Experience your feet.

Actually feel the experience of having feet

Take a moment to know your feet.

Now think about what you know about feet.

There is a profound difference between knowing and knowing about.

Knowing is direct. It is experiential.

Knowing is the taste of coffee, the warmth of sunlight on your skin, the tightness in your chest before a difficult conversation. It requires no explanation - it is happening now.

Knowing about is different. It is conceptual. It lives in thoughts, books, memories, and descriptions. It can be incredibly useful, but it is always removed from experience itself.

You can know everything there is to know about World War II. You could read every history book ever written, memorize every battle, and recite every date. Yet you would never know World War II in the same way as someone who experienced it.

You can know all about making pizza. You can explain the chemistry of yeast, trace the origin of every ingredient, and debate the merits of wood-fired ovens. But until you experience it, you do not know pizza.

This distinction matters because most of us try to understand life or who we are through knowing about.

We collect psychological theories. We read self-help books. We memorize spiritual teachings. We become experts on theories about emotions, mindfulness, thought or consciousness. We know the language. We can explain the concepts.

Yet we may never recognize the difference between what we believe we know about life from the experience that is here.

This points to another step even farther removed from reality: belief.

Belief doesn't even require knowing about. A person can believe something simply because they were told it was true. Belief requires no evidence and no experience at all. Belief is often inherited, borrowed, or assumed.

So we might think of it this way:

Knowing is direct experience.

Knowing about is conceptual understanding.

Believing is adopting an idea that does not require either experience or understanding.

Wait, beware - even in this article lies a trap.

We cannot communicate what we know with words.

Thought and language turns knowing into knowing about.

It is possible to know and talk about the difference between knowing and knowing about without ever actually experiencing the difference.

You can read this article, nod your head, and think, Yes, I understand.

But that understanding is still conceptual.

This is why it makes no sense to take these words for it.

The only way to know the distinction is to experience it.

Right now, notice the sensation of your feet touching the floor.

That is knowing.

Now think about feet.

That is knowing about.

The difference is immediate and unmistakable.

Every investigation into the truth of experience begins and ends here. Not with better concepts, but with clearer experience. Not with more knowledge about, but with simple, honest knowing.

We have come to trust knowing about more than we trust what is known here and now.

And the result is suffering.

Why? Because we get lost in our beliefs about what is happening and what should be happening.

We lose touch with the experience that is actually happening.

Our life becomes an exercise in avoiding discomfort without ever knowing it - and pursuing pleasure that we will not actually experience when it arrives.

The the experience of conscious existence becomes overshadowed by our beliefs about it.

“ The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Here. Now.

We do not have to wait until everything is the way we believe it should be.

When you know anxiety or fear or sadness rather than being attached to what you know about them, you can discover profound peace and freedom.

Play with the difference between knowing and knowing about and see what you discover.

I went to school for a total of 20 years.

But my greatest education was not in any classroom.

The most powerful lessons I have learned come from anxiety.

Not because it is a “gift” (at least not any more than any other human feeling.)

It is just happens to be the feeling that I chose to organize my life around.

More accurately, I organized my life around avoiding it.

I felt it early - long before I had a name for it. It ranged from a mild, uneasy sense that something was wrong or that something unwanted was about to happen, all the way to full-blown panic or paralysis.

It was a pretty intense sensation of emptiness in my chest and stomach accompanied by fullness in my throat.

I was given a front row seat to a lifelong presentation of anxious feelings.

I don’t know if it is in my genes or from my environment. Most likely both.

My parents coping mechanisms for their anxiety created a lot of emotional chaos - family life was punctuated by alcoholic rage that was an exclamation mark on a regular pattern of built up expectations ending in aborted plans followed by long periods of brooding silence.

I can remember sitting anxiously at the window watching for the lights of cars coming up our country road, hoping that everyone would get home safely - my mind spinning with fears of car accidents or arrests due to driving under the influence.

I struggled mightily as I got older. I read every room vigilantly, trying to figure out who to be in order to avoid criticism or gain approval. My efforts to sidestep, numb, or suppress uncomfortable feelings caused pain ‘for anyone who chose to be in a relationship with me while undermining my physical health and emotional growth.

As a coach, clients come to me for many different reasons, but the foundation for most of their struggles is an effort to escape the discomfort of anxiety:

I am not enough.

I am not worthy.

I have failed.

I am too much.

I cannot handle what I imagine is going to happen.

I have to get my sh*t together and I don’t know how.

Procrastination, overreaction, lack of confidence, arrogance, compulsive behavior, addiction, detachment, and the constant search for approval or meaning can all be attempts to avoid the discomfort of anxiety.

Even the drive to achieve or accomplish can be fueled by the search for a way to hush a background hum of anxious thought.

We may believe we are trying to solve a problem, improve ourselves, be happy, or get our lives under control. But often, we are simply trying not to feel what is already here or what we imagine is coming.

A common piece of advice is to “feel your feelings.”

This may be helpful…

But “feel your feelings” can become another strategy for getting rid of them:

If I let myself feel this, maybe it will go away.

If I stay with it long enough, perhaps I can get through it.

If I process it correctly, I will finally be rid of it.

The feeling is still being treated as a problem. We are still waiting for it to leave.

Most of us were not taught how to simply experience a feeling.

We know how to think about a feeling. We might know how to explain it, analyze it, resist it, blame it on someone, predict where it will lead, or search for a way to make it stop.

But actually experiencing a feeling is different.

It is the difference between experiencing a Luna moth on the side of a building and thinking about a Luna moth on the side of a building.

To experience anxiety is to know the sensations as they are. While you can experience that there is a story of what the sensations mean, you do not have to believe it.

A tightness in the chest.

A fullness in the throat.

A trembling in the hands.

Heat in the face.

A restless movement in the stomach.

These sensations may be uncomfortable, but without the story, they are not a threat.

“Something is wrong.”

“I can’t handle this.”

“This should not be happening.”

“That should be happening.”

“What if it gets worse?”

