A lot more free

 I’m a little bit hurt but a lot more free.

I ain’t saying that you never took a toll on me.

For what it’s worth, I can finally see

that I am a little bit hurt but a lot more free.

(Max McNown, A lot more free)

I let those who feel that they can create Heaven on earth speak for themselves. I am certainly rooting for you! My personal observation has been that besides enjoying the pleasures of the blue planet that we are privileged to experience, earth is a playground that encourages and allows us to break free from the “me-energy”.

I am 60 now and have much deeper insights about myself than when I was 50 or 40. As just one example, when you are 20, you run head over heels to the wonderful woman you meet. These days you are walking. Not because you can’t run anymore but because you know what it takes to make a relationship work. The good comes with the bad in every aspect of our life.

Maybe we can free ourselves from some professional compulsions or material desires, but we always will feel the good, the bad and the ugly that life confronts us with. The Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller said in one episode, “Being a parent is watching your heart walk outside of your body forever.” That’s true. If you are a parent, you will never be completely free.

The psychologist E. Graham Howe said in “The Druid of Harley Street” that for everyone of us when we die there is a standing ovation up there in the Heavens. That’s a nice conjecture. Everyone who lives tastes the pleasures of the blue planet while doing their thing to break a little bit more free from the compulsions that come with it. 

Heart-centered living

 A man drove on the highway when a message appeared on the radio, “attention, attention, on the A 9 a driver is headed in the wrong direction. Please reduce your speed and watch out for incoming traffic!” The man looked up and screamed in frustration, “what do you mean one, there are dozens, dozens of them!”

How do we know what we see and feel is what is real and not a figment of our conditioned mind? A friend said the other day that she is beyond politics and I said to her, “You don’t have an equanimous mind, you are indifferent. That’s different!” Who gave me the authority to say that? Was I perhaps headed in the wrong direction?

I cannot tell you how enlightened folks perceive the world but I can tell you a thing or two about mind games. I experience them daily. The mind needs control and is happy to override feelings in order to get it. Our mind’s notion of enlightenment is that we will never experience suffering again. What a lovely concept that is!

A measure of spiritual advancement is our ability to face what is with an open heart. We experience the trigger life confronts us with, take the full force of the impact, and let it run through our system without putting up any resistance. After the initial hit there are some ripple effects, but the amplitude of the hit is fading. Our conditioned mind doesn’t jump on it!

I have experienced a change over the last year. I discovered the feat of heart-centered living. It is as if there is an entirely different energy system emanating from the heart region. We can literally feel how the system jumps from mind to heart-centered living. The heart doesn’t protect us from pain but it burns conditioned reaction functions like a furnace.

We feel life’s ups and downs—the good, bad and ugly—perhaps stronger than anyone but our conditioned reaction functions are unable to build on the initial hit to the system. Conditioning burns in the presence of universal love and we stay with life as it is, and not as we want it to be or fear it to be. Give heart-centered living a shot. Life is different when the heart rules.

The drift of a conditioned mind

 When the spiritual philosopher J. Krishnamurti stayed in India, a monk insisted that he needed to see him. He had walked for many days and wanted to ask him how he could become enlightened. 

Krishnaji smiled and he said, “You are trying to find an answer, aren’t you, sir? You are trying to find a solution.” He said, “I would rather change this process and merely look at what you are trying to do with yourself. Look at what thought is trying to do to itself. “ So he said that thought is trying to persuade itself and pressurize itself to stop its operations, because it wants to get something out of it, and this is something which thought can’t do.

The monk went into a deep state of meditation, and after a while his eyes opened and with tears in his eyes, he said that he got it. He thanked J. Krishnamurti profusely and wanted to leave but the sage invited him to stay a little longer and talk with him. After a while the monk asked, “What do I do if this blissful state leaves again?” 

Krishnaji said, “This is just the question that I knew you were going to ask me.” He said, “But who is it that asks the question? The mind that is silent is asking this question, or the mind that was not able to get silent and worrying over it that is asking the question?”

Again, the monk fell into a state of deep contemplation and once again tears were streaming down his face after some time. “I got it now,” the monk said smilingly, “this is the last time you will hear from me” and left.

I love the monk’s break-through experience. It shows that thinking is more than an aberration interrupting our inner peace. The conditioned mind has a drift that purposefully takes us away from the inner stillness that aligns with being. In the monk’s case it was the quest for enlightenment that was the interference but once the game was recognized, inner stillness and being became the default state. Maybe we have to look through this game more than once just as the monk had to, but that’s ok, at least we get our arms around the drift of a conditioned mind.

