I stared at the bananas on my kitchen table, a flood of judgments arose, they are just about edible, they are empty space, they taste a certain way, there are probably tiny microscopic creatures on them, they’ve taken 1000s of years to evolve, someone picked them, brought them to the supermarket, hardly any effort from me. Then I ate one (skin peeled)
Thanks. I’ve found for me, the first step is to accept my situation “as it is,” without wishing for my circumstances to change or my situation to be different. Then I can observe without my ego doing all it can to get me out of whatever it doesn’t like and fear.
Maria Popova just wrote a piece about Vaclav Havel’s time in prison. Like you, she is a gifted writer, weaving threads & ideas from many different writers into a wonderfully connected whole. Here it is if you’re interested;
Thank you for answering my question so thoroughly and precisely. That makes me happy and is a form of intense appreciation. Your answer deals with the big issue of doing by not doing.
In therapy for OCD, there is one “method” that is touted as the only effective one: Exposure and Response Prevention. So you confront yourself with unwanted feelings and decide not to respond with obsessive behavior, but just: do nothing. No responding, just silence. For me, this is the mystical aspect of behavioral therapy.
You emphasize that there is no method and that nothing can be done actively. However, focusing our attention on our worst feelings - i.e. what you describe in your balcony experience - and renouncing numbing and distraction does indeed seem to me to be a bold decision, a somewhat heroic act.
Because OCD leads to feelings of powerlessness and helplessness as a result, I'm wary of saying there's nothing you can do. Because there is this depressive belief that says the same thing. But yes: maybe this sentence just needs to be reinterpreted. There is nothing you can do. Nothing is the medicine. Choose nothing as helping act.
Your balcony experience also reminded me of a quote from Franz Kafka that always seemed like a form of Western mysticism to me and that you may know:
“You do not need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
Very interesting, Christian. As I explained in my response to Earl below, I do not see what occurred as a heroic act on my part. It was more the only choice available that I could see. The momentum to persist was not the result of willpower or discipline the way we are accustomed to thinking of it. It was a power not from my mind that propelled me forward - against my ego’s will which held on to dear life and resisted the process every step of the way.
So you made an available choice against the will of your ego? This is very interesting to me, because I wonder: is there a healthy, non-ego-based form of self-empowerment? Is self-efficacy something suspect?
Spiritual self-help scenes are often about letting go, surrender, overcoming control, practicing awareness and perception - but rarely about choices.
But especially when we are stuck in addictive or obsessive patterns, it doesn't feel healthy to accept everything and just let it go - as only approach. Because that’s like endless repetition.
"Rephrasing statements in choice-based language shifts your locus of control inward. External forces and limiting beliefs lose some of their power, placing it back into your hands.
You don't have to have all the solutions yet, you just have to know that you are making choices. At least then, you begin to own problems rather than surrender to them."
This writes Rehabitus, who was able to transform his alcohol addiction. This attitude gives me hope but it seems to contradict to your approach of giving up control.
What do you think about this focus on our choices and about owning problems as an act of liberation?
So beautiful and resonant for me. I have never thought of what I call ‘arrows of truth’ this way. Time spent on my yoga mat for over 24 years woke me up. Sitting on a balcony in silence each evening, sounds so simple but without any stimulation at all, is actually so brave. Thank you for this Shiv. I will share this in hopes that others might just be inspired to sit with their own Soul. My words do not convey well how much this article means, this articulation is a very bright arrow of truth me. 🙌💚✨🙏🏻
This is beautiful piece shiv...but I also remember you doing a article on your positive experience with hypnotherapy some months back ..so in the relevance don't you find any kind trauma healing useful or perhaps it's like a stair case to reach to a level where awareness takes over ...I have pondering over this since days would love your clarity over it 🙏🏻
Ever since I read your first book I've thought about that story about the balcony, and again whenever it comes up in your writing. I don't know why but it got lodged in me somehow. I think it's the element of faith in a path forward despite what must have felt like utter ignorance and even insanity. Something I've always wanted to ask... I get how awareness worked through you to find connection and healing. But surely it was willpower (that supposedly non-existent thing) that kept you inside, not reaching for distractions or relationships and just feeling like shit. Right? Or was it a lack of options? Something else? Sheer masochism? Because the desire to distract oneself is a pretty overwhelming force. Especially when you've exhausted your list of solutions.
I think it was the realization that I couldn’t continue the way I had been. So yes, a running out of options. And an inner resolve, that I didn’t choose, to sit with myself until something gave way. I hesitate to call it willpower because I’ve been famously poor at doing anything through act of force or discipline. This was different - it was just a knowing that I had to sit there. It was like something not from my mind, propelling me from within and without, against my ego’s will. I am more inclined to think of it as divine will than personal will.
I stared at the bananas on my kitchen table, a flood of judgments arose, they are just about edible, they are empty space, they taste a certain way, there are probably tiny microscopic creatures on them, they’ve taken 1000s of years to evolve, someone picked them, brought them to the supermarket, hardly any effort from me. Then I ate one (skin peeled)
A beautiful post of a Taoist nature. Thank you.
Thanks. I’ve found for me, the first step is to accept my situation “as it is,” without wishing for my circumstances to change or my situation to be different. Then I can observe without my ego doing all it can to get me out of whatever it doesn’t like and fear.