“Why is this happening to me?”

What I was never told in school - or anywhere else - is that it is well within our human ability to recognize the difference between experiencing a feeling and thinking about a feeling.

That difference is freedom.

Not freedom from anxiety.

Freedom from the need to escape it.

When we see that we are free to experience any feeling, we can begin to investigate its true nature. We can meet it with curiosity instead of resistance. We can look directly rather than relying on what we have been taught or what we believe.

What is anxiety when it is experienced without explanation?

Where is the danger in the sensations themselves?

What happens when nothing is added and nothing is pushed away?

We may discover that a feeling does not prevent openness.

It does not prevent curiosity.

It does not prevent peace.

Anxiety can be present without becoming an emergency. Discomfort can be experienced without becoming a problem. An unwanted feeling can arise without requiring escape, control, or self-improvement.

We can be curious, open, and peaceful even in the presence of what we would rather not have.

This is really good news.

_____________________________________________________________________

I am Dave. I help people discover the peace and freedom of being a human who experiences feelings. This discovery allows deeper relationships and presence as well as healthy productivity and peaceful joy.

If you are tired of running from, or wrestling with, emotional discomfort, I would love to show you another way.

You can email me at dave@unstruggling.com or set up at time to talk at https://calendly.com/unstruggling/discovery

I woke up with an itchy forearm. The morning has been spent experiencing this.

Here is a description of what seems to be.

I find an experience that includes thoughts and sensations that appear to be about the experience.

Looking at the thoughts and sensations, they appear to be part of the experience that they seem to be about.

When I look for where or what this experience is coming from - a source, creator, or origin - I only find the experience.

I find the sense that there is a “me” looking at the experience - an experiencer.

When I look for what is experiencing this experience - an experiencer - I only find the experience.

When I look for what this is and what is experiencing it, the apparent “thingness” of life gets more transparent and less easily pinned down.

There seems to be one seamless experience that contains names for parts of it and thoughts and feelings about it and a sense that there is more of it somewhere and a sense that there is a separate “me” that it is happening to.

To be clear, I cannot find the “more of it” or the “me.” I can’t even find the sense of these things. I only find the experience of the sense that these things exist.

As someone whose life once seemed paralyzed by anxiety, the process of investigating it directly has been very helpful.

When you are feeling anxious, you might try this:

Instead of asking “What is wrong?” or “What is this anxiety about?”, you can ask “What is this anxiety?”

And you can ask “What is experiencing anxiety?”

“What is this?”

“What is experiencing this?”

When you ask these questions and look for the answer - in experience rather than thought - you may find that anxiety is not at all what you think it is.

P.S. These questions can be asked of any experience - anger, fear, sadness, annoyance, overwhelm, stress…

We buy a book, listen to a podcast, or read our favorite Substack writer.

We nod in agreement. We highlight passages. We think about them. We try to understand.

Then we buy another book, listen to another podcast, and read another article.

We collect philosophies, strategies, and beliefs. We trade one set of ideas for another. We become experts in thinking about life.

Meanwhile, life waits patiently.

The warmth of coffee in a mug.
The sound of rain on the roof.
The tightness in the chest we are trying to escape.
The laughter of a friend.
The ache of loss.
The simple fact of being here.

No book can experience these things for you.

No philosophy can taste your breakfast, feel your sadness, or hear the birds outside your window.

Knowledge has its place. Good teachers can point the way. But eventually there comes a moment when another explanation is not what is needed.

What is needed is to look - to experience without a story.

To stop collecting descriptions of life long enough to experience life itself.

To notice what is here before thought explains it, judges it, or compares it to what should be.

The truth of life is not hidden in the next book.

It is waiting in the experience you are having right now.

Life is always waiting patiently for us to experience the truth of it.

There seems to be a theme in many conversations I have been having with people related to nonduality.

“I understand it, but I just can’t seem to get it.”

Many people (including me) have written here about the true nature of reality - one, whole, boundless, inseparable from consciousness - sometimes with an air of authority or certainty, and often with a disclaimer that these are just pointers.

I offer my apologies for the times I have done this.

When I look at the experience I am calling mine, I do not find nonduality.

Oneness, wholeness, boundless - these arise as ideas, not facts.

To claim that I know anything about reality that can be packaged into a concept is to be play fast and loose with what is found.

While it may be comforting to present or read a neat little phrase about how things “really are,” the truth is I don’t know.

Ever come across something like this - “Babies and puppies are just in the moment.”

It is a nice sentiment, but, how exactly, does the author of a statement such as this know this to be true? Does awakening comes with the bonus of telepathy?

Saying that I cannot find boundaries between then and now or here and there does not mean that these boundaries do not exist. It means that I cannot find what has been believed or what shows up in the contents of thought.

And that happens A LOT when I look.

This is what is so fascinating to me - outside of belief, I cannot find most (all?) of what I believe exists.

And experiencing that often leads to relief, joy, and awe.

But that does not mean that these things do not exist.

Not finding my car keys does not mean that they are not in the house.

I am free to keep looking and I am free to give up looking and declare that the keys are forever lost.

But, the whereabouts of the keys is simply unknown.

Like Schrodinger’s cat - the whole point is that we cannot know if there is a cat in the box without looking.

As far as I can tell, it is not the belief in duality or nonduality that causes any suffering - it is the attachment to any belief that creates certainty and closes down the openness of just looking.

When you look directly, you may not find an “I” as an object in experience. You might find sensations, sounds, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and the knowing of them. But I have not yet located the separate entity that is supposedly having all of this.

And yet, language still works.

It makes practical sense to say:

• I am going to the store.

• I had coffee this morning.

• I enjoy walking in the woods.

The question is not whether the word I is useful. The question is whether the word refers to what we assume it refers to.

We do the same thing with other useful concepts. We talk about the sunrise even though we know the sun is not literally rising. The phrase works. It points to something in experience. It just can’t convey the experience itself.

“I” functions well as a pointer to a sense of self - even if it cannot point to an actual self.