#jkrishnamurti #spirituality #silence #being

Catching the drift

 “When I am married to her, I shall be happy.” “When we have kids, we will be happy.” “When I get this promotion, etc.” These are some belief sets we are consciously aware off. There are others we don’t even know about.

Spiritual seekers may no longer imagine their happiness come with material things but they too have belief systems. “I shall be enlightened one day. That’s when the suffering will come to an end.” We are striving towards something.

Thoughts, feelings and actions may always be a bit uncomfortable from time to time. That’s not the problem. The problem—as much as the opportunity—is to spot this belief set and look through it. We can be mindful of our “drift.”

Stillness and love is not something to work for. It’s what we have when we spot the “mental drift” telling us stories that just ain’t so. Spot the rising thought-feeling-event energy and stay with it until you find its root cause.

Self-imposed interferences come and go, but who is looking for love and peace when the obstacle to our inner peace appears? It’s the same institution that caused the interruption and that’s why we can never break free.

Who is enjoying this moment right now? Who is scheming to get something? Who is fearing that we don’t get what we want? “The drift” can be spotted in our thoughts, feelings, actions and how the environment interacts with us. 

Catch the drift here and now and look through it and the quest is over.

Look for what’s real!

 Someone who walks in a desert for the first time is bound to run to the lake on the horizon not realizing it is a Fata Morgana.

Someone who steps on a rope in the dark in Arizona and it moves is likely to jump aside fearing it to be a snake.

What we call ego is a similar aperation—the lure of money as a precursor of happiness is one example.

How to get a pure vision and heart? A spiritual quest starts when we get tired of the tricks we play.

Spot the game, reaching for the pleasurable and avoiding the painful and see what’s real.

Enjoy the honey but mind the bee sting

 I met a man who was really impressive. You could feel in his energy that he had something special going. He told me that he once was a hardcore spiritual seeker who had burnt out one day. At a time when he was going through a divorce as well he wanted to end his life. It never came to that. One day when he spent time with his family he fainted and woke up a changed man.

I almost fell off my chair when he told me that story. All his spiritual messages are about the power of the now. He didn’t claim the power of now as it turned out, the power of now found him. Why should it be any different for his followers? That’s the frustration of a teacher who wants to help the followers to reach a breakthrough. He has a good message though, enjoy the honey!

We all own the power of now. No teacher is required to see the magic of the now. Where we need help is with the self-imposed interferences that cut us off the higher vibrations. That’s why I promote Suzhen Liu’s work who teaches mindfulness, letting go and family energy workshops. We can only see what is in front of us. My friend couldn’t until his interference cleared out. 

Taste the honey and enjoy but mind the bee stings would be the proper simile in this case. The spiritual teachers who tell you “you are That” abound. There is nothing wrong with their message but don’t forget to do the inner work to claim your heritage.

Returning to our original mind

 When you have the spiritual awakening, it is like seeing the funniest joke ever played. It appears that you are at a costume party and everyone is role playing the character they dressed up as. Except their costume is the personality made up of all their beliefs about what they are, should be, shouldn’t be, should do and shouldn’t do. Their personality mask is a big set of agreements about themselves.

Ramesh Balsekar

I started noticing this shift in 2025, but with the big energies that are flowing through us these days it has become more pronounced: there is a conscious shift at our disposal from the mind centered way of experiencing life to a heart centered one. One day it felt like I was breathing through my heart, for the lack of a better description. It is as if the energy system originates from the heart instead. As we shift to this energy circuit, the mind becomes vibrant but still.

I coined the acronym S (ilence) E (nergy) L (ove) F (low) in my last book Breaking Free and it describes the phenomenon of heart-centered living quite well. The mind quietens as the energy expands through the heart center and the inner peace becomes the outer power of merging with the external flow. We are part of life as is, and we perceive the love embedded in the Oneness of life, or notice the misplaced and illusionary striving for it. 

How exactly can we accomplish this feat of returning to our original mind, away from the modern mind that attempts to control the flow of life? I can only share the methodology that I have practiced in recent years—mindfulness! Observe the thought-feeling energy as it arises and stay with it. See how it interacts with life events and observe everything that comes your way with an equanimous mindset. Modern mind is the interference; original mind simply is.