Maria Popova just wrote a piece about Vaclav Havel’s time in prison. Like you, she is a gifted writer, weaving threads & ideas from many different writers into a wonderfully connected whole. Here it is if you’re interested;
https://www.themarginalian.org/2025/02/06/vaclav-havel-letters-to-olga/
Thanks for sharing Kujo. I am familiar with both Havel and Popova. Look forward to checking out the article.
Thank you for answering my question so thoroughly and precisely. That makes me happy and is a form of intense appreciation. Your answer deals with the big issue of doing by not doing.
In therapy for OCD, there is one “method” that is touted as the only effective one: Exposure and Response Prevention. So you confront yourself with unwanted feelings and decide not to respond with obsessive behavior, but just: do nothing. No responding, just silence. For me, this is the mystical aspect of behavioral therapy.
You emphasize that there is no method and that nothing can be done actively. However, focusing our attention on our worst feelings - i.e. what you describe in your balcony experience - and renouncing numbing and distraction does indeed seem to me to be a bold decision, a somewhat heroic act.
Because OCD leads to feelings of powerlessness and helplessness as a result, I'm wary of saying there's nothing you can do. Because there is this depressive belief that says the same thing. But yes: maybe this sentence just needs to be reinterpreted. There is nothing you can do. Nothing is the medicine. Choose nothing as helping act.
Your balcony experience also reminded me of a quote from Franz Kafka that always seemed like a form of Western mysticism to me and that you may know:
“You do not need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
Very interesting, Christian. As I explained in my response to Earl below, I do not see what occurred as a heroic act on my part. It was more the only choice available that I could see. The momentum to persist was not the result of willpower or discipline the way we are accustomed to thinking of it. It was a power not from my mind that propelled me forward - against my ego’s will which held on to dear life and resisted the process every step of the way.
So you made an available choice against the will of your ego? This is very interesting to me, because I wonder: is there a healthy, non-ego-based form of self-empowerment? Is self-efficacy something suspect?
Spiritual self-help scenes are often about letting go, surrender, overcoming control, practicing awareness and perception - but rarely about choices.
But especially when we are stuck in addictive or obsessive patterns, it doesn't feel healthy to accept everything and just let it go - as only approach. Because that’s like endless repetition.
"Rephrasing statements in choice-based language shifts your locus of control inward. External forces and limiting beliefs lose some of their power, placing it back into your hands.
You don't have to have all the solutions yet, you just have to know that you are making choices. At least then, you begin to own problems rather than surrender to them."
This writes Rehabitus, who was able to transform his alcohol addiction. This attitude gives me hope but it seems to contradict to your approach of giving up control.
What do you think about this focus on our choices and about owning problems as an act of liberation?
https://open.substack.com/pub/rehabitus/p/the-choice-journals-2-finding-hidden?r=rxz6f&utm_medium=ios
Another good question Christian and one I may write another article on to address. Stay tuned
“Because the hard power of the intellect is no match for the soft power of awareness.”
Brilliant! Just what I needed to read! 🙏
dear shiv,
thank you for sharing this!
these are particularly beautiful lines to me:
"And so, the rock does not hollow out. It only ends up wet."
and
"the hard power of the intellect is no match for the soft power of awareness."
thank you for sharing this experience!
love
myq
So beautiful and resonant for me. I have never thought of what I call ‘arrows of truth’ this way. Time spent on my yoga mat for over 24 years woke me up. Sitting on a balcony in silence each evening, sounds so simple but without any stimulation at all, is actually so brave. Thank you for this Shiv. I will share this in hopes that others might just be inspired to sit with their own Soul. My words do not convey well how much this article means, this articulation is a very bright arrow of truth me. 🙌💚✨🙏🏻
This is beautiful piece shiv...but I also remember you doing a article on your positive experience with hypnotherapy some months back ..so in the relevance don't you find any kind trauma healing useful or perhaps it's like a stair case to reach to a level where awareness takes over ...I have pondering over this since days would love your clarity over it 🙏🏻
Ever since I read your first book I've thought about that story about the balcony, and again whenever it comes up in your writing. I don't know why but it got lodged in me somehow. I think it's the element of faith in a path forward despite what must have felt like utter ignorance and even insanity. Something I've always wanted to ask... I get how awareness worked through you to find connection and healing. But surely it was willpower (that supposedly non-existent thing) that kept you inside, not reaching for distractions or relationships and just feeling like shit. Right? Or was it a lack of options? Something else? Sheer masochism? Because the desire to distract oneself is a pretty overwhelming force. Especially when you've exhausted your list of solutions.
I think it was the realization that I couldn’t continue the way I had been. So yes, a running out of options. And an inner resolve, that I didn’t choose, to sit with myself until something gave way. I hesitate to call it willpower because I’ve been famously poor at doing anything through act of force or discipline. This was different - it was just a knowing that I had to sit there. It was like something not from my mind, propelling me from within and without, against my ego’s will. I am more inclined to think of it as divine will than personal will.
Thanks for going into it further for us, Shiv. I get the sense of what propelled you, I think. It's a great story and I'm glad you revisit it.
Both the body and the mind can heal themselves naturally if we let them and don;t interfere.