“While you’ve been busy with your attention captured by feelings and thinking of yourself as separate and limited, you’ve missed the absolute truth: you have always been all that you ever wanted.”
I’m very excited to share with you an excerpt from chapter 1 of my book, The End of Self-Help: Discovering Peace and Happiness Right at the Heart of Your Messy, Scary, Brilliant Life.
Love,
Gail
The self-help industry is fundamentally flawed. It perpetuates the myth that we are limited, damaged, inadequate selves who need to be fixed. Sadly, it keeps millions of people just like you hoping for a better future when they will finally be happy and fulfilled.
But what if this inadequate self isn’t who you are? What if it’s possible, at any moment, to be happy and free?
Discovering this possibility is a journey that leads you to the amazing fact that all you seek has always been here. What you discover won’t be new or unfamiliar. You’ve always been who you really are despite your distractions.
- You’ve already delighted in the burst of joy that comes out of nowhere, if only for an instant;
- You’ve felt the all-consuming feeling of love;
- You know the wondrous sense of the unity of all;
- You’ve experienced the spark of unexpected creative expression, and
- You’ve dissolved into a bout of uncontrollable laughter.
You know in your heart of hearts that you’re bigger than your imagined limits.
Happiness isn’t nearly as elusive as we might think—if we know where to look for it. There’s a current alive in each of us that flows toward contentment, toward resting effortlessly in peace and ease. This current is so strong that every action we take is an attempt to find happiness.
When you seek approval, you’re trying to feel whole and relaxed. If you strive for money or material goods, you’re searching for the moment of ease when you finally fulfill your desire. If you overdo anything, you’re really looking for happiness, peace, and relief from inner turmoil.
You might think you want a relationship or the perfect job or even your mother’s love. But, your real desire is the inner longing to be free of conflict, satisfied and complete, with no sense of something missing.
This is the ease of being you’ve been searching for your whole life. And you absolutely can know it in your own direct experience.
But you won’t discover it in the objects, people, and situations in the world. You won’t even discover it in your own thoughts. These are changeable, unreliable forms you can’t trust to make or keep you happy. If this is where you’re looking, then you probably already know your search will fail.
The good news—the most amazing news—is that the peace you long for is available, here and now, in this very moment…and endlessly. You come to know it when you learn how to stop relying on ideas about how you wish things were—and say “Yes!” to the reality of how things actually are.
The path to realizing the unlimited potential for happiness in every moment is radical. It involves a shift in consciousness that invites you to question everything you take to be true—all the stories, beliefs, hopes, expectations, and feelings that make up who you think you are—and discover that they’re the very source of your dissatisfaction, unhappiness, and personal suffering.
Take an honest look at the thoughts and feelings that consume your attention. Are you:
- Waiting for others to do something so you can be happy?
- Obsessing over all the things you don’t like about yourself?
- Recycling thoughts about what should or shouldn’t happen in your life?
- Living in fear, shame, worry, or depression?
No wonder you’re not happy. These everyday problems set you up for frustration and disappointment. They make you think the present is unfulfilling, and they delude you into believing that the ease you seek will be available at some future time.
This “if only” thinking keeps you chasing happiness rather than living it. And while you’re distracted by these thoughts and feelings, the deepest peace and happiness—available right now—go unnoticed.
Let me be clear: we’re not just talking about that smile-on-your-face feeling we call happiness. It’s not even the satisfaction you feel when things are going well—these are expressions of it. When you deeply accept everything as it is, the inner war with your own experience ends, and you’re not only peaceful, but joyful and content, as well.
This is your natural state: what you knew before any conditioned habits or emotional pain concealed it. It’s the pure aliveness that remains—when the pressure to do, fix, try, and accomplish falls away. Fear subsides, and you feel intimately connected with everything.
This is the happiness that is always available, always ready to be discovered. Even though you may not consciously experience it, you and I both know that it’s here. Even if it’s hidden, this loving presence is alive in your true heart.
Are you caught in “if only” thinking? Do you know your natural state? I’d love to hear… And if you’re reading this by email, please click here to comment.
