Greetings everyone. Well, it finally happened. I had my first encounter with losing a post!
Last night at around 11:30 pm, I finished part two of the belief exercise. I posted it with an affiliate banner I was trying out and it went a little haywire (Duane was the only witness to the mess), so I decided to take a short break and come back to it. Well somehow in my tired and cognitively compromised state, I deleted it.
I was going to post it today but decided to wait until tomorrow because I am teaching a bicycle safety/maintenance course with some colleagues at the local YMCA kids clubs and I’m not in the let’s-look-deep-into-our-other-than-conscious-mind-and-see-how-we-are-creating-our-lives kind of mood!
Today is more about learning how to ride a bike in less than a half an hour without training wheels, The ABC quick check and how not to get killed or maimed while riding.
Since however we will be teaching the kids about safety and the importance of protecting their brains with a helmet, I thought I would talk to you a bit about protecting the brain.
I’m not talking about wearing a helmet though. You are all big boys and girls and know the benefts (avoiding mood and mind disorders, cognitive impairment, being in a vegetative state, etc) and the drawbacks (not looking cool, messing your hair up if you still have any, being hot) of wearing a helmet.
I am talking about protecting our brains from this superficial and frenzied culture that seems to be fixated on immediate gratification and an insatiable appetite for fun and thrills.
I’m talking about a culture whose people are rapidly falling into two categories:
Impulsive and Compulsive
We want it all and we want it now! In fact, if you listen you can here the matra.
BIGGER! BETTER! FASTER! MORE! NOW! NOW! NOW!
We are really messing with our brains. Especially the brains of our children!
When I say brain, I include the body because they are inseparable, two sides of the same coin.
TV, iPods, Blackberrys, violent video games; a diet that is high in simple sugars, additives, preservatives, trans-fats and low in protein, whole grains, fruit, vegetables, fiber and healthy fats; violent movies, pornography, a constant negative and cortisol-raising stream of words and images from the media. The list goes on and on.
Are we insane? Are we addicted? Are we making ourselves and our children fat, scattered, unfulfilled, easily distractible and dumb with the things we consume through our mouths, skin, lungs and our sense organs. Are we making ourselves and our children physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually inflamed and imbalanced?
That depends on you…
Are you feeding your brain a healthy diet?
Choose well to be well!
End of transmission. Sorry for the rant but sometimes we just have to let things roll and see where they stop.
Kind regards,
A
Today I want to ask two questions that arose after an interesting experience in which I watched, in real-time, myself experience the urge/impulse to be dishonest about something.
It wasn’t being dishonest in the sense of telling a lie to someone but more of a laziness in which I could get time credited for work I did not do yet but could do later. In other words, I could have not done the full amout of work but got credit anyway and then made it up later. No harm no foul because it would all even out in the end. Right?
I would like to think this little devil popped up on my shoulder because I was tired and not feeling well; because I wanted to get home and back to working on this course and to possibly get a workout in. Maybe I was just in a lazy mood or maybe, just maybe, deep at heart I’m a just a dishonest slacker.
Honestly, I don’t know and it really doesn’t matter. I did not do it. I stayed and worked. I always suck it up and do the right thing in the end.
Seems that over the last few years of practicing Zen, I seem to have awoken a powerful discipline that never leaves me. I have been told one must have discipline to practice Zen. But my experience is that the initial investment of discipline pays generous dividends. You receive more than you give.
It dawned on me that that is how life is, how most things in life are. You just have to show up. In the case of my practice, it is showing up to the cushion in the spare bedroom that is now my “meditation room”. For this course, it is getting in front of that damned computer AGAIN and doing what we made a commitment to do. Whether we are training for a race or just trying to get in and stay in shape, the hardest part is getting off our asses, putting on our gear and hitting the trail or the gym. Afterwards, we almost always have that sense of , “Wow, I am so glad I did that, I feel so much better!”
What is it that makes us do the right thing and not be lazy? What makes us show up at our computers or the gym or our kid’s non-vital game when we just aren’t in the mood to listen to gossipy parents and we can (so to speak) get away with it?
Is it character? Once again, I don’t know! But that not-knowing led me to the two questions I am about to ask all of you:
1. What is character?
2. What is the real way to build character?
I have a few answers, but not “The Answer”, as that would be arrogant and a symptom of a limited mind that has one foot in the grave. Best to keep your “don’t-know mind” as one Zen master put it, or as Suzuki Roshi put it, your “beginners mind.”
Well that is the end of this transmission. It is late and I am babbling.
I just realized, that I have given you homework two days in a row and have more in store. What has Kevin done to me?!
Until next time…
Kind regards,
Anthony
Today, we are going to do something practical, powerful and effective. We are going to do a simple exercise to help us uncover and clarify some of our beliefs.
Many of us have discussed beliefs in variety of our blogs, so I thought it might be helpful to dig a little deeper within and do some much needed exploring. We can keep talking about beliefs in the theoretical sense or we can get down to business and see a big part of what makes us tick on an unconscious level.
