By Adam J. Pearson Introduction: The Cost of Stories That Argue With Reality We’ve all had this experience. It’s so basic and universal that it seems to be part of the human condition. I’ve heard friends express it in Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Australia. The experience goes something like this: a painful thought arises in…
Tag: brene brown
Anger: The Fierce Mask of Suffering
By Adam J. Pearson Introduction Anger can sometimes seem to loom over us like a baffling monster, terrifying and powerful. It can appear to rage through through the bodies of otherwise harmless people and possess them like demons. A flurry of yelling, a bombardment of hurtful words, and an explosion of harmful actions often follow when anger boils…
Authentic Talk vs. Telling People What They Want to Hear
By Adam J. Pearson I’ve found in my life that trying to figure out what we think people want to hear from us so we can reflect it back to them is exhausting. Why do we do it then? In most cases, the answer seems to be quite simply that we’re afraid to create a…
The Prison and the Key: Why I Write About Shame
By Adam J. Pearson The Wisdom of Eamonn Perkins Eamonn Perkins is a wise, humble and tremendously compassionate teacher from Ireland who spends much of his time working with addicts and prisoners. He’s so low-key that, as of this writing, he doesn’t even have a website. In a 2014 interview, Eamonn said something brilliantly concise and and equally incisive: “If you…
The Gateway into Presence: Resting in the Sense “I Am”
By Adam J. Pearson Introduction: Experiencing Presence In previous articles, I have presented a few ways to directly ‘taste’ nonduality or being “One without a second” as The Upanishads put it. One way involves seeing through the cognitive construction of separation to see that prior to concepts, no such separation appears. A second way uses total forgiveness to reveal not-twoness by lovingly releasing the grievances…
The Heart of the Void: Finding the Assumptions At the Core of Shame
By Adam J. Pearson Introduction: What is Shame? In previous articles, I’ve written about the nature of shame, this powerful feeling of deficiency or lack that we sometimes experience at the heart of ourselves. Shame is the name of the void we feel within us, the void that other people’s approval and attention cannot fill. Shame…
Silencing the Praise: Why Seeking Approval Fails to Fill Our Inner Void
By Adam J. Pearson The Game of Approval Seeking For many years, I found myself playing a game that was not only futile, but excruciatingly painful and destructive. Usually without even fully being conscious of what I was doing, I would try to seek approval from other people. It was as if there was this…
Words from the Wind 