There is appears to be experience happening. Memory. Personality. Preferences. There is a body that others recognize and call by name. There is a continuity that allows a conversation to continue from yesterday to today.

But when you look for the owner of all of that, the separate controller standing behind experience, the direct evidence seems elusive.

So the practical use of “I” need not be abandoned. But it can be held more lightly.

If I am reporting the experience here as honestly as I know how:

The word “I” is useful for communication, but when I look closely, I cannot find the thing I feel that it refers to.

This neither insists that a separate self unquestionably exists or not. Nor does it suggest that ordinary language must be discarded.

It is experienced that thoughts, sensations, and perceptions are appearing.

It is believed that there is a separate entity producing, owning, and controlling them.

Whether that belief is true can only be discovered in experience - until then, it seems to be an open question.

And there is something strangely freeing about allowing it to remain open. Not replacing one belief (”there is definitely a self”) with another (”there is definitely no self”), but simply admitting:

I have not found one. And the word remains useful.

Many years ago, I was on a meditation retreat when the teacher asked us to pair up and share with each other what Zen was.

One person was to speak while the other person just listened.

I was paired with the teacher. Ugh.

I wanted to get it right. I took great pride in being able to put complex ideas into words.

So, I gave my carefully thought out answer about the nature of Zen while the teacher listened.

After a period of time, we were instructed to switch roles.

The teacher just looked at me and smiled for the entire time.

My reaction?

Disappointment (I wanted the answer!) and judgement (why was she being so cheeky? Just give me the answer! I have travelled a long way and spent a lot of money to get here!)

I was deep in the belief that there was an answer/philosophy/perspective that would release me from the weight and anxiety of life.

Zen, true nature, truth, the way - call it whatever you want - it seemed like it might be a way out.

Having grown up in a world steeped in the ideas of progress, improvement, excellence, and perfection, I felt it was my duty to figure this all out and get it right.

Having internalized the hope of happily-ever-after, I was determined to meditate as hard and long as necessary to cross the threshold into Nirvana.

So…yeah.

That seems like a lifetime ago.

I still talk and write about the experience I call life.

I still meditate everyday.

Feelings and thoughts arise - some I like and some I don’t - some seem to be important and some don’t. All of them pass.

I still don’t know what Zen is.

Whatever all of this is, capturing it in language feels like a task well above my pay grade.

But experiencing it happens without having to say a word.

People have lives.

There is a mortgage or rent to pay, a child to raise, a promotion to get, chronic stress, pain or anxiety to be dealt with, dinner to be cooked, dreams to be realized, cars to repair, or family dysfunction to be navigated…

The search for enlightenment, consciousness, awakening (call if whatever you want) is mostly framed in spiritual terms - there is not a lot of talk about the practicality of living a life while you are seeking to be free of it all.

Full disclosure, I have never known what spiritual means. It seems to be a catch-all for everything that is not seen or understood.

If we are talking about spiritual practices, are we supposed to leave the cost of diapers and the challenge of migraines at the door? Should we not worry about a source of income? It seems that such mundane concerns are to be transcended.

Are we supposed to treat a tense moment with our partner as a projection that has no real substance?

Despite the “it’s all an illusion” rhetoric, it seems that there are unwritten rules to this spiritual stuff: Give up hope of any result and acknowledge that you are nothing (or everything) and that all the stuff you are experiencing is a product of a conditioned mind. Easy.

Or…you can look at your life - this life that is happening right now - and see what happens.

Here’s what has happened in this life since I began looking at the this experience as simply and honestly as I know how.

I laugh more and yell less.

I listen more and lecture less.

I cry more without being embarrassed.

I follow through more and avoid less.

I let go of resentment more and fuel it less.

I experience anxiety as a soup of physically uncomfortable sensations with a story attached and I go on with my day.

Will all of this happen to you if you look? Maybe. I don’t know.

We look to others for answers to our questions: What is enlightenment? Am I enlightened? Am I close? Am I on the right path?

I used to be obsessed with these questions and the answers that are offered.

I used to spend a lot of time engaged in careful wordsmithing (without personal pronouns and without any evidence) about how we are all already enlightened and we just don’t realize it.

The real answer? I don’t know and, increasingly, I don’t care.

Looking at life - just looking - seems to be a helpful tool for sorting out what is being experienced directly and what is believed about that experience.

“But there is no one to do the looking,” I hear folks say. Okay. That’s fine.

Maybe just a little break to look - rather than thinking about it incessantly. Maybe just a tiny moment to loosen the infatuation with how this incomprehensible miracle differs from the fantasy of how it should be.

I am not saying that this is all there is. (I have said it many time, but that is not what I am saying here. I am saying that when I look, it seems that this is all there is. The mess, the miracle, the thoughts, the feelings, the desires, the unwanted, the cats and dogs, the early morning alarm and the leak in the faucet.

What do you see when you just look?

I am Dave.

I help people look at the truth of their experience.

If you are curious, please reach out.

You can email me at dave@unstruggling.com

Or you can schedule a conversation (no fee, no pressure) here: https://calendly.com/unstruggling/discovery

Many years ago I was coaching a young man who was feeling intensely stuck.*

He was adopted, and he had struggled to understand why his parents would have given him up.

He told me his adoptive parents and siblings were loving and thoughtful. He felt very fortunate to have landed in this family.

In looking at his experience, he became aware of something he had overlooked. He realized that whenever he was sad or angry, his parents would ask him “What’s wrong?”

This was a sincere effort to support, but he heard it as “there is something wrong with you for feeling this way.”

He tried hard to pretend he was always happy and to hide any feeling that might be seen as wrong. “Nothing” was his go to answer. He would smile and then go to his room and cry.

His story became “My real parents gave me up because there is something wrong with me.”

The thing he feared the most was that his adoptive family would realize that he was fundamentally flawed and give him up too.

When we met, he was tying himself in knots trying to only have the “right” feelings.

He was searching for strategies to “be happy.”

