Shakespeare said That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” William Shakespeare uses this line in his play Romeo and Juliet to convey that the naming of things is irrelevant.

Shakespeare was wrong, Naming is everything. From our 2023 woke vocabulary to words that describe our innermost feelings and thoughts and parts of our brain. Where are feelings and thoughts coming from? Where is the internal dialogue coming from? We throw words around like subconscious, psyche, watcher, mind, brain, higher self. Is it coming from you? What is the definition of “you”? Is it coming from your brain, (again definition please) your subconscious? It’s all theoretical And we have created a vocabulary that is really ill equipped to help us understand anything.

In fact can anyone prove that there is a subconscious? Or is that simply a made up word to describe the things we do and feel when we don’t understand why and or how our brain actually works?

I say it’s the latter. Go check out what John Hopkins has to say about the 100 million nerve cells that line your esophagus to your stomach. Now they are saying it might even control your moods.

So lets start with the absolute simplest word, “you”. Not so fast. I was actually inspired by my good friend and mentor David Ellzey today who got me thinking from his Facebook talk Nov 3 2023

We don’t even have an adequate description of what is “you” It might be the sum total of all of the feelings and thoughts you have had up to today. That being a billion, thoughts if you are around 50 years old. But what if you were free? What if you were a human that was actually “being” today? So would you not be responding to your environment with no prejudice or bias or reaction from any memories from the past?

Does that make any sense to you? I am proposing that the real “you” if you were a human that was “being,” you wouldn’t be in reaction to a man or a woman or a dog or a situation, based on previous interactions and or memories that you have stored. You would literally be a human, free from your past being.

I actually got another fabulous analogy from my friend Jeff. He was explaining, as a Jazz musician he listens to the notes being played and then decides when is the right moment to jump in and with what note. Sometimes it requires more silence and the right notes.

My mind was exploding with analogies because we were talking about a course for counseling others. So I literally wasn’t sure if he was speaking about Jazz or counseling or life itself. Then if you think about life itself as Jazz, aren’t there passages that are discordant and others that are harmonic? Aren’t there beautiful segues and movements towards higher highs and sometimes lows? Wow! Life is like a Jazz composition. I will leave it to Jeff Stitely to write that book he is an expert on both Jazz and self development, since he has been studying, learning and leading trainings for over 35 years.

But back to vocabulary. I think we have to start with no vocabulary or we need to redefine every concept we have ever heard. I recently read a best selling book that kept referring to the psyche. Who even said there was such a thing? Has anyone seen it? If you remove it by surgery do you no longer have a psyche? What about a subconscious?

What part of the brain would you remove to find that your heart no longer pumps blood and your lungs no longer breathe? Don’t people with severe brain damage still breathe and pump blood?

So maybe they have that one figured out, its in the brain stem or medulla. But what about all the other words we so casually toss around? PS where does a gut feeling come from? Is it from the 100 million nerve cells that actually line your gut? Why do so many people say that their “gut feeling” was right? Funny maybe we go that one right. What about when you are in deep silence meditating and come up with something that is literally unknown to you? What about known psychics who police have used to located bodies? We know that happens. What part of their brain are they using to communicate and with who? Did it even come from “you?” Do we have the ability to communicate outside of ourselves in ways we do not understand?

For our purposes how about if we just drop the vocabulary, admit we know nothing, nor do the greatest scientists and or all the people lecturing us on which part of the brain and how to do anything.

Just like we listen to people who have earned a billion dollars on how to make money. Let’s just listen to people who obviously resonate the truth with us and have achieved silence and joy and a joyful life and let’s just take their advice. And definitely don’t get hung up on vocabulary. If someone proposes a “way” for you to be more at peace or happy and or to enjoy your life more you do not need to label it or even figure it out. At most jot down what you did in your diary and who taught you so you can keep doing it.

Here I’ll give you a quick freebie I just made up. You can go to India and chant “who am I” A million times or you can stay in the US and have someone yell at you a million times “who are you?”

The “you” is who you are when you shed the skin like a snake in every moment to reveal the new “you” You actually have choices. After shedding you can reveal the new you same as the old you. (wasn’t that a song by the BeeGees?). Just kidding we needed a bit of levity.

But the point is when you reveal yourself you can decide how much baggage to bring to the new you. The proof of what I am saying is we have all done it. The new you at some point in your life may be a non drinker. The old you might have been an alcoholic. The new you might be a non smoker the old you was a smoker.

It’s like that with every little and big thing in your life. At any moment you can choose to drop the old skin and reveal the new you with nothing but awe and wonder and love. This is the truth of who “you” are. You decide in every moment if you learn how to let go of aspects of the old you.