This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, The End of Self-Help: Discovering Peace and Happiness Right at the Heart of Your Messy, Scary, Brilliant Life now available for pre-order on Amazon.com
Bob V says
Gail, what a beautiful piece of writing – about the Truth. It’s all about looking within at what already exists …. in the blink of an eye. The ‘rest’ is just icing on the cake, and interestingly, it comes when you are at peace with what you already have. I look forward to reading the book.
Gail Brenner says
So sweet to hear from you, Bob.
All I want to say is Yes! When we’re one with what’s already here – the rest is icing. And it can be beautiful icing or tragic icing, but it is just icing. Life can be so juicy!
Sending love…
T.L.S. says
This is Truth beyond Measure. How lost n wrong I’ve been. Standing firmly in my own way. As I know now. I am thankful for all that I am n hope to be the best me. Although I have ties to cut and habits to break. Self evaluation seems long overdue.
Gail Brenner says
I hear your fire, TLS. May your journey be fruitful…
With love to you…
MyPeaceOfFood says
Hi Gail!
Looking forward to reading your book! In my cart on Amazon 🙂
I think it’s easiest for me to forget my natural state when my kids are fighting and I’m trying to control it/settle them down. I engage and feed into that energy, I know, but I really haven’t mastered yet how to handle it. I have honestly considered dropping everything and plopping into lotus position in silence to see if they would just STOP and inquire and forget what they are fighting about!
Your work is always so helpful to me. 🙂 Thank you 🙂
Lexie
Gail Brenner says
I love that idea, Lexie! Follow your truth, even if it’s radical, and it invites them to drop their conditioning and be curious.
When you’re trying to control them, you’re actually resisting them, which might be feeding their fighting energy. You might be trying to make their experience different so your experience is more peaceful. Instead, stay with your peace by dropping into lotus and let them be. Who cares if they fight, especially if you’re already peaceful.
Let me know!!
Tammy says
“You might think you want a relationship or the perfect job or even your mother’s love. But, your real desire is the inner longing to be free of conflict, satisfied and complete, with no sense of something missing.” Gail- these 2 sentences you wrote, have been all that consume my mind for a very long time. I now believe that these very words, have been my exact thoughts about my life. How do I break this cycle? Get out of this rut, my life has been in turmoil for years, because of this mind-set or believe I’ve held on too.
Gail Brenner says
Hi Tammy,
Keep looking within. Those stories about what you might get in the outside world that make it all right – these are just stories and need to be seen that way. Look instead at the feelings behind them – the feeling of lack, longing, missing something, not being good enough. These feelings are kept in place when you keep telling the story about what you’re missing. But go to your direct experience of the feelings, then notice what these feelings are arising in or from. There is an expansive space of just being that is here at the heart of the stories and feelings. You are here, peaceful, silent, present for everything without reacting to it.
When the stories go and the feelings are known to be physical sensations in your body, you have access to the greater, lovely truth of you. This is the path.
Start with the feelings, go to the sensations in your body, and breathe with your experience in the moment.
silvia says
You are totally right.
Problem is, it requires to be conscious and the ego doesn’t know how. It’s against its own unconscious conditioned being, always thinking, always seeking the way of changing everything… There is a level where I can observe that behavior and choose if let it be (which ends up all consciousness, because the emotions are very strong) or try and change it (which is a conflict with what is and also ends up all consciousness).
That level, which apparently can observe and decide, is also a part of the ego trying to control and change everything, trying to get to the superior level of conscuousness where that compulsion dissolves and everything IS. Paradoxically, it is the trying what once again ends the possibility…
It is like a game of mirrors where the ego gets lost and very frustrated. Yes, the ego knows and understands all these words and concepts, but it is not able to get out of its own unconscous conditioning where everything is a conflict by definition…
Gail Brenner says
That’s exactly right, Silvia. The ego can’t get out if its own way. What needs to be investigated is the doer. Who is the one who wants the ego to disappear? Who is the one experiencing thinking and emotions? And what is a thought, what is an emotion?
All these concepts need to be investigated until we know the absolute truth of them, taking nothing for granted.
We are not the separate one who is trying to be free and happy. The idea of that separate one arises in the field of conscious awareness. This is the fundamental ground of being that is always here, always the reality of all experiences. It’s formless, non separate, unconditioned, and filled with infinite potential. And when we see who we’re not – the separate one experiencing all the conditioning – we begin to realize who we are – this formless aliveness.