We began by pulling apart looking and believing. We used simple objects he could hold in his hand - such as a stone or a cup. He began to see that experiencing something directly (looking) was not the same as thinking about something (believing).

Next, he experimented with looking at his feelings without doing anything about them. Just looking.

He found that his feelings were “feelable” (his word).

He told his parents how he was feeling and the stories he had been holding onto.

He asked them to consider asking “What’s up?” or “What’s going on?” when they sensed he was “in the feels.”

At first, his parents were crestfallen. They apologized over and over. His response? “It’s okay, you can just feel those feelings.”

Yesterday I received a note from him. He is in a graduate program for social work. He wants to work with adoptive families and help them look at the complicated feelings that are part of the process.

To see clearly, it is most helpful to just look.

*this story is shared with the young man’s permission.

I am Dave.

I help people find peace by looking at their experience directly.

If you are curious, send me a message. You can email me at dave@unstruggling.com

You can also schedule a conversation here: https://calendly.com/unstruggling/discovery

If you looked and looked for something you believed in, and you did not find it, how long would you continue to believe in it?

This is not a rhetorical question.

At what point is it reasonable to assume that what you believe exists, does not?

How long do you look? A lifetime perhaps?

There are at least some people who believe in Bigfoot.

And there are at least a few people who are actively looking.

I just had a conversation with someone the other day about whether he beliewved there was a single Bigfoot or a species of Bigfoots.

More commonly, people often believe in a separate self.

Some people I know even talk about “taking time to find myself.”

Others talk about “knowing your true self” or “being true to yourself.”

So, when you look for this self, what do you find?

I am not talking about looking in a “spiritual” way with closed eyes and hushed voices.

I am talking about looking the same way you would look for your car keys.

So, for example, you might say that the body is the self - look at that. Is a corpse a self? If a bone is broken, is the self broken? Was their a self when you were only a few cells?

You might say that the self is in the body - look at that. Where, exactly, in this body do you live? If we could look inside, what would the self that lives in this body look like?

I am not being coy. It seems very reasonable that if you believe a self exists, you would have either found it or direct evidence of it.

In all of human history, has anyone found a self and then shown the rest of us where ours is?

If you can show me a self - mine, yours. or someone else’s - I would be thrilled to see it. Genuinely and deeply thrilled. How cool would that be?

For some, after all the looking, the conclusion they come to is that a self exists only as an idea.

What do you find when you look?

And - even more fun - who is looking?

I am Dave.

I help people look at their lives as simply as possible.

This can be done with humor and compassion.

Examining the truth of your experience reveals an always present antidote to stress, anxiety, overthinking, and overreacting. And looking this way can be fun and funny a lot of the time - it does not need to be a big heavy deal that we need to “work through.”

If you are curious, feel free to email me at Dave@unstruggling.com

Or use this link to schedule a time to chat - https://calendly.com/unstruggling/discovery

Let’s get the punchline out of the way:

My take on hope is that it can be a source of suffering.

As well as the thing with feathers. (Emily Dickinson anyone?)

I went through chemotherapy treatment for leukemia twice.

It was mostly super not-fun.

Hope was not what got me through.

What got me through were good doctors and learning to let thoughts and feelings just be.

I learned it while living in an isolation room waiting for people in white coats to figure out whether was going on inside my blood cells was going to kill me. Doubt, fear, anxiety, and overwhelm had a way of creeping into the experience.

There were lots of thoughts and feelings about all of it.

Looking at them as objects and events - rather than commands and threats - created a much needed respite from the struggle with how life was showing up.

But, wait, c’mon…“You have to have hope. Right?”

This is a familiar sentiment. Before we tackle that one, let’s look at why we love hope so much.

Why we love hope - reason #1

It can distract us from pain.

I get it. I really do. In a vacuum, I would choose comfort over discomfort every single time. Easy.

But, life has taught me that running from discomfort is basically the same as running from truth. Maybe it’s an aging thing, but I am increasingly interested in truth. I don’t think we need to go out and find discomfort, I think it is enough to face the stuff that finds you.

Why we love hope - reason #2

Hope seems like it works when it seems like it works.

When things work out the way we want them to, we celebrate the hope we held onto to.

When things don’t work out, we are left heartbroken. It all seemed so possible and so reasonable to wish for. What kind of caring God would let this happen? What did I do to deserve this? There are many questions and very few answers. There is often a feeling of betrayal.

The autopsy usually points to some unjust circumstance or some shameful shortcoming of ours (or our parents).

What we rarely ever examine is hope itself.

What the heck is hope based on - other than preferences and desires?

Why should the universe organize itself around my view of how it should behave? Doesn’t that seem a bit much to ask? Like, maybe just a little ungrateful for the invite to conscious existence?

Doesn’t it make just a tiny bit more sense that we might learn to let the universe lead this dance?

I mean, running the universe is big job. I don’t know the exact amount, but I have to assume that it would take a tremendous amount of hope to get the universe to be just the way you think it should be. Like, a lot.

And, if I were on an MMA card against the universe, who do you think is going to win? Every. Time.

Also, please just ignore the other 8 billion people who want the universe to be the want each of them wants it to be.

But, wait, c’mon…“You have to have hope. Right?”

This sentiment seems to assume that the alternatives to hope are apathy or despair.

I vote for another way. I vote for investigating experience directly. Honestly. Simply.

We can look right at what is happening in order to actually see it.

We can let the experience itself be the knowing.

I promise you this. If you look…if you just see what is here - even (especially) if it conflicts with what you believe to be true…

Then hope will no longer be necessary.

“There’s no such thing as an atom.”

I was told this by a physicist many years ago.

But, before I get into that, first my recent telemarketer adventure.

I want to be clear, this is not a criticism of telemarketers. It is a human condition thing.

Years ago, I went on a cruise.

Ever since, I get weekly phone calls marketing new travel opportunities. I have lost count of how many times I have asked to be removed from the call list.

So yesterday, after the familiar intro line, I said ”Please remove me from your call list.”

The caller responded “Why?”

