habits can quickly fade too, once we become conscious of them and override them with new patterns of behavior.

Unnecessary activity. Do you find yourself doing things simply to fill empty spaces of time? Do you engage in household chores that don’t really need to be done or work extra hours in your job because you don’t know what to do with your leisure time? If so, you’re using doing as an escape from being. You’re trying to flee the present by immersing y

The thought mind is very powerful, like a dictator who has taken complete control of your identity. Like all dictators, it doesn’t relinquish power easily.

Gratitude brings us into presence, and presence creates gratitude. Our blessings are always in the present, whereas the taking for granted syndrome takes us out of the present, into imaginary future scenarios.

As we disidentify with the thought mind, this deeper being reveals itself more powerfully, like the blue sky as clouds dissipate.

The three states are abstraction, absorption, and awareness. Through every day of our lives, we shift in and out of these states. At any given time, we are always in at least one of the states and sometimes in a combination.

You have chosen to start your day in absorption rather than in awareness.

Thought chatter is simply a process that takes place inside our minds. Our bodies are full of physiological processes, such as the beating of our hearts, the circulation of our blood, and the digestion of our food. Thought chatter is just another type of process. Rather than taking place in our hearts or our blood vessels, it takes place in our hea

In particular, this bleak philosophical outlook describes reality as it appears through the taking for granted syndrome, which switches off our attention to the beauty and wonder of life. In addition, the outlook stems from an aberrational state of duality, created by strong ego boundaries that cause a sense of separation. This brings a feeling of