Thanks again to everyone who purchased The Secret Within. Sales and feedback have been great. If you haven’t picked up a copy, click on over to Amazon. The practices I share in the book changed my life!
This is the final post in a three-part series providing a brief overview of the book. I also posted a video on my YouTube channel featuring an interview I did with the publisher on this section. (Link provided at the end of this post)
I will be posting additional videos going forward, so you may want to subscribe to my YouTube channel.
Ok, enough self-promotion, on with the show!
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Living From Inner Peace
In the first two installments of this series (Part 1, Part 2), I covered awakening to awareness and Silent Fitness. If you haven’t read those posts, I suggest doing so now.
After practicing Silent Fitness for many years, I encountered a problem. When practicing Silent Fitness, I was at peace. But when I returned to thought-centered awareness, things got to me.
In short, I found peace, but I was not living peacefully. It was like being fit enough to run a marathon, only to get winded walking up the stairs. The juxtaposition of peaceful mindfulness practices and the turmoil of life was jarring. I wondered if there was a way to extend the benefits of Silent Fitness throughout the day.
The solution arose from watching the quality of my awareness.
When actively practicing Silent Fitness, awareness was centered on presence, but when the practice ended, I reverted to once again living in my thoughts. There is nothing wrong with that, per se, but when one’s mind is embroiled in troubling thoughts, stress returns.
Unless one is a Zen master, it’s only natural for thoughts to impair one’s peace. The key is to be more watchful, so that you catch yourself in the act of replaying troubling thoughts. In other words, become the director rather than an actor in the drama of your life.
The Director’s challenge is to witness every aspect of a scene in granular detail, whereas an actor gets caught up in a role. When practicing Silent Fitness, I was in a witnessing mode, like a movie Director. Once the practice was over, I returned to being an actor caught up in life’s dramas.
To extend the peace of Silent Fitness into my life, I had to learn to witness my reactions in real time, rather than getting carried away by them. That’s not an easy thing to do in situations with high emotional content.
As I experimented with this, I found that watching my reactions drained situations of their disturbing content. Furthermore, I found I could engage in brief practices throughout the day. When upset, no self-talk was required; in fact, attempting to calm myself was a distraction in itself. The key was to simply witness my feelings, down to the smallest detail.
I experimented with this during an exceptionally difficult period in my life. Our son was in the intensive care unit of the hospital, and a dear friend passed away; it was a trying time, with high emotional content to say the least.
And yet, amazingly, when carefully watching my reactions, peace ensued. No doubt, years of Silent Fitness practice contributed. However, what became clear in this new practice was that becoming present, i.e., watching awareness in brief episodes throughout the day, had additional therapeutic power. I call this power the secret within.
Once this power was revealed, I began designing additional practices. The most impactful being Stop, Accept, and Renew (covered in the book), which I’ve practiced for 5 years to great benefit.
As we learn to witness life, we discover a wisdom we didn’t know we had. Perhaps that’s because to fully witness life, one must let go of obsessive thoughts, get out of one’s head, and shift awareness to a perspective other than Self.
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The learnings I share in The Secret Within took me forty years to uncover. My motivation for writing the book was to help others struggling with difficult circumstances. In fact, one shouldn’t wait for a crisis. The practices are beneficial for anyone interested in increasing joy and meaning in their lives.
Your secret within is closer than you imagine. It is an indwelling wisdom that surfaces in the absence of the thought-controlled Self. Practices that reveal the secret within cannot be mastered; rather, they are practiced; the practice is an end in itself. Practice brings us peace.
I hope this three-part series and supporting videos entice you to explore this material further.
The Secret Within illuminates a path toward peace. My recommendation is to follow that path in a way that resonates with you. In doing so, I believe that your life will be transformed.
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