“Because I don’t want to receive your calls anymore.”

“So, you are just going to leave all this money on the table? Why?”

“It doesn’t matter why, please remove me right from the list.”

“But I don’t understand. I want to know why.”

“Goodbye.”

Now, I could get all judgy about the telemarketer’s response. But my point is that we all want to know why. We call it different things - meaning, purpose, cause, mission…

People have made careers out of helping people “know your why.”

Aren’t we all searching for an explanation that will make sense of things? We even have a word for a void of explanation - belief. When we cannot explain, we fill that space with a belief. What we fail to see is that all of our explanations are beliefs.

Whenever we are referring to something we cannot experience directly, it is not knowing, it is believing.

Beliefs fill in the black box of the unknown where we believe the answer is hiding.

Someone raises an eyebrow when we are speaking and we believe we know what they are thinking. We don’t. Even if our belief is accurate, we don’t know.

So what? What is the problem with confusing believing and knowing. When we think we know, we stop being curious and open. We can feel defensive of what we know - we can be closed and reactive or distant.

Which brings me back to the atom.

“Atom” is a belief. It is a word that points to an explanation for a whole bunch of observations. It is an attempt to scratch the itch of “why?”

To paraphrase my physicist friend, “There is no actual little round thing with other little round things swirling around it. Atom is a conceptual model that explains many experiences, but no atom actually exists.”

Enter Adam and Eve.

I think this difference between lived experience and conceptual understanding was what the biblical creation story is pointing to. When we are given paradise, but instead of being living fully in it, we insist on understanding and controlling it - when we confuse our explanations of this miracle with the miracle of existence itself - we are removed from paradise. This search for a why creates the illusion of watching life from the outside. Separate.

Which, of course, begs the carrot question.

The carrot question is this: When does the carrot you are eating stop being a carrot and start being you? Where is the line? Is it when it is chewed? Swallowed? Digested? And when did the carrot start being a carrot and stop being sunlight? Or soil? Where are these lines between things that we all believe in?

Look around. Look at a flower, an ant, a cloud, your fingers…listen to birdsong and breathe in the air. What are the chances that any explanation for any of this captures the true nature of it?

True nature. Ugh. More spiritual jargon. Perhaps. But I am not pointing to anything mysterious at all. I am suggesting that it is the belief in a mysterious hidden explanation for all of this that gets in the way.

Instead of seeking a reason for all of this, we can recognize the not understood, unexplained, and unjudged experience that is here. Just here. Right now. Always.

I am Dave. I grew up in a chaotic family and struggle with anxiety, reactivity, and perfectionism for decades.

Now I help people find peace and contentment in the truth of their experience - no self-improvement necessary.

If you are curious, email me at dave@unstruggling.com and we can chat. Or, jump on this link and schedule a conversation - https://calendly.com/unstruggling/discovery

I was 25 when one of closest friends died from a brain tumor.

It was a decade until I cried for the loss.

I spent the first 30 years of my life hardening. Trying to be stronger, right, victorious…

There was the sense that I needed to win - approval, admiration, jobs, relationships…

It was important to me that I was seen as someone who knew what they were doing, who was good at it, and who should get credit for it.

I craved praise, but immediately doubted the sincerity of it.

Criticism stung and ached, but I clung to it and revisited it like the greatest truth.

When I started meditating, it was in the spirit of winning. I was determined to be the best darn meditator ever. I was going to kick anxiety, doubt, and every other unwanted experience to the curb.

Even therapy was a contest for a blue ribbon. Sometimes I practiced what I was going to say to convince my counselor that I was doing really really well. I wanted her to appreciate how insightful I was and how willing I was to see what I needed to work on.

In this mode, appearances were everything.

It was exhausting. I felt like two people - one who was struggling with just about every aspect of life, and one who was performing a life for others. Kind of how I imagine the life of a dancing circus bear.

Days felt like rollercoaster rides that continued long after they had stopped being fun. When I went to bed at night, I was not excited to wake up and do it all over again.

I felt trapped. Most moments were spent looking for, and dreaming about, better moments.

At 30 years old, completely and totally emotionally overwhelmed, I punched a concrete wall and broke my hand in several places.

When I woke up from reconstructive surgery, I gave up for the first time. It was unavoidably clear that my approach was not working. So I quit. Surrendered. Admitted I had no idea what I was doing.

I literally dropped to my knees and sobbed in desperation.

This was the beginning of softening.

I have spent the last 30 years of my life trading winning for opening, listening, observing, connecting, and sitting with.

It’s sometimes messy, but there is definitely much less drama. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is okay not trying to be the smartest or funniest guy in the room. Others’ victories can be celebrated rather than resented. Who knew?

Anxiety, sadness, restlessness and boredom still show up. That's just how things are when life occurs in a human body. But these feelings no longer seem like evidence of failure or of a flawed nature.

Perhaps most significant is the way tiny little boring everyday moments often present joy, awe, heartbreak, and gratitude for the plain ol’ incomprehensible miracle of conscious existence.

Now tears roll when I see my sons or partner after time apart, when I see a parent being kind to a child, when I see a stranger help another, when I hear about someone’s loss or victory, or when someone shares honestly about what they love or fear.

As I look at the state of world affairs, I see a familiar obsession with appearance, performance, and winning.

I see the suffering this causes on a grand scale as we collectively struggle to defeat demons that simply do not exist and perform for an audience of performers.

When I read the lasting wisdom of sages, I keep finding the same message:

Just look. There is no winning. There is simply this - an ever-present opportunity to love life just as it is.

I am Dave.

I help people who are tired of performing and are hungry to live life peacefull;y and joyfully.

I am certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, but I can help you look at your experience simply and honestly. The result is less reactivity, less spinning in your head, and more openness to the miracle of life.

If you are curious, you can email me at dave@unstruggling.com, or you can schedule a conversation at https://calendly.com/unstruggling/discovery

I used to think the problem was either the world “out there…”

Or the mind “in here.”

The former seemed unfair and the latter never shut off.

