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I once had a friend whose beautiful white Samoyed, worked as a support dog in a children’s hospital.
One day a father urgently stopped them in the hallway, desperately, he begged them to come to his daughter’s room.
She had been in a coma for months.
Nothing had helped.
Nothing had reached her.
The dog walked in, and without hesitation jumped onto her bed and pressed his nose right into hers.
And that afternoon… she woke up.
Later she said, she didn’t even know she’d been in a coma.
Just that suddenly this dog’s snout pierced the bubble into her world, and disrupted something, it broke the state she’d been trapped in.
I think about that story often.
Because I work with people who want to change something in their lives, who say they are ready, and yet they fall back into their patterns again and again.
And keep suffering.
Not because they’re weak.
Not because they don’t care.
But because they don’t know they’re in the comatose state of their own minds.
They don’t know they’re inside a loop.
Sometimes I wish I could push my nose into their bubble and wake them up.
How can I disturb the pattern enough that something in them wakes up?
How do I break the state?
Gently, clearly, so that they can see the cage they’ve mistaken for the whole world?
I have to be careful doing it through words, because they can easily get twisted in the mind.
And that’s what I want to discuss today.
Because becoming aware is no small matter.
It’s a matter of interruption — simply breaking a habit.
The habit of familiarity.
And like any habit, it takes attention to break it.
And that’s where this begins.
At some point it became really clear how suffering isn’t coming from the outside world, but from our minds' interpretation of it.
Life is just being life, unfolding the way life unfolds.
Isn’t it?
But we only experience happiness when what happens, matches what we wanted to happen.
Check for yourself, isn’t that the case?
So we spend much of our lives trying to control outcomes, trying to arrange life to match our preferences.
But that’s simply how life unfolded in that moment. No reason, just life.
The meaning comes from inside us, from the mind.
It struck me that most of us don’t question our inside world …and whether it’s trustworthy.
Let's have a look...
Because if we don’t see the architecture of the mind clearly, nothing will ever change.
We don’t just experience life, we organize it.
We assign meaning.
Over time, those meanings harden into assumptions and presumptions.
In other words, a bias.
I like this, not that.
This is good. That’s bad.
This matters. That doesn’t.
Basically, I want it to happen this way to get through my day/my life.
And eventually, we stop seeing life as it is, and start seeing everything through the lens of our bias.
And even if intellectually we can understand we are seeing life through this filter, we don’t automatically escape it.
But why?
This is important!
The system that traps us, is the same one that convinces us we’re choosing freely.
Here is the fascinating part.
It's such a brilliant design.
It keeps us locked into our existing reality.
To the life we have, even if we might want to expand it.
It does this through the cunning trickery and wizardry of…
LOGIC.
Yup. We logicize our way to never changing.
You don’t have to believe any of this.
But try and stay open as you read.
Just try to notice your own mind at work.
Let me explain...
When making a decision, you think you assessed the situation and made a rational or logical assessment.
But really you just asked the very system designed to preserve the status quo, to tell you how to change it.
And this is where we get stuck.
We ask the mind how to change — when the mind’s entire job is to keep things the same!
It’s like asking the guard of a prison how to escape.
Their answers will lead you back inside.
The guard doesn’t need to drag you in, he just has to convince you it’s logical to return.
It works because logic feels responsible, familiar, and safe.
It’s why people feel smart while staying stuck.
They say, “It’s okay — I used logic.”
Hear this part …
It's tough to grasp so let's go slow…
Letting the mind help you change, actually goes beyond its range of possibility.
The mind is a closed system — it can only work with what it already knows.
It can’t perceive anything outside of itself, so it can’t guide you somewhere new.
The mind doesn’t stop you from changing out of resistance.
It stops you because, it can’t see beyond itself.
So it offers you the only thing it knows how to give; the familiar.
To the mind, going beyond itself equals non-existence, because it cannot exist anywhere else…
And since it doesn’t want to disappear, it keeps your attention focused on it.
Can you see that?
That the mind can’t know anything beyond itself?
So when you have an opportunity to change your life, to live differently, to free yourself from being limited by the mind, and you actually begin to change, you will only get so far before your mind convinces you, with a very logical reason, to walk yourself right back in behind the prison walls and lock the gate behind you.
And you feel completely satisfied doing this because it felt logical.
Meaning familiar, meaning rational.
Two steps forward, two steps back.
Think about how you make decisions.
Do you wrestle with an option until you finally rationalize it?
But rationalize it into what?
Into something that feels logical?
Something that feels reasonable?
And doing so keeps you exactly where you are.
The mind is subtle.
It doesn’t block change outright.
It lets you taste it — just enough to feel hopeful — then folds it back into what it already knows.
That’s why insight alone doesn’t free us.
The realization gets absorbed, and quietly turned back into habit.
Have you ever had a moment of clarity where you think, “Ah. That’s it. I see it now”, and you decide to change?
Then at some point, the quiet wizardry of the mind pulls you back into the same internal loop so subtly you don’t notice it happening.
I really care about people getting this. I want you to fully live life. Not as a problem to solve, but as something to be lived.
For some people, it takes a genuine heart-to-heart for this to land.
And in the moment, they’re lit up.
They feel something.
They say yes they want to shift.
And then…then it fades away.
Not because anything dramatic happened, but because life resumed.
Distractions.
The familiar rhythms of their days. The spark fades as they slip back into routines.
Yet I’ve noticed something interesting...
If the same person were offered something that fit their mind’s survival story, more money, more visibility, more status, they would drop everything.
Clear their schedule.
Show up fully.
No hesitation.
Which tells me something important: It’s not that they don’t want to change. It’s that the mind only recognizes certain changes as “important.”