I have had more than a glimpse of that. I live that way most days and most hours and minutes of each day. Its beautiful. To look at life and the people aka gifts in your life like a baby with nothing but love and curiosity is literally the greatest feeling in the world. It’s even better than the physical joy from drugs that literally physically hijack the pleasure centers of your brain with the strongest chemicals known to us that mimic pleasure and joy

This is true joy that can be shared and is lasting and is beautiful and loving. And it almost feels like those pleasure centers or endorphins are actually being released it is so powerful.

I guess I will have to study to see if we can naturally release endorphins just through being open loving and without past. How is that for a new word “withoutpast”

That could be another way of understanding or looking at what everyone is trying to teach you. How would you feel and what would you do if you had no past? No frame of reference no prejudices, no failures that scares you from taking action. Just pure joy and inhibition.

The world has an unlimited amount of beauty, joy, beautiful flora and fauna (animal life) it also has an unlimited amount of cruelty sadness and death. Maybe our next, or first job, might be to redefine death. How about if we replace death with passage. Lets end with an example of a passage every single one of us on this planet has made into the great unknown.

This cute parable is about two babies in a womb having a conversation about what exists outside the womb (since no one has ever come back LOL) as we do about death and what resides outside the realm of our known world.

Lets end with this parable to prove the futility of us listening to endless YouTube with one expert after another making up words and trying to impress us with their expertise. So many claim their expertise is proven by reminding you that you are literally talking to yourself as you read this. Really? No shit Sherlock everyone has a voice in their head. The fact that you point that out and give it a new made up name doesnt make you an expert, nor does your 2 hour youtube or 160 page book where you keep bloviating on the same issue with no concrete advice. By the way to be clear I am excluding methods that are proven and ones that work for you. In fact if one of those make pretend gurus brings you peace by chanting some weird mantra thats great. I simply want whats best for you. You will know what works because it works. I keep going back to the one method that taught me to let go because I did let go of oh so many things that NEVER came back to haunt me. That is why I live every day in peace and joy. That is also why I diss so many big shot and names the whole world knows because the best of methods in the world will not work if you are still hoding on to things from your past that block you from attaining joy. In fact sometimes it requires digging to get down to the root cause of your unhappiness which is why simple chanting or jumping up and down will not get you there long term. Sure you might feel good in the moment but it will return until its analyzed uncovered, brought in to sunlight and truly let go of.

I can probably ask chatGPT to write 10 books about the “voice in your head” and each one would be a best seller. Each one with a different psudonym and each one describing a moment we all know. ie “have you ever had a night where you can’t sleep because you can’t turn off the voice in your head?” This book will once and for all help you to tame the voice in your head. Then the next book will be “ever wake up with your head already spinning with the worries and things you have to do today?” This book will help you tame the inner voice so all your days weeks and years are pure productivity. And they would all be best sellers because out of the billions of people on this planet, just one sentence will resonate perfectly with at least a million people.
Then we can do another one with a spiritual explanation. It’s all bullshit and if anyone was honest they would admit that the only reason they made a one hour youtube was so that those without premium are hearing 12 ads and they are making more money to give you a 5 minute concept.

So rethink your vocabulary. Forget all the gurus and all the bullshit. Let go of who you are, or were, and learn how to live or relive in the moment. Sedona method or any other method that works for you. Get it for free or get a coach. Shed the skin every moment. Don’t bring anything into the present. For those who have ever played any sport, Live your life like you played that one great game where you were in the flow. Hopefully you have all had at least one moment where you were physically in the flow and everything flowed perfectly. The goal of life is to live and love in the flow

And let’s end with this cute story to kind of prove that we literally know nothing. I originally heard this on David Ellzey’s facebook in January of this year.

In a mother’s womb, two babies were talking and this is what they would say to eachother if they could talk ( maybe they can). The first baby asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery?”
The second baby replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”
“Nonsense,” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What would that life be?”
“I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths.”
The doubting baby laughed. “This is absurd! Walking is impossible. And eat with our mouths? Ridiculous. The umbilical cord supplies nutrition. Life after delivery is to be excluded. The umbilical cord is too short.”
The second baby held his ground. “I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here.”
The first baby replied, “No one has ever come back from there. Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery it is nothing but darkness and anxiety and it takes us nowhere.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the twin, “but certainly we will see mother and she will take care of us.”
“Mother?” The first baby guffawed. “You believe in mother? Where is she now?”
The second baby calmly and patiently tried to explain. “She is all around us. It is in her that we live. Without her there would not be this world.”
“Ha. I don’t see her, so it’s only logical that she doesn’t exist.”
To which the other replied, “Sometimes when you’re in silence you can hear her, you can perceive her. I believe there is a reality after delivery and we are here to prepare ourselves for that reality when it comes….”

from John Need I say more? Actually re read that at least 5 times you will hear and perceive something different every time. And it will probably bring you peace.