Ernie Thayer

I have had so many interesting conversations this week. Several fascinating realizations occurred in the process, among them:

• Under the glow of warm, unjudging attention, anger reveals something true about a person that until then was unavailable to their awareness. The anger disappears, and deep ease replaces it. New directions appear…

• When there is undue attention given to choosing, controlling or trying in one’s life (the “me” running the life), the actual present movements of one’s being remain relatively unseen. Left unattended to are attractions, affection, stirred interests, sensations in the body, the feelings of authentic response to life that occur spontaneously in the immediacy of living. At the same time there are reactions because of ‘how I want my life to go’. Yet the authentic and unseen movements, if not resisted, bring us the deep sense of fullness which control and choice are seeking, but cannot bring us.

• In even the most dramatic disturbances in one’s life, such as death, illness or the breaking of an important relationship, deep insights into our nature are available, and seeing them changes us dramatically. We are left more loosely bound to the drama of our life, and less identified with s/he who is living it. We can see a door we are drawn to walk through into more light and more ease.

• How astounding it is to rediscover that when there is genuine attention to anything without thought, with no judgment, no identification, but only warm, curious attention…then what is revealed (besides the truth of what is watched), is a state of being that’s truly alive in the moment, active and free of history or any ‘story’. This is who we truly are but have forgotten, and that we long to reclaim as our birthright. In that sublime watchful state there moves a facile intelligence that is not of thought and so can be trusted where thinking has no role.

I realize these musings must seem abstract scribbled here in words, but I assure you that had you witnessed the processes as they occurred, you would yourself be moved to tears (as I was). I only hope you can feel through these puny words the realities they point to.

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.
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Please check out the Video page to read about Ernie’s August 2006 Workshop “Living at Ease” and order a set of the DVDs of that workshop for yourself.

Also, note that the blog is just part of the larger web site, which will take shape over the coming months. Your comments will be an integral part of the entire site, because as Ernie would say, the “juicy stuff” always happens when human beings interact with each other. So don’t be shy! The blog and some of the other pages have areas for you to leave comments, and with enough interest we may add true discussion forums for more interaction.

“I heard about Ernie’s workshop and decided to attend because I was having such a hard time with my father’s death. I went without knowing what to expect.

–Pauline T., Seattle, WA