a letter to my friend alan

A Letter to my Friend Alan

You’ll find this to be a somewhat surprising departure from my usual style of writing. That’s because it’s a letter written to my friend Alan Brooks that I didn’t think anyone else would see but him. That’s why you’ll be surprised to see such a gracious gentleman as me using the word “fuck.”

I wrote the letter in reply to Alan’s request that I explain how to practice the John Sherman method, and specifically how to do it in a way that can enable a person to detach from the drama of an event and be aware of themselves as presence alone.

Here's the letter:

Dear Alan,

I have the advantage of having had listened to almost everything that John Sherman has taught. So I know the gig, you might say.

And here’s the thing. All John ever tells folks to do is this: “Whenever it occurs to you to do so, stop for a second and look at this feeling of presence that is always the same.”

The only thing he wants to get people to do is to over and over and over and over and over and over again, fifty times a day, each and every day, day after day after day, repeatedly, every single time you think of it, “Look at the fact that you’re here, that you exist, that you’re being, that you’re present, that you’re absolutely certain that you exist."

Now, something absolutely impossible to describe or explain happens OVER TIME when you keep noticing you exist many times a day for several months running. John never describes or explains what that is because it’s totally impossible to do so, number one; and number two, it wouldn’t do you any good anyway. Only the looking to see that you’re certain you exist as often as possible for several months will do the work, will work the magic, produce the miracle, eliminate the suffering, increase peace and harmony and ease and so on.

Alright, but here’s what happens. Nobody’s content to simply accept that and just keep doing it and quit fucking around with anything else. I’m talking about what I hear his students continuously bothering him with at his meetings. They don’t want to just keep noticing they exist countless times a day for months on end. No. What they want to do is USE this presence/existence thing to FIX some crap that’s going on in their lives; or to get free or immune or unaffected or as you put it detached from some drama-shit into just the awareness of presence.

They’re ALWAYS asking him questions like that. And every single time he says exactly the same thing. “Don’t be concerned with changing the crap or controlling it or taming it or getting free of it or getting detached from it or not being affected by it or bothering with it in any way whatsoever at all, because none of any of it is in the least bit problematic. So leave it all alone and let it be whatever the fuck it wants to be, and turn your attention instead to just one thing and one thing alone ------ LOOKING AT THE FACT THAT YOU’RE ALWAYS ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THAT YOU EXIST ---- and don’t worry about the fact that you can’t sleep or you hate your wife or your obsessed with food or your addicted to narcotics or you can’t stop worrying or, or, or, or, or ------ John doesn’t care one jot about any of that and always says that none of it matters one jot; because right in the midst of any of that you can still notice that you’re certain that you exist.

Now, I told you yesterday that I knew I would run into problems if I talked too much about my own personal experiences, because what happens then is that I end up describing how things are for me that happen to be the result of looking at my existence or beingness or presence, already 10,000 times by now; and there’s no way for anyone to get to the way I now experience things as a result of that, EXCEPT by noticing THEIR OWN existence 10,000 times THEMSELVES. They can’t get there any other way. There are no shortcuts. There’s nothing that I can explain or describe, there’s no “how to” process I can devise, that can evoke the quality of experience that you can only arrive at by seeing that you certainly exist at least 10,000 times and more.

Much Love,

Ben

This is a link to my “Extraordinary Experience” (an essay)

This is a link to John’s September 6, 2008 Teaching (a recording)

This is a link to John’s Website where you can access all his Teachings at no charge