’ll see that most everywhere, these two words are used interchangeably. Mainstream society does not distinguish between the word “feelings” and the word “emotions” very often carefully or correctly.
However, in trying to be clear about this, we need to distinguish these two words “feelings” and “emotions” to be and mean exactly what they are. Quoting myself, above,
“All emotions are the result of refusing to feel our feelings.” This contradicts entirely a mainstream idea that feelings are emotional sensitivity. Feelings are not sensitivity to emotions. Emotions are a reaction to feelings. The direction of effect is reverse. Feelings come first.
Feelings are that which is real. Emoting may follow feelings, as a reaction to the feelings. Dramatic actions in response to the real. The feelings are real and our “No” to them creates emotional reactions which are not you, not your feelings, not real. We experience feelings, we create emotions. The emotional life is an illusion. The experiential life is real life. Feeling your feelings, not hiding or burying them is living in truth. If you’ve been longing for your real true self, start pausing, turning inward and feeling – - no matter what you find.
(I’ll be giving some tips shortly to prevent overwhelm and promote safe feelings, but meanwhile, COMMIT to being your real experience. Commit now!
Anger is SUFFERING and nothing healthy.
The YES Solution
|
Resisting life is killing us. It’s killing our future, it’s killing our present moment, it’s got us talking on cell phones and it’s burying the hole deep inside, deeper and deeper. It’s time to wake up and welcome life. Money, ego, attention, possessions, winning, whining, complaining, controlling are all leading us around by the nose as we keep trying harder and harder and getting less and less. Or more commonly for self-aware people, we’re seeing more and more “issues” than we’ve managed to handle. If we don’t learn a new way of welcoming life wholeheartedly now, then we probably won’t do it later. |
I have found that within the core of every helpful thing, such as therapy or meditation, is what I call a YES – a welcoming, an admission of the truth of things as they are, an attitude of optimism, a refusal to resist. They all come around to saying YES to life.
Without going into it deeply here, we each know of areas of our life which are not satisfying, which may not be changing, where we’re living our life in half-measures or with too many compromises. We may have invested a lot in personal change, or we may stay away from “self-help” as so limiting in function we don’t want to bother with it. Some of us have done so well we see immense failure beckoning because the goal has gotten so big. Self-judgment reigns when we accurately see how little we’ve covered so far, when we thought we were living grand. Without faith, there is a sense, or at least a fear, of incompleteness – and faith doesn’t go very far these days.
The solution is an affirmative life, which can be created with decisively wecomely living, deliberately focusing on being YES to life continually. Being a YES to life in all it’s manifestations, YES to everything that happens, YES to everything you feel. And, yes, even YES to all the NOs that come along.
| YES is a core answer that needs no doctrine, requires no work, but offers all the changes you wish, for free, and in ease. YES will give you a new lease on everything you are doing. YES will initiate you into experiencing life brighter, clearer, more colorful and loving. YES will carry your load. YES will heal. YES will give you the alternatives you’ve already wished you could find to the resisting unhappy life you’ve been experiencing. YES is a core answer that needs no doctrine, requires no work, but offers all the changes you wish, for free, and in ease. YES IS life. |
Everything you’ve learned consciously or unconsciously, everything people drummed into you when you were young, these are all part of the conditioning you live day to day as you live your life usually on automatic. Conditionings get you so far, they help you survive and get a car and cell phone without having to really struggle with fundamental questions such as who you are. But they hinder, not help, when you start to look at what lies beneath your surface life. They replace being in doubt and so when you do question again it’s hard to see past the conditioning that pops up. This book, _The_Power_Of_YES_, will help unravel your conditioned life and then assemble a new conscious deliberate life in it’s place by using the most powerful tool in human consciousness, YES.
Re-awakening, re-surfacing, and re-creating, all happen in the bright light of YES. Intuitive knowing, unhesitating certainty in “No thanks,” all become do-able whey you choose YES first before all else. Compulsive desires, unconscious unhappiness, yearning to be whole, fixing undesirable conditioning, all these can be addressed along with self-help, therapy and exploration of consciousness. Even practical things like money, ego, attention, possessions, winning, whining, complaining, controlling, start to make sense. YES comes in when you realize that what you have been doing hasn’t worked. Very little of standard cultural wisdom works for the true longing to be free. Most of it teaches you, at best, ways to delude yourself that you are Well Adjusted. That’s not enough.
What’s needed is an over-whelming power of your source, where YOU come from, who you really are. You can access all of you, all your power of creativity and inner wisdom with learning to pause and focus with YES.
Most self-help or gurus or churches or teachers essentially build up your ego with more conditioning, belief systems and New Age counterparts, get you feeling good about yourself – even unto people feeling proud of being “ego-free!” Even the best intentions can get sucked into looking for prestige, awakening, enlightenment. As great as these can be, EVERYTHING can be eased and increased by a free and easy attitude of YES, which makes honesty easy, the truth revealed and change happen. Welcoming life will satisfy your itch to find yourself if you’re not resisting what you find, but instead have familiarity with the ease of YES.
The mind can’t say YES, but you can. Roles and pretend won’t find the truth but sincere inner YES will. Ego isn’t a problem when you don’t leave it room with resistance and NOs, but instead welcome all life. When you are YES to others, separation goes away – - it just stops happening.
YES reveals the radiance of who you really are.
Gently we’ll become available to new paths. Pressure and time slows and it becomes very easy to say YES to the present moment. It doesn’t take long before deep truths are revealed when you become comfortable with YES. All you’ve been taught can take an easy review. YES really truly gives people a new start, and a new fresh look, at their lives. And perhaps best of all, YES doesn’t take a lot of work or effort – - it IS the tool that works.
This book will teach how to apply the willingness of YES with an easy integration. You’ll see how YES applies to all the other things you already do or have been hoping to do. You’ll see that anything is possible when your efforts are not based on resistance or hiding things from yourselves or others, all of which suck your creative energy. If what you’ve doing almost works, YES will probably give you the power to continue, succeed and complete.
Drop any cynicism and read on and see how YES works for you. Don’t accept that old belief that nothing in the end works, it’s just a tease. With the power of YES and understanding conscious awakening, things will really move, resolve and integrate for you.
Conscious self-awareness is far more accessible than in the past, and you’ll find living YES really enhances your movement and beingness. Conscious living has become actually commonplace, not that unusual.
So that’s the basics, this works. It’s really powerful and it’s entirely up to you – - not as a big great effort, but as simply deciding to live this way. Read on and see if you don’t see how this works and why it’s the coolest thing available. It’s free, you already know how to do it, now you just need the details and commonplace practical ways of application.
As you’ll see, it’s people like you who change and really look forward into life. No far-out-teachers needed, just maybe joining some like-minded friends to share with. Dependency? Little of that here!
So if you think maybe you’re a seeker, if you’ve had a built-in longing, if you’ve been hurting in a heart-felt way and long for healing, read on. YES to reading on. Many things are do-able and they’re ten times more do-able when you’re YES. It’s not hard or impossible, nor a mystery. The rest of this book is just the practical details. Really good details, but still just details. You’re already well on your way if you want to be. And if you’re hanging back, please give yourself a break. YES is so obviously better than a life of resisting, a life of NO.
