What’s in the eBook?
"I really needed to read this. I seriously LOVE the book. I wish I had read this months ago. I would send this to everyone I know. I could seriously see this being taught in the corporate world, in schools, in nursing homes, hospitals, I mean really everyone!” - Reader
Section: The Message
A random encounter with a vagabond triggered the sudden understanding which became the message within this book.
Section: The Perspective Game
Objective learning vs subjective experience and how one may relate to this text.
Section: Our Inheritance: Problems
One’s fundamental views of the world are inherited from others - this includes specific thoughts that we mistakenly assume are our own.
Section: Our Inheritance: The Big Questions & Solutions
We’ve inherited The Big Questions:
“How can I stay happy?”
“How can I avoid discomfort?”
“What is the meaning and purpose of life?”
There is a better question that serves as a trojan horse, sneaking past all of our culture indoctrination to an inner truth:
What do I feel when I sit quietly without distractions?
Section: The Trinity of Mind
Using subjective experience as a guide, one can observe that “the mind” has three primary components. Sit With It calls these The Trinity of Mind:
The Intellect
A storage and retrieval system for knowledge: the thoughts, ideas, concepts, and assumptions that we have collected throughout our lives.
The Body
The instrument of direct human experience. The Body directs automatic processes and produces physical sensations.
The Observer
This is the ‘I’ that observes the sensations in The Body and the fetched ideas proposed by The Intellect.
Section: The Status Quo
We have all inherited an implicit false assumption: If we are undisturbed by negativity, we will experience a state of happiness, tranquility, and peace.
Generation after generations of human beings have internalized these two false assumptions:
Unpleasant sensations are caused by unfortunate events and/or thoughts.
Distress is unacceptable.
Section: The Car Alarm
The Body’s alerts us when it senses physical danger, when it is ill or damaged, and when it is uncomfortable. Once alerted, we know where to place our attention.
By routinely avoiding unpleasant bodily sensations, we create a situation in which The Body’s alarm keeps sounding off in a plea for attention.
We ignore The Body as if it were a blaring car alarm in a parking lot.
Section: The Demand for Pleasure
Our relationships with the people, objects, and situations in our lives are warped by the demand for happiness and permanent pleasure.
We’ve learned to avoid discomfort and use everything and everyone we can as a source of gratification.
The Life Wave diagram is introduced providing a visual representation of how this process happens.
Section: The Categories
The Intellect fetches gratification from six categories, routinely using them to avoid inner discomfort:
Attention: Positive or even negative attention from family, romantic/sexual partners, co-workers, friends, strangers, pets can be a powerful source of pleasure.
Status Comparison: Feeling superiority due to knowledge, skills, abilities, societal accomplishments, material wealth, asceticism, physical attributes.
Intoxicants: Unbalanced relationships with food, sexual stimulation, drugs.
Emotional Coping: Drowning out inner wisdom by relying on pessimism, cynicism, anger, retaliation, complaining, escapism, self-pity, self-harm, long-term grief.
Distractions: Over reliance on shopping, altruism, knowledge collecting, experience collecting, work, physical training, media consumption.
Imaginary Time: Recalling past experiences and imagining future experiences (pleasurable and un-pleasurable).
Section: No Problem, Only Solutions
The Intellect fetches knowledge from each of the categories in an attempt to answer The Big Questions.
The Intellect is desperate to help us, but there is one simple fact standing in its way: There is no problem to solve.
The distress signals in The Body are not a problem. These unpleasant sensations are The Body asking to be heard. The Body wants attention.
Much of our individual power is wasted on trying to solve The Body’s distress signals.
Section: Riding The Life Wave
Whenever a pleasure inducing activity is threatened or lost, we fall into our pre-existing, and ever-accumulating, reservoir of distress.
Blinded by Status Quo thinking, we do not realize that we are actually falling into the very state that we started from.
Section: The Thought-Storm
The Intellect goes into overdrive trying to find a solution to a non-existent problem and creates an entangled mishmash of thoughts, ideas, and possible solutions: The Thought-Storm.
Adding to ourselves or our knowledge will not help us exit The Thought-Storm.
The more you struggle and attempt to pull yourself out of The Thought-Storm, the more stuck you are.
Section: The Sunshine
If we move towards and through our discomfort, we have the opportunity to discover a new way of relating to our lives: The Sunshine.
In The Sunshine, we realize that life is a dynamic experience, not a problem that needs to be figured out.
Section: Slow Your Wave
Our lives are spent bouncing back and forth between distress and pleasure seeking. This behavior can be visualized as a high-frequency wave pattern, a Fast Wave.
You can Slow Your Wave via deliberate and careful observation of discomfort within The Body and thoughts presented by The Intellect.
Section: Sit With It
In order to Slow Your Wave, we must cultivate a transformative habit: Sit quietly without distractions once a day, every day.
A daily routine of sitting quietly without distractions provides us with the opportunity to:
Fully feel The Body and its discomfort.
Observe and understand the thoughts that The Intellect fetches the most often.
Feel cravings for compulsive action.
Train The Intellect to fetch a daily reminder to sit, forming a habit.
Sitting is a practical thing to do. There is nothing special, mystical, or spiritual about it.
Sit every single day.
Start with 3 minutes a day.
Add 3 minutes increments as you get accustomed.
Section: Moving Closer to Truth
The transition from a Fast Wave to a Slow Wave is not necessarily fun or easy. When going inwards we peel back the layers of our cravings for permanent pleasure, and just like peeling the layers of an onion, this process can sting.
Sitting is a form of exposure therapy. It is not a problem if you are uncomfortable or don’t feel well. It’s kind of the point.
There is no end goal here; we simply get to know The Body a little bit more every day.
Section: By-Products
There are several by-products of daily sitting, which may open up a new experience of life.
These should not be made goals of sitting, but rather should be allowed to arise naturally over time.
They include:
The Big Questions don’t matter as much.
One experiences a quieter, more helpful, Intellect.
One senses true empathy, compassion, love, and unity underlying all aspects of one’s life.
Section: Courage
Quiet sitting may seem like a passive thing to do, but in actuality it takes courage to sit while the rest of the world is spinning out of control.
While everyone is caught up in a storm of activity, the act of stopping and sitting quietly is a radical one.
If you have the courage to Sit With It every day, this new way of living can arise organically.
Find Out For Yourself.
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