The 12-Step, codependent no more approach and the psychological analyzing  and labeling are not for me.  While fostered by caring individuals with only the best of intentions, both approaches are run by the mind with way too much thinking involved, too many judgments, stereotyping, etc.  I am aware that both processes are based on research and the due diligence of learned people, but the basis for dealing with everything in this life came with us from birth and it is precisely all this “mind’ activity that blocks our natural coping processes from being available for our use making our collective ego think the learned professionals are the only way to go.  I disagree.

These approaches no longer work for me.  So why do I keep drifting from the one that does?  Maybe it seems too simple, this recovery has to be more complicate than Eckhart’s simplicity, but his ideas are simplicity; profound in their power.

A power to make the name calling, the judgments, the classifications of another drop away as too much mind and leave behind only what is the observer in me behind my ego, looking beyond the ego of him  to the observer within him.  This observation does not nullify or cancel the effects of his or my negative behavior but instead creates an internal understanding of the difference between my ego and my being, his ego and his being, and an understanding of the workings of the “pain-body” and the power of this moment within us both.

From reading Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth” and Mooji’s “Before I Am” I have experienced a deep and restful peace, a peace which has nothing to do with what he might say or what I might think.   All of those things have no bearing on my inner peace.  This is a state I have tried to achieve for years but it wasn’t until last night when I read the following quote from Mooji’s book that true peace became a recognized aspect of me.  I know it has always been there as the I am behind the me and my ego but my striving and grasping for it has kept it at bay.  “Truth is not some bundle of concepts that you have to believe in.  Truth is not a concept, it is where all concepts end” says Mooji.

This peace, I hate to call it a realization because that implies that my “mind” recognized it, came over me unbidden, un-thought of, and at first, unnoticed.  It crept in as I read Mooji’s words and sat in my bed with tea cup in hand.  My body recognized it first and reacted in spite of my busy mind. I became suddenly aware of the physical symptoms of peace, slower deeper breath, normal regular heart beat and lack of thoughts.  Not a blank mind but a mind full of just being with no room for thought.

A knowing came upon me and the thoughts that were weighing me down lost their power.  It no longer mattered how it would turn out because I became aware that this being of I am, behind my ego, and this sense of peace that it provided would not be and could not be changed.

Knowing this fact and not just believing it have given me a freedom I never felt before. This morning the sky is bluer, the little birds coming and going from my bird-feeders seem to pause and look at me with an internal knowing.  The contrast of the still leafless trees against the cloudless sky is defined like the 3D effects in the movies.  Birdsong drifts to me from every angle of the woods and wind-chimes give a voice to the invisible wind.

The prayer flags gracing the front of my house flutter their prayers to the heavens with my every breath and the world stands once again as witness to another being’s awakening and says “welcome home”.