And anything that doesn’t fit that internal map gets quietly deprioritized.
Here’s how it usually happens...
Something appears — a conversation, an invitation, a practice, a person — that could genuinely change your life.
You have intention to change.
But the mind is right there with the familiar and logical to do list.
You don’t realize what just happened but you are back to life as normal.
Listen to this…
The mind didn’t sabotage you.
It did exactly what it’s designed to do: keep you safe inside what it already knows.
Within the parameters of how much of life it’s comfortable with you experiencing.
Which means change will feel like what?
Unfamiliar.
Uncomfortable.
Your usual emotional measures can’t apply here.
To change, you may have to step into a new emotional territory.
And..
It will feel illogical.
Let that settle for a moment.
So if logic and your feelings both defend the prison… How do we get out?
Well, the answer is so simple, we miss it.
Ok...
We find our logic through “thought’ and we discussed that that is the trap.
Now ask yourself “Am I always thinking”?
You know you have thoughts, but are you always thinking?
Test it, right now.
Focus really hard on this.
Be curious what your next thought is going to be...
You had awareness that you were waiting for your next thought, right?
But no thought came.
You didn't disappear when there was no thought.
In fact you might have even become more aware.
So if the awareness remains and the thoughts come and go, it means you can’t be the thoughts.
Because you don’t disappear then reappear when a thought comes.
No, ‘you” are constant.
So what are you when you're not thinking?
You’re still aware right.
So you must be something to do with that.
In fact our awareness is ever present. We just collapse that awareness with the thoughts.
You, in a sense, became the thought, or, more commonly described as saying, "I got lost in the thought."
What got lost… your awareness.
Me realising I am always that awareness, and not the fantasies of my thoughts, is the act of waking up from that day dream.
Waking up in a dream, knowing that I'm in a dream is called lucid dreaming. And realizing I’m the awareness, in this life, could be called lucid waking, no?
The distortions of the mind still continue but you don’t collapse into them.
And that's the escape route.
The only way to be out of the prison is to already be out.
This part of you was never trapped, awareness doesn't get trapped, you collapse awareness with the thing that is the trap.
Breath, reflect…
Remaining in the logic trap is just habit.
And it’s the reason your life is lived inside a loop.
Habit just means you're doing what you're doing without awareness.
This is where it becomes very simple.
Thich Nhat Hanh said it best
“You have an appointment with life”
Life is here, where the body is, not in the dimension of thought.
Unless we have mindfulness, we are missing the appointment we made to be here with life.
Let that sink in.
Imagine you made an appointment with life, but instead of experiencing it directly, you’re watching it through the filter of the mind, commentating on it.
Interpreting it, adding meaning, twisting it, wishing it were different, regretting.
So much noise.
Let this affect you…
It should affect you.
That's why his simple mantra is so powerful.
As you breath in, say:
I’m aware that I’m breathing in.
As you breath out say:
I’m aware that I’m breathing out.
Try it right now…
It brings you to where your body is, not scattered in the turbulence of the mind.
Now you can actually be here and fully connect with life.
Which brings us to the final turn: the moment where the trap dissolves.
You don’t have to "fix" the mind. You don’t have to outsmart it, out-logic it, or wrestle it into clarity.
Just notice.
That’s it.
Every moment you notice…you’re out of the loop.
You're free from it.
But, and this is a big but, don’t look for a feeling to confirm that something changed…
A lot of people stumble here.
The very impulse to check, “Am I progressing? Do I feel different yet?”, comes from the habit you’re trying to dissolve.
If you give that query any attention at all, it’s already got you, the trap has begun.
You have to just leave it alone completely.
The part of you that wants to measure progress can only measure thoughts and feelings.
It has no capacity to measure awareness. Because it is separate from awareness.
So when you try to use the mind, to verify a shift that happens beyond the mind, it will always find its way back to:
“Nothing is happening,”
or
“See this crap doesn't work”
This is why the hardest part of real change isn’t effort—it’s not checking.
It's staying firm on the course without constantly checking for progress
And this is why every tradition talks about faith, trust, and commitment.
Not because they’re mystical ideas, but because the system you’re transcending has no instrument to confirm progress.
If you keep asking the mind for proof, it will either discourage you…or encourage you just enough to later reclaim control.
So the practice isn’t feeling different.’ It is noticing.
And letting that be enough.
Every moment you’re aware, even for a breath, the walls soften. The trap dissolves. Awareness doesn’t need to fight the mind.
It just needs to remain.
Evolution isn’t only something that happens to the body. It can happen internally.
The word Buddha means to be above the mind, not trapped inside it.
Below the mind is instinct, like an animal nature, unaware that it’s unaware.
Above the mind is awareness.
But most of us live inside the mind.
And that’s the only place suffering exists.
To rise above it isn’t to become something new.
It’s simply to be aware.
To step out of the habit of being lost in thought.
You don’t have to achieve it.
You don’t have to perfect it.
You only have to let go of the idea that you're not already there.
The chain back to the prison is logic and the moment you see that — really see it — the whole thing collapses.
The locks, the walls, the stories…
Because the moment you’re aware of the loop, you're no longer inside it.
The moment you notice the thought, you’re not the thought.
Become aware before thoughts become actions.
Because it's the actions you repeat that give you the life you have.
So the moment you realize you've been pulled back into the prison, you can be at ease, because you know the door was never locked.
You were never really trapped.
Just asleep inside a story your biology was telling you.
Wake up!
Be present with this moment.
Then another.
That’s all this is.
Remembering that life is right here,
Right now.
—Paul
P.S. We covered a lot! And this subject might have raised some questions. You can submit them here, and I will answer them for you.
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