A Primer on How to Have a Good Summer
- Andrea Fiondo
- Jun 1
- 7 min read
Sat Nam, and Welcome in,
Summer starts in two weeks! June 20 is the date of the summer solstice; we hope you’ve got something special planned if you celebrate the date! We are grateful to be booked for a private gong immersion.
We have new hours beginning June 19, more on that is available in another email/blog/newsletter.
I like to write stuff. It helps me organize my thoughts. I will never need to use AI to generate these blog posts, because I just love to write them. If you like to read them, leave me a heart at the bottom.
This blog is about How to Have a Good Summer.
A few weeks ago, during one of those 70 degree days in April, there was this thought: Let us have a good summer. Put another way, I want to have a good summer. Or, may the Summer be a good one.
We all want that right? Here in Michigan, we really appreciate good weather for a few months each year, and we are bound and determined to HAVE FUN in it.
What does this mean? For the most part, it means, deep down, we want peace. We want love, joy and peace. It’s the human condition to seek for these things. Why? Because Peace is our essential nature, we have just forgotten this. It is the essential nature of all creation, all forms, all levels of consciousness/awareness/energy. If it weren’t, we would not be aware of it, we would not seek it out, we would not be aware of the possibility.
How can we “achieve” this? The vast majority of people spend their whole lives setting up outside circumstances to try to achieve this. Enough money, enough comfort, enough of the right sort of people, and we will be peaceful, joyful and happy. How’s that working out so far?
It doesn’t work. You can have it all, and life will derail you.
We can’t achieve what we already ARE. What we can do is remove the obstacles that appear to be in the way of our realization that we ARE happiness, joy and peace.
(As non-dualists, we don't subscribe to the belief of a separate self, but to address any issue with something other than silence, we propose for the moment that we are a separate Self.)
What are the obstacles?
Thoughts, beliefs, and feelings.
Like the MAGA supporters like to say, in another way to “own the libs,” F+ck your feelings.
It’s hilarious (in that cosmic way that non-duality reveals about duality) that they are both very wrong to say this, as it is mean, insensitive and malicious, and very right to say this, as feelings taken too seriously will be obstacles to our essential nature (peace).
Deeper understandings of reality always disarm the painful side of things.
In LIFE, shit happens. You are going to feel all kinds of feelings while you’re alive and present. You are going to experience the depths of despair, the pains of the body, the sheer terror of fear, and the anxiety of separation. Yep. You’re built to feel your feelings. Can you see why a thing might actually sign up for this? Brave!
You are also going to have what appear to be huge problems. One way or another, life check mates us. If it hasn’t yet, it will. If it has, be glad…you now know one of life’s greatest truths…the little you cannot win this game. As long as we believe we are a Person inside here, we are vulnerable to anger, depression, anxiety and misery. And we make others miserable as well. Misery loves company.
Most of the people I know, who know about enlightenment, and yet have zero interest in it, are of the same breed: the dream they are having is the one they are fully and entirely conditioned to believe is their birthright. Why would I want to wake up from what is REALITY for me — I earned this! I like it here!
They are on both sides of the spectrum, as viewed from the middle where most of us are. They are, on one side, incredibly fortunate in that they are independently wealthy, they live in comfortable conditions, they are loved and love others, and they are grateful to be alive. They have all kinds of thoughts, beliefs and feelings, which they think make up who they are, so invariably they have some sort of regimen to be in denial of most of it. They drink, they do drugs, they spend money, they obsess about their body, or their work, or whatever outside thing gives them a sense of power, agency, and worth.
On the other side, they are deep in their nightmare. They are addicted to one thing or another, and no other way of living seems possible. They are chronically, painfully, deeply unconscious of the power they possess. There is no way out for them. They are locked inside themselves. This Person Prison.
Either way, their true nature is obscured by their thoughts, beliefs and feelings.
