Ernie Thayer

Life is so good.

This is a new enterprise for me – writing a blog. I want it to blast me and others to wake up to the exquisite possibility of living as a new kind of human being. I’ll start by saying something about myself.

Something happened to me that I cannot fully explain. Over the past 30 years, my life has changed dramatically from one of moving along in time, making the best of it (attorney in San Francisco, drinking too much, unsure of what will make me happy, but trying all sorts of fruitless experiments, including sex, drugs and alcohol), to a life in which time has very little play, and the movement of the present is paramount. This is difficult to describe, but I want to try.

I’ve worked as a private counselor/psychotherapist now for over 20 years, and counseled in several contexts with non-profit agencies since the mid ‘70s. That was the work I moved to from the practice of law which ended in 1975. It was fortuitous that this was so, because the therapy practice gives me a springboard for the work I now pursue, which is facilitating in others the kind of movement that has happened in me.

My best intentions up until 1975 yielded alcoholism, virtual bankruptcy, a broken marriage and deep unhappiness. I was occasionally suicidal. Alcoholism got my attention first and a steady recovery followed in San Francisco, where I met a man named Ralph, who died not too long after we met, who had a light in him so bright it attracted me without reserve. He was a recovering drunk like me, working as an engineer in a beer bottling plant! But he had a twinkle in his eye and step and obviously something was different about him from anyone I had ever met. He was an informal mentor for me and some others recovering at the time.

What was most striking about him was that he shone! In conversations with Ralph, something stirred in me which continues to this day. I had been reading about awakening in the writings of Jiddu Krishnamurti and others, but Ralph embodied a human life of easy happiness and deep understanding. I was hooked. My curiosity spiked and I gave a great deal of attention to what it was I saw in him that might be available to me, or to anyone.

Since then, I’ve remained intensely curious, had some experiences that shook my sense of what’s possible in a human life, and found a stable life in the moving present that replaces the life I once led. I have a loving partnership with my wife Holly for over 20 years now (Hi, darlin’!) and work that I love and that I believe is helpful to others. I live where I want to be and have a simple but happy life of ease. This is not bragging, and I trust it doesn’t ring that way; it’s my life and I am so grateful for it.

I didn’t plan it this way. I continue my therapy practice, now completely devoted to the kind of transformation which has happened to me, and I give the occasional workshop on the subject, currently titled “Living at Ease” or “Everyday Wakefulness”. I also want to do some on Relationships and on Work.

So, this is why I’m sharing here with whoever is interested. A dear friend suggested a weblog and I thought it would be an ideal way to meander about in realms that interest me in hopes others may join me or just watch with interest and curiosity.

The Nature of the Change
This change is easily available nowadays to ordinary people with ordinary lives, even those of us conditioned by western culture, whether religious or not. For now that’s the thrust of my work – that this delightful way of living is now easily available without further suffering. All one needs is lively curiosity and a willingness to see oneself clearly.

No particular path is required, no esoteric practices or rituals, certainly no trying! It isn’t a process of ‘self-improvement’, thank heavens, and doesn’t require years of study or any special lingo. It’s easier than that! I am astounded by the success of such a book as The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. And I suspect its popularity is precisely because there is now an opening for a new maturity for humans that probably wasn’t there until recently.

Thus far in my life, several others around me are also changing in wonderful ways, including my dear wife Holly. I love being with her and others and sharing our experiences. It seems the most natural thing to do. I hope this blog becomes a window to that sharing and an extension of it – human beings wondering about or experiencing a new way to live in the world that brings relief from emotional pain and stress, yields ease and joy, is immensely practical, and oh so necessary on our poor earth!

I’ve likened the change I’m talking about to a switch from the old ‘default’ way of living that has persisted for probably thousands of years, to a new ‘default’ way of living.

The Old: The old ‘default’ is basically “the pursuit of happiness” guaranteed by our American Declaration of Independence. That is to say, we feel lack (maybe guilt or shame or some insufficiency inwardly) or some gap in our lives and so we pursue various activities, things and satisfactions of all sorts to fill that gap. This can be in the name of pleasure or in the name of the holy, but the essential movement is the same – from lack to fulfillment. And this old ‘default’ life needs time, especially the future, in which to achieve results. Except for the occasional satisfaction (like a healthy burp after a good meal), we remain essentially unfulfilled and soon ready for MORE! Entire lives are built on this activity (mine sure was!). It is thought to be the way of things, and until recently for most of us, has been so.

The New: The new ‘default’ life is one in which the living present gets the attention, not time or the time-line life, and not the future. It’s living in response to the intensity of the living ‘now’ rather than from a preexisting idea, desire, plan or hope. It’s easy, because it doesn’t require time! You can remain precisely where you are and move effortlessly as suggested by the moment you’re in. (This isn’t as easy to say as I’d like!) Of course the ‘you’ in that last sentence refers to a different being from the one operating from the old ‘default’ …Ah, now there’s the rub! It doesn’t mean you need resist the old or try to hold on to the new; it is simply living in another dimension of life that includes the old, but isn’t governed by it.

Giving Up: One could say that what we truly are is Warm, Curious Attention. Warm, because there is great affection, love, in its movement. Curious, because the awareness is not idle but intensely interested to see what is actually going on. Attention, because it is a bright, still and all-inclusive witnessing. Others have called this Presence or Being. It is the essence of what we are.

An intense intelligence awakens when we realize what we truly are. It is different from the intelligence of thought or of the mind, and acts in the very seeing of what is so, rather than by using the past or knowledge to create.

I have to yield up the old life to have the new one, but this is an effortless transition, because it is simply what I want to do, when I see and understand the terrible waste in the old way. And, of course, it doesn’t mean I abandon thinking where it is necessary or appropriate. The transformation is “psychological” in the sense that it totally changes my sense of who I am. It happens in seeing the truth, not about the new life, but about the old one. Real change inwardly is like the difference in navigating the physical world with a blindfold on vs. off. It is so much easier with your eyes open.

You could call it ‘Living with the lights on’. The very first intelligent act that occurs when there is that kind of attention is to loosen identity with the old self and its ways. A new way of living begins in the ashes of the old.

This kind of living is compelling…