I was constantly rehearsing conversations, replaying mistakes, worrying about the future, trying to figure out how to finally feel okay. Even when “good” things were happening, there was this subtle tension underneath everything. A feeling that I needed to get somewhere else internally before I could really relax.

I was anxious. Reactive. Easily frustrated. I took things personally. I wanted approval. I wanted relief. I wanted to stop feeling like I was always running slightly behind my own life.

And honestly, I was exhausted.

What changed everything for me was surprisingly simple.

I started looking.

Not philosophically. Not spiritually. Just honestly.

When anxiety showed up, instead of immediately trying to escape it, solve it, justify it, or medicate it with distraction, I started asking:

What is actually happening right now?

Not the story about what might happen tomorrow.
Not the explanation.
Not the interpretation.

What is actually here?

I found sensations.
Tightness in the chest.
Heat in the face.
Pressure in the stomach.
Fast thoughts.
Images.
Mental noise.

But when I looked closely, I noticed something:

The suffering was coming less from the experience itself and more from the resistance to it.

I was fighting my own life all day long.

Fighting traffic.
Fighting uncertainty.
Fighting other people.
Fighting feelings.
Fighting myself.

No wonder I couldn’t rest.

The biggest shift in my life came from learning the difference between thinking about experience and directly knowing experience.

Thinking says:
“This is terrible.”
“This will never end.”
“They shouldn’t have said that.”
“I need to calm down.”
“What’s wrong with me?”

Direct knowing is much quieter.

It notices:
Tightness.
Sound.
Breathing.
Thoughts arising.
Sadness.
Warmth.
Pressure.
Life happening.

That simple shift changed everything for me.

Not because my mind became perfect.
Not because I became endlessly calm.
But because I stopped being completely hypnotized by every thought and emotion that passed through.

There is an enormous amount of peace available in simply admitting what is true right now.

Not what should be true.
Not what you hope is true.
Not what your mind says is true.

Just this.

This breath.
This feeling.
This moment.
This ordinary, messy, miraculous human experience.

You do not have to win your life in order to live peacefully.

You do not need to become a different person before you can rest.

You can start by simply looking.

My name is Dave.

I help people discover the peace and freedom that results from recognizing the truth of this experience.

I am not a guru or a guide. I am just a guy who struggled mightily and found a way to drop that struggle. The truth of experience is the guide.

This approach is supported by thousands of years of human wisdom from many traditions (as well as a lot of scientific studies).

If you are curious, please reach out.

email: dave@unstruggling.com

You can schedule a conversation here:

https://calendly.com/unstruggling/discovery-clone-1

There is only this one sacred, blessed, boundless, miraculous, incomprehensible, and unexplainable experience.

It is always happening right now.

You do not need to take my word for this, you know this with every fiber of awareness.
It is the most obvious and overlooked fact there is.

We are obsessed with what we think and believe is (or should be) happening. We ignore what cannot be expressed.

But, when we stop and look,

we find one experience. Only. Always. This.

We were not taught to see things this way.

We were taught to believe that this experience is something that is separate from us - something we can win.

We were taught that there is a right way to do it (ours).
A wrong way to do it (theirs).

We were taught that there are thoughts and feelings we should have…
and others we shouldn’t.

Just to be clear, this is not a conspiracy theory. I do not believe that there are masterminds who orchestrated any of this for the ignorant masses. It seems more like a widespread cultural delusion.

In other words, the people who taught us that life is a competition to be won or a problem to be solved had been taught this by others before them, and so on, back through time.

We were good students. We wanted to do it right.

So we started watching and listening.
We searched for clues about how to win.

And somewhere along the way, we learned to pretend that we understood…
while feeling fundamentally flawed because we really didn’t.

If this feels at all familiar, I offer this:

In this moment, you do not have to try to win.

In this moment, you can simply acknowledge the truth of this experience.

You can know it directly, without need of concepts or language.

There is nothing to fix or improve or catch up to.

You can live this moment in profound peace, just as it is.

This takes no effort at all.

When you stop trying to win…

You can admit that you do not know what is really going on….

and that its okay.

And you can experience the freedom of being.

Imagine that I came to you carrying a box.

And I told you that there was a duck in it.

“Can I see it?” you might ask.

When I open the box, you look inside and find nothing.

“Where is the duck?” you ask.

“It’s more of a feeling that there is a duck in the box. A belief I guess.”

“So, there is no duck.”

“Not that can be found, no. But someone told me that there is a duck in there and I have a strong sense that it is.”

“But, I don’t see a duck.”

“I guess you will just have to believe me.”

During a meeting with a client today we went looking for a duck in the box.

I will call her Lucy (the client, not the duck).

She offered this honest account of her experience: “I feel that there is a body in this room and that there is ‘a Lucy’ in this body.”

So, we went in search of “a Lucy” that is sensed in the body.

I want to be super clear - I am not saying that there is a self or there is not a self. Either of these statements is just a thought that can be believed without evidence.

I am saying that we can see if there is experience to support belief in a self.

Kind of like looking for Santa Claus.

Many of us believed wholeheartedly as children that a large man in a red suit flew a sleigh driven by reindeer all over the world in one night, crawled down chimneys that would barely accommodate a loaf of bread, and put presents under trees.

When I was 6, if someone had given me a polygraph test about whether Santa Claus was real, I would have passed with flying colors. The belief operated independently from experience of an actual Santa Claus. This also applied to Leprechauns, Easter Bunnies, Tooth Fairies, and monsters under the bed or in the closet.

Does it apply to the self? There is only one way to find out. Look.

A common response when people look - “so, the self is in the mind.”

Is this experience or another belief?

One way to find out is to look for the mind. Where is it? What does it look like?

When you find it, do me a favor - put it in the box with the duck and send it over.

There are many “things” that we believe exist - self, mind, past, future, here, there, us, them… Rather than believe that these exist, or argue about whether they do, you can look for them. Not the sense of them, the actual them.