F+ck your beliefs. If you believe things are exactly the way you were conditioned to believe things are, you are in a kind of prison. If the prison is nice, you won’t want to leave, which is fine, that’s the way 99% of us are. We have many lives. All is well.
Jesus saw the prison his people, all people, were in. He broke free. The teachings he brought were not understood. Even most of his own disciples did not get it. They just made a new prison. They did not achieve liberation. Jesus came to free us all from the bondage of religion. Of limiting belief systems. The kingdom (freedom) of God (the Truth) is within YOU (the form).
We are a vehicle (a self) used to hide from our true nature, until we lose that self/vehicle, and then find it again. Jesus taught, in John 3:3: Verily I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.
This verse has been completely misunderstood. A whole bunch of powerful thoughts and beliefs and feelings rose up around it and continue to make people miserable even 2000 years later. It’s not that thoughts and beliefs aren’t real. It’s that they create a usually false reality.
From Tim Rice in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, Jesus said: “To conquer death (the root of all fear), you only have to to die.”
John 12:24-25:
Verily I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto eternal life.
(See also Luke 9:23-24)
True LIFE is found through surrender, sacrifice (the putting aside of one’s own desires) and spiritual rebirth (enlightenment, or even death), which ultimately leads to resurrection.
True life is found in the absence of fear. In the absence of fear, you have spaciousness. You have peace.
If you first believe that you have certain rights, and next you believe you are being deprived of them, you will become angry and resentful and bitter.
If we blame the outside world, which is what 99% of humans have done for millennia, what do we gain? No peace. No joy, no love, no freedom from fear.
Mind jumps in—-well how do we effect change if we don’t act to change this outside world?
Oh, we will act. You will act, in accordance with what the present moment brings to you. If you bring your full awareness and power, always, to the present moment and what it requires of you, you will be in Right Action. It’s everything right there. Trust that if you stay conscious in the eternal NOW, and the infinite HERE, you will do the right thing. You won’t need to think much. You won’t need to feel that much, or engage in philosophical belief systems designed to limit your actions. You will just do. It will be great. You may die, but that’s the worst of it. It’s okay. You both do die and don’t die. It’s okay.
F+ck your thoughts. They are happening to you, and through you…they are not you. Thoughts cannot tell you who you are, they cannot be what you are. They come in, they sit down, they are entertained by you for as long as they entertain you. Then they go. And get replaced with new thoughts. 99% of which are unnecessary, irrelevant, unhelpful and inaccurate. Why take them so seriously? They are making you insane.
Consider the poem by Rumi:
The Guest House
This human being is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture.
Still, treat each guest honorably.
She may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
Because each has been sent
As a guide from beyond.
-Rumi-
So, if you want to have a good summer, you absolutely can! Apply your prodigious thinking skills to awareness of the present moment. It is always, always, always ONLY now. What is required of you NOW? Apply your feelings to right here, right now. You are always right HERE. You are never anywhere else. It is always, always always only HERE that exists. Be where you are!! It is in your essential nature to respond with peace, happiness and joy.
Look around, look around at nature, at all of the 10,000 things. There is so much to see, to hear, to taste, smell, touch! You have a brain, and a marvelous nervous system, designed to see the beauty in all things. Get out there and see the beauty.
The only appropriate reaction to everything around you is gratitude.
It’s all God. (Another word for Reality)
Even the crushing pain of our preferences not being met, it’s God.
Even the seemingly unbearable heaviness of circumstances, it’s God.
You are not your preferences, your opinions, your judgements, your ideas, your thoughts, your emotional reactions, your belief systems or your body/mind.
You are what is aware of those things. YOU ARE THE PRESENT MOMENT and SPACE.
Therein lies the eternal, the peaceful heaven/sky/kingdom/spaciousness, the infinite nature of your Being.
And you share this eternal, infinite, peaceful nature with all things, all forms, in this universe.
Understand and embrace this, and everything else falls into place for you.
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