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In 2016, I connected with a teacher who lived as a Buddhist monk for 8 years.
What followed was 30,000 hours of mindfulness practice. Now, a lot of people think I’m full of shit when they see this number. But actually, it’s a conservative estimate.
I spoke with that teacher one-to-one for hundreds of hours, and got obsessive with applying what he taught me. I was aspiring to an Olympic level of training: everything else became secondary. I split up with my girlfriend of 7 years, burned bridges with Grammy-nominated artists in my old career, and dealt with the people who remained in my life constantly doubting my choices.
To this day, almost no-one from my old life understands why I made this huge change. What they don’t appreciate is that my happy marriage, my stress-free 6-figure business, and my improved relationships with everyone in my life are a direct result of my choice to go all-in on my spiritual practice.
But how did I get to these results? What did I learn that was so life-changing? Well…
To cut to the heart of it…
I learned who I am without my mental/emotional assumptions about who I am. And that realization was so profound that it dissolved all stress, anxiety, dissatisfaction, doubt, desire, procrastination, guilt, shame, self-loathing, and any other afflictions of that nature I could list.
And although this realization can only ever occur in a single moment, paradoxically, there was a journey that led to it.
The first thing my monk teacher showed me was the basic recipe we all unconsciously follow to cook up our own unhappiness.
Here’s the short version:
- You assume yourself to be separate to your environment
- You encounter something in that environment
- You label it good or bad
- You want either more of it or less of it
- You realize you can’t always control how much of it you get
- You feel dissatisfied
I started to observe this pattern in myself, and I was stunned. It took mere days for me to confirm that this was, indeed, how I was creating all my own troubles.
And the more I noticed this pattern in myself, the more I noticed it in others. It was like a veil had been lifted. I was deeply moved; it felt like I was dreaming. ’It’s really this simple, I thought, ’we really are making ourselves miserable…’
Side note: this doesn’t belittle very real problems like poverty, war, abuse, etc. These are actual threats to one’s survival occurring in the present. The problems spiritual teachings and practices target are mental/emotional ones.
From then on, my practice — in a way of speaking — was really just about seeing that pattern playing out in more and more circumstances. And the seeing, itself, made it easier and easier to interrupt the pattern. Why would anyone choose to create suffering for themselves once they saw how they were doing it?
Of course, completely letting go of 30 years of familiar thinking, feeling and behaviour required continued practice. At least that’s how it seemed at the time…
Re-examining Every Facet of Life
My teacher and I continued to speak at least once a week for 3 years. The intensity of my practice continued to grow. I learned to continue that intensity without burning out by trying too hard. We examined every facet of my life: work, play, relationships, love, hate, fear… Nothing was left out. And the results were wonderful.
But something was bothering me…
I’d always maintained an interest in other presentations of spirituality. And come 2019, one type of presentation was becoming irresistible to me: nonduality.
That first teacher of mine placed strong emphasis on one of the Buddha’s instructions from the anapanasati sutta: ‘gladdening the mind’. He recommended to me that when ‘unwholesome thoughts’ — like those associated with anxiety, doubt, stress — appeared, I should ‘replace’ them with ‘wholesome thoughts’ — like those associated with gratitude, confidence, peace. This was excellent practice — the results were tremendous.
But…
The nondual teachings, by contrast, presented the possibility that if I would simply relax at the deepest level, then I would discover not only the dissolving of those unwholesome thoughts, but also a depth of wholesomeness that would eclipse any I might create with the thinking mind.
The difference in these two presentations of truth became a subject of deep contemplation for almost a year. I experimented; I explored. I spent a long time ‘straddling’ both teachings, not quite ready to abandon those more relativistic practices that had been such a positive influence in my life.
Dualistic Versus Nondualistic Practices
That relativistic practice, I realized, was like careful gardening — constantly pulling the weeds of unwholesome thought and planting the flowers of wholesome thought. It worked: the garden looked better. But the nondual teaching suggested something different: stop trying so hard. Just prepare the soil (relax) and allow the native wildflowers to sprout on their own.
Considering this possibility, I began to notice the scuffed knees I had from kneeling in the dirt; the bad back I had from bending over all the time.
So I decided I had to try and glimpse for myself the truth to which the nondual teachings pointed.
Following that decision, I took up the practice of resting naturally without seeking or describing anything with the same level of dedication I’d applied to my previous practices. Once I made this commitment, it was only a matter of hours before all remaining mental fabrications were cut through at the root.
Everything fell away: I saw the very processes of ignorance, attachment, desire and aversion with penetrating clarity, and finally realized my true nature as the aware space in which those processes occur. In doing so, I appreciated that their essence was the same as that of a tree or a joke or the sound of traffic.
Subject/object relativity was dissolved. It began to look absurd. The notion of ever wishing things were different became absurd. The idea that I was a separate somebody who had to fight against reality to arrange circumstances to my liking looked absurd. And simultaneously, the magnificence of each moment, just as it is, was revealed.
It was like taking off a VR headset I’d been wearing for 30 years. That whole time, I’d been totally immersed in a video game called ‘Dan’. Now I saw that it was a fabrication.
Following this, everything else in my life became exponentially easier. Dating had always been a struggle for me, but two weeks after this realization I met my future wife — the best match I ever found by a long shot. Money had always been a struggle for me, but I immediately started learning about one-person business and social media, which led to a six-figure income. I repaired my relationships with my family, which had always been strained when I was doing my deliberate practices, but now became a great delight.
In short, I cut through all possibility of ever being dissatisfied again, and life became an ongoing celebration. I confirmed the hypothesis that is given as an invitation by the greatest nondual teachings. It’s true: nothing need be done — because the true nature of the human being is joy, compassion and wisdom. All we need to realize this is get out of our own way.
But…
Like millions of practitioners before me, I needed convincing. That’s the role my initial practices fulfilled. And this is very common. I’ll never know what might’ve happened for me if I’d encountered the nondual teaching first. Would I have cracked right open like a walnut without ever having practiced a moment of mindfulness? Perhaps. Or would I have bounced right off that nondual teaching and painted it as nonsense? Perhaps. We’ll never know.
What Does Your Path Look Like?
All any of us can do is approach all teachings with open minds and hearts, experiment to find what works for us in each moment, and align and realign ourselves with the only goal that makes sense: freedom, peace, truth — not just for ourselves, but for all humanity.
Maybe it takes you 30,000 hours like it did me. Maybe it takes you 30 seconds. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Regardless of what your path looks like, I’m committed to helping you navigate it — not by telling you it should look one way or another, but by considering the whole picture of your life and practice, then making recommendations appropriate to you.
The first step in that is to take my 1-minute quiz to find out what ‘mindfulness level’ you’re at, then how to get to the next one.
With love from my sofa,
Dan 💙
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