Can you put any of these “things” in a box and show them to someone? Do they exist as things or as feelings, senses, or beliefs about them?

I sincerely invite you to see if there is a duck in the box or if there is just a sense that there is a duck in the box.

(This is a metaphor 😁. I have never actually put a duck in a box.)

“That’s enough. I can’t take it anymore.”

(Overheard in the grocery store.)

I have said similar things, and yet I have so many questions.

How much is enough?

What is “it?”

Why can’t any more of “it” be taken?

Where is “it” being taken from?

Where is “it” being taken to?

Thought and language are amazing.

And they are simply part of existence.

They cannot capture it.

And this is the challenge.

We have come to trust and believe in the things we can think and communicate.

Even though we cannot understand or explain the most ordinary of experiences.

Can you explain the smell of a daffodil? The taste of a raspberry? How you wiggle your toe? How you make a choice? Where a thought comes from? How you are reading this?

The stubborn insistence that life only counts when it fits concepts and language drives a relentless search for a definitive answer.

Meanwhile existence plays out in plain sight in every moment.

And we keep looking for something to think and talk about.

You are late for work.

The car in front of you is going the legal speed limit.

“What is your problem?,” you hiss to them from the privacy of your own car.

You forget to pick up milk for tomorrow’s coffee on the way home.

Your partner says it is fine, but you hear frustration in her voice.

“I’m trying my best,” you comfort/scold yourself silently from the privacy of your own head.

You wake up in the morning with a full feeling in your throat and a tight, heavy feeling in your chest and stomach.

“This sucks. Life would be so much better if I could get rid of this,” you mutter into the privacy of your toothbrush.

There is a simple difference most of us were never taught to recognize:

~ What is here now - what exists in present moment awareness - is known.

~ What is not here now - the stuff that exists in thoughts - is believed.

All life began by knowing. Simple, effortless, present-moment awareness.

Then along came thought. We were able to create and communicate our conceptual models and applied meanings. Past and future were born.

Over time, we began to believe and trust our thoughts more than our direct experience.

We began to fight, kill, and suffer over ideas, doctrines, and boundaries that only existed on paper.

We banished peace and wellbeing to the shouldiverse.

We have become so convinced that we can know what we believe that some people become angry at the suggestion that there is a difference.

Confusing knowing and believing is the primary source of human struggle, suffering, dissatisfaction, disconnection, and violence.

Recognizing the difference makes a difference.

Recognizing the difference opens the door to exploring the truth of what is happening and who we really are.

While thoughts are part of the human experience, believing them is not required.

Humans have the ability to believe:

~ thoughts for which we have no evidence.

~ thoughts that are not true.

~ in things that do not exist.

~ things that we do not or cannot know.

And we torture ourselves with all of this.

We tend to stick with what we believe, rather than explore what is known.

And we when what is happening is not aligned with what we believe should be happening…

Or, when we believe what is going to happen is not going to be aligned with what we believe should happen…

We stress and suffer with anxiety.

The irony is that we are knowing all the time. We just get confused by what we think about it.

So…you can try to stop thinking. (Good luck with that!)

Or…

You can recognize the difference between knowing and believing, and you can explore what is known.

The coolest part is that this does not take years of practice, specialized knowledge, fancy equipment, or…..belief.

It can be seen in an instant. Right now.

Try this:

Find an object near you that you can hold in your hand.

Hold it. Look at it. Smell it and listen to it if you want to.

This is knowing the object directly. Knowing happens in direct experience.

Now put the object down and turn away from it.

Think about the object. Where is it? What is it called? Where did it come from? How was it made?

All of this is belief. It cannot be confirmed outside of thought.

Go back and forth with the object and experience the difference between knowing and believing.

Now try the same experiment with this moment.

Do not focus on anything in particular.

Just allow open awareness to effortlessly take in what is happening right now.

Thoughts may arise - just let their presence be known without grabbing on to their content.

Now think about this moment. What does it mean? Should it be happening? Is it good or bad? What needs to be different?

And then back to knowing - the effortless, open awareness of what is.

And maybe you might experiment with trusting what you know.

If I had to inventory my experience, it might look something like this:

Experiencer - “Me” - the someone who experiences life

Experiencing - a process by which life is experienced.

All the stuff that is experienced - I group this into six big buckets.

1. Objects and Events. These seem to be “things” and “happenings” that have their own existence whether I am aware of them or not.

2. Sensations. These seem to be inside this body and seem to be related to objects and events that seem to be outside this body.

3. Thoughts. These seem to pop up and disappear like transparent silent sentences. Some of the content is names for things. Most of the content references a “me” whose experience is narrated and judged based on preferences and histories that these thoughts tell me are “mine.” Pronouns seem to be used very casually in thought. “I”, ”you”, and “me” get thrown around without any clarification of who is talking to whom.

4. Feelings. These seem like sensations that are flavored by the thoughts that show up with them. Some of these seem stickier than others depending on how unwanted they are.

5. Behaviors. These seem as though “I” am choosing and/or causing them. It also seems as though these choices and behaviors seem to influence or cause other things to happen.

6. Me. A self that is both experiencing things and being experienced. It seems like this self lives inside this body. It mostly seems to be in the chest and behind the eyes or forehead. Other parts of the body somehow seem to be part of the self and be property of the self at the same time.

(These categories are imperfect and overlapping. For example, a thought can seem like an event and/or an object. Thinking sometimes seems like a chosen behavior, but sometimes behaviors seem like they happen out of the blue - more like events than choices. Feelings sometimes seem connected to objects and events and sometimes seem to appear for no reason.)

Experiencer, experiencing, experience, sensations, objects, thoughts, feelings,. behaviors. Pretty standard stuff.

However, here’s the thing…

when I look as simply and honestly as I can…

not through the filter of what is expected or believed in…

I cannot find anything solid about any of these.

I only find a convincing perceived solidity based in belief.

Take a chair, if I look directly for the distinct, solid “chairness” of the experience, what I find are sensations of light, pressure, heat, texture and the thought “chair.”

