Just finished listening to this on Audible, I also have the book. Unsurprisingly it’s difficult to find words to describe it. It felt like Peter was reading my mind as he wrote, knowing what mischief my mind and self were likely to be up to as I listened and calling them out. When I finally got to the end I fell quiet and felt peaceful, if a bit beaten up. How do you follow that? I asked myself - I still have one - working in progress. The answer was loud and clear - ‘The Book of Not Knowing’ start all over again. Looking forward to listening to it for the umpteenth time with new ears and a better grasp. What a privilege to have Peter’s work in our lives. Thank you.

Listening to Ralston on repeat. In ‘Whereof one cannot speak’ Peter explains at length how the self came about in the first place i.e. how it was ‘invented’. OMG it’s an INVENTION! I am an amazing genius body and the self is just an invention. That was huge for me - it’s an invention not who I am. My self has been driving me mad, getting on my nerves and keeping me awake for years. I felt an immediate drop off in the ‘racing’ inside aka anxiety and had a great sleep score last night with lower heart rate on my Oura ring. Years ago I remember reading in one of Peter’s earlier book something like - ‘once you transcend the self you won’t miss it at all’. Those words really struck me at the time - how could you not miss yourself ? It’s only day 2 but he’s absolutely right, of course, not missing my self at all. I ask ‘did I get it?’ as it doesn’t seem possible for it to really be that easy - why did it take soooo long? Who cares - let’s hope it doesn’t come back - I’ve put a bouncer on the door.

Not sure if there are any other golfers in this group but it’s all transferable to life. In my experience it’s fairly mind blowing how many regular golfers moan, blame and complain for most of their round and afterwards in the bar. A bad lie, poor greens, bad weather, other players talking, landing in a divot and other first world conceptual activity. I’ve always felt us golfers are so fortunate to have time, money and opportunity to walk in nature hitting a small white ball around a big green one into a small hole for hours on end, developing skill (or not). Anyway yesterday in the Club Championships it was a normal May day in the UK sunny spells with light rain and cool breeze. I had a good round going and could feel the excitement in my chest. As I stood on the 14th tee halfway through my downswing a cloud filled with huge (almost golf ball size) hail stones burst. Distracted I sliced my shot right lost my ball in the trees and by the time I got the 2nd ball in the hole on the completely hail stone covered green I’d run up an 11! The usual pit of the stomach feeling of disappointment reared its head but then it dawned on me ! Having listened to Ending Unnecessary Suffering on repeat for weeks - this time I had a choice! Don’t have all the usual thoughts about it and you won’t suffer - it worked and I enjoyed the rest of the round. Happy golfer - thank you.

In case you missed the session today here it is.

A major distinction we can make in this work is "doing vs. being". Essentially, we spend 99% of our days "doing" stuff. And this isn’t just about physical activity: thinking and planning are also forms of doing. Even "trying to be" is ironically a form of doing. Nearly all this "doing" is driven by self-survival, which in turn leads to suffering and a lack of clarity. In Consciousness Work, even though we recognize the pervasiveness of our primitive self-survival reflexes, we also try to expand our scope beyond that. And there are two directions to do this: 1) Leaning toward more "being". This is the goal of our Being Complete workshop. or 2) Improving the quality of our "doing". This is the goal of our Four Principles workshop. Basking in pure being forever would be nice. But since we'll keep "doing" things until we die, we might as well remove as much BS from this as we can, and focus on how to do stuff in the most conscious way possible. The main tool we recommend to achieve that is to follow Principles. Our 6hr Principles workshop held on March 21 (next saturday) has been crafted to address this precise issue. When you align with Principles: - You know where you're going - You stop fighting yourself - You realize you may not be as stuck as you thought - You stop leaking energy on things that don't matter and more good stuff. See you there :)