The mind/ego can’t possibly understand this. It needs to be known directly, not thought about or learned through any conventional means. It is always the case that this is who we are, but when we know it consciously, conditioning loses its power. We can play in the world in our roles and relationships, but we know the absolutely truth and the conditioning no longer causes suffering.
silvia says
Thanks again, Gail.
As always, right on target!
:O)
Gail Brenner says
Big hug to you, Silvia! xx
Niro says
Well, i experienced a vast change in my life when i changed my way of thinking.
It took me a very long time to change but i can feel the difference.
Whenever a thought pop up in my mind and keep on going like a chain, i’ll take a deep breath, hold it for a while and then slowly exhale.
Then i would think, this thought is from outside, there is no connection between me and that thought. i’m not involved in that thought. then i find it fading away.
It’s very difficult. Each time another thought will come. It takes a long time to be disconnected from unnecessary thoughts come in my mind.
Mind is everything! What you think you become.. Now i feel happier than before as i’ve changed the way of thinking. You can’t stop thinking, but you can change the way you think.
I never gave up!
Still i’m practicing this, along with yoga and meditation.
Thank you. 🙂
I always find your articles very useful..
Gail Brenner says
This so beautiful, Niro! I appreciate your clear intention and willingness to stick with it. This is the road to happiness. Take each thought and see it as not you, that it really, truly doesn’t involve you. It’s just a cloud floating by.
Thinking, and believing thinking, is a very powerful force. So it takes this pure intention, as I know from my own personal experience as well. But the benefits…happiness, peace, clarity, and living true and not according to conditioning or the content of distorted thoughts.
Thank you so much for posting this as everyone gets inspired by hearing of others’ experiences.
Lori says
Gail,
I have read your article over and over this morning. I’ve been asking myself, “What would life be like if everything I’ve been searching for I already possess within me”?
I can’t imagine life without a struggle to “be better”. It’s exhausting, but I don’t know any other way to exist. I wonder what would drive me to even get out of bed if it weren’t for a striving for…something?!
Gail Brenner says
Hi Lori,
I love that you’re considering life without suffering!
I have two answers to your question about what would drive you if you weren’t striving to be better.
Answer #1: try it and find out! Go to sleep one night with no plan to strive, try, or do anything, and just see what happens. You might have reactions to what happens, for example, if you’re moved to stay in bed an extra hour or two, your mind may tell you you have to get up and go do something. But just notice this without acting on it. Only move when it feels purely natural, not when you’re pushing yourself. See what you discover from this experiment.
Answer #2: When we’re not moved by fear, lack, and pressure, there is space to be moved by love. We can’t know what will happen, but what emerges will be natural and aligned with the whole. We see situations clearly, not through the veil of our own fears and needs, and we move accordingly. Surprising responses and actions may appear. The universe is overflowing with infinite possibility, and we can know this in our own experience when we get our own conditioning out of the way. If you totally let go, you may rest for a while because you’re exhausted – or not. It’s impossible for anyone to know. And then you may act – moved by love. This can be trusted.
Joanna says
” When you deeply accept everything as it is, the inner war with your own experience ends, and you’re not only peaceful, but joyful and content, as well.”
This is so true and so beautiful! Looking forward to reading your book!
Gail Brenner says
Great, Joanna! I’m looking forward to the book being out there!
xx
Deb says
How do I reconcile accepting the now with a deep pull to live a different kind of life?
Gail Brenner says
I really appreciate your question, Deb. Accepting the now doesn’t mean that nothing changes and that you can’t honor a pull to a different kind of life. Accepting means allowing all reactions, habits, and conditioning so they are seen through with the light of awareness. As these all lose their power to distract your attention, you are open to realizing what’s here that may have been masked before. And that might be a true, heart-based (not fear-based) urge to change something.
From the perspective of absolute consciousness, there is nothing to do or change. But from the perspective of a human living a human life, we don’t do nothing. We breathe, eat, walk, sleep etc. As the distorted identities and habits are shed, you might be called to make changes to be more aligned with what you know in your heart is true. Then you are doing, but the doing arises from the stillness of being.
Don’t decide, rather let yourself be moved. Stay awake to your process, stay out of the way, and all is well.