But it doesn’t end there…

I cannot a find a single thing in awareness that has a name or meaning of its own built in.

I can only find names and meanings that seem to be assigned to them.

And don’t get me started on the boundaries I cannot find…

I cannot find any boundary that separates sensations, thoughts, objects, events, and behaviors from each other…

I cannot find any boundary between any of them and the experience of them.

I cannot find any boundary between the experience of them and who is experiencing them.

This lack of boundaries is obvious in awareness, but it is not what I was taught to believe.

So…

When what is happening right now is experienced in simple, effortless awareness:

~ It is whole, substanceless, and seamless.

~ It is inclusive of, but not limited to or disturbed by, any of the stuff that shows up in it.

None of this is a philosophy or a teaching.

It is an attempt report on “my” experience as directly as possible given the limitations of language to convey a direct experience.

None of what is written here matters.

All that matters is what is found when you just look.

What do you find when you look as simply and honestly as you can?

Not through thoughts or beliefs about what is happening - but from the direct and effortless knowing of this experience?

You probably already know all of this.

It is quite possible that you know exactly what I am writing about here.

In fact, it is quite possible that you have known this for as long as you can remember.

See if any of the following feel familiar:

~ Even though you have tried to believe what you were taught to believe, it has always felt like trying to wear a tight wet wool sweater against your skin.

~ Since you were young, you have felt a disconnect between what everyone was telling you about life and your own direct experience of life.

~ Sometimes it feels like you are the only one because, looking around, it seems like a lot of people appear certain of their ideas and opinions about what is going on and how life should be.

~ But you have questions - a lot of them.

~ When you are quiet, the certainty you try to present to others feels quite fragile and without foundation.

~ No amount of effort, achievement, praise, approval, wealth, self-improvement or acknowledgement silences the nagging whisper of unworthiness or lack of belonging.

~ Humming along in the background is the feeling of being a fraud, an outsider, or just a fundamentally flawed person.

~ And seeking truth in books, videos, and retreats sometimes provides distractive relief, but seems to ultimately add layers of complication rather than clarification.

~ You feel resigned to brief moments of pleasure separated by long stretches of anxiety, struggle and suffering.

~ Sometimes you wonder if thoughts about life might not be as trustworthy as life itself.

Life itself?

You already know it.

It is the life you experience that feels incredibly real and impossible to put into words.

It is the sound of crying, the feeling of fear, the taste of chocolate, the sensations of love and hate and boredom…

It is the life that is always happening, but that we never talk about. What we talk about is our thoughts about the past, the future, and whether what is happening right now should or shouldn’t be.

So, what happens next?

What happens when you just look at the experience that is happening right now?

What happens when you trust awareness of experience more than thoughts about it?

What happens when you see the truth that you have always known exists? Right here and now - in this moment - not after years of striving, seeking, and figuring it out?

What happens then?

Aren’t you curious?

I remember the thought arising.

I also remember the first time I sat with the stuff that I super-duper did not want to feel.

It was massively uncomfortable.

And…I discovered that it’s okay to feel awful.

…previously…

I spent over three decades obsessed with avoiding one thing - uncomfortable feelings.

I really, really wanted to eliminate, sidestep, or bypass the shame, grief, resentment, rage, and fear that kept showing up.

I thought that if I just could figure it out, self-improve it out, effort it out, or realize it out…

I strived to find the belief, philosophy, strategy, information, theory, mindset, mantra, practice, hack, technology, insight, or revelation that would send discomfort packing once and for all.

In my spiritual-text-junky days I came across the Buddha’s “freedom from afflictive emotions” situation and immediately translated it to “absence of afflictive emotions.”

I thought the goal of spiritual practice (whatever that means) is to banish unwanted sensations and thoughts.

I focused all my energy on fearing, escaping and avoiding anxiety and any associated thought or experience.

I was in a 24/7 internal chess match with emotional discomfort.

I hopped on the “find your purpose, realize-your-potential, rewire-your-brain, and consume-happily-ever-after” fairy tale bandwagon.

Due to an absolutely meritless belief that I could magically keep upset from happening, I vigilantly read every emotion and ranked the relative safety of every person in every room.

All the while trying to appear as if I knew exactly what was going on and was somehow above and onto it all.

The focus on not feeling awful made any possibility of a pleasant feeling seem intoxicating and irresistible.

Alcohol, pot, and approval became the perfect self-medication cocktail.

They were also catalyst for a tremendous amount of pain for those who trusted me.

And along came karma - doing what it seems to do…the piper demanded payment and hope was put on hold…

When everything that mattered to me seemed to hang in the balance…

The most wonderful thing happened…

I literally dropped to my knees. I actually remember feeling self-conscious that I was being so cliche. But that’s not the point. The point is this…

I was tired.

Exhausted really.

From figuring out who was to blame.

From suffering and creating suffering.

From trying to fix and run a universe filled with people who I didn’t feel were “getting it.”

From trying to find or create the shouldiverse I believed in so strongly.

I was finally tired enough that the only thing that made any sense was to stop.

And stopping allowed me to look - although looking only takes an instant.

Not think about it.

Just look.

Look at what I had been running from, contracting around, and fighting with.

Look at what is believed.

Look at what is feared.

Look at what belief is.

Look at what fear is.

Look at who believes.

Look at who fears.

Look at who is looking.

All this looking confirmed the initial hypothesis - it is okay to feel awful.

I wonder how much violence - toward self, others, and the environment - would subside if people had the experience that feeling awful is okay.

Just to be clear - I don’t want anyone, including myself, to feel awful.

Feeling awful is not my preference. But, it does not have to be my enemy either.

It’s just part of the human condition.

And that’s okay.

I am Dave.

I help people see the difference between awareness and thought, discomfort and suffering.

When you are tired of struggling against life, feel free to reach out.

We can have a conversation. No pressure for anything else.

You can email me: dave@unstruggling.com

You can schedule at call here: https://calendly.com/unstruggling/discovery-clone-1