If we do this, if we take this journey together but also as individuals, I am certain that when we return we will be able to speak and write on this topic with an authenticity that is based on personal experience and therefore, understanding.
After all, how can we change our destructive, limiting or outdated beliefs and make the changes we want in our lives if we aren’t clear on what it is we believe? We don’t need to focus so much on the “why” of our beliefs to change them. But we definitely need to get to the “what” of them so we can effectively graduate to the ”how” of understanding and making positive changes.
There will be three parts to this exercise. The first part we’ll do today, the second probably in a few days and the third when we are ready. Although this exercise is very simple, it does require some time, thought and effort. I have done it a few times and had some very powerful and life changing shifts in consciousness and behavior as a result.
The insights that one can gain from this are priceless and well worth the investment of time and energy. So do yourself a favor and don’t squander this opportunity!
Before you begin this exercise, get some paper and something to write with. I’ll wait right here!
Back? Okay, now let’s get started.
Start by writing down as many answers as you can think of to the following:
I am…
Life is…
Success is…
People are…
Relationships are…
Money is…
The world is…
Being healthy is…
If there are any other areas of your life that are troubling you, please add them to the above list and do the same.
It is important to answer these questions honestly and without too much analysis. If you are concerned with the privacy of your answers, then keep them somewhere safe and out of sight. I actually had an incident where someone close to me read one of my answers to a question in the second part of the exercise and was very hurt and dismayed.
Fear not on the first part of this exercise. The second and third parts do ask you to get much more personal, so if need be, treat it like a diary and put it away.
In addition, do not give the answers you think you should give or would like to give such as: ”The world is a beautiful and friendly place,” or ”People are my brothers and sisters,” or ”I am perfect and whole,” or any other New Age, positive affirmation type answer. I’m not saying that your answers need to be dark, just that they should be real!
The way it was explained to me was that if we really thought these things and deeply believed them, then we would have much different results in our lives!
When I was given this exercise by one of my teachers, I was instructed to continue to add to the lists over a weeks period and to even carry around a few 3×5 index cards and something to write with in case some sudden realization came up.
Well, that is the end of this transmission. As a reminder, because I think it bears repeating, please don’t gloss over this extremely powerful exercise and underestimate its profound potential for creating quick, deep and lasting change. I know many of you have done quite a bit of reading and have learned from some great teachers and mentors, but I promise you that if you do all three parts of this exercise, you will be amazed at what you discover!
Until next time…
Kind Regards,
A
Today we are going to get back on track and resume our discussion on looking within to see how we create our reality and what we can do to change our unhelpful beliefs. I have had the privilege to read many great blogs from this group and one of the reoccurring themes has been how our beliefs are one of the primary driving factors in how we create our lives, our reality or for you sales and marketing experts (which is all of us for the time being), what motivates us to buy.
Beliefs are extremely powerful and we cling to them til the bitter end, even when they don’t serve us or are just blatantly wrong.
In other words…
We don’t believe what we see. We see what we believe! And we’d rather be right than happy!
Let’s get started.
We all have an internal processing system that takes what we experience and processes in a variety of ways. This processing is what makes our life. This system evolved as we grew up and its primary goal was to keep us safe in the context of our family situation
If you believed something your parents didn’t want you to believe, to some degree doing so might not have been safe. If your parents were kind and loving and open-minded, they might have given you considerable leeway on what you believed. In this case, safety might not have been much of an issue. However, if they were narrow-minded, afraid, or had their own emotional issues, it might have been very unsafe to believe something they didn’t want you to believe. The same thing applies to what you thought was important, how you made decisions, and many other aspects of how you created your life. Your processing system was shaped in a way that conformed to what your parents wanted, and for some of you it would have been very unsafe to do it any other way
You created your internal processing system—your way of thinking and acting, your way of perceiving yourself, other people, and the world—in the exact way you needed to create it in order to make it through your childhood. If you had loving parents, a safe and nurturing environment, and loving mentoring, your system probably works pretty well and creates, most of the time, positive outcomes and positive emotional experiences. If you had parents who were in some way emotionally dysfunctional—parents who were afraid, angry, anxious, or abusive—if your environment was less than safe, if you didn’t receive resourceful mentoring, your system very likely creates many outcomes you don’t like and many negative emotional experiences
The more traumatic your childhood was, the more likely it is that you’ve structured your internal processing system in a way designed to avoid danger and create safety. Most children are extremely resourceful in creating an internal processing system that works in their family environment, and creates the maximum feeling of safety. However, once you leave your family, the rest of the world isn’t like your family situation, and the strategies you created during childhood very often create problems when used outside your family environment. In fact, your internal processing system will tend to attract people and situations like those in your family, and not notice other choices.
Today your internal processing system—as well as it may have worked to get you through your childhood—is giving you, at least part of the time, results you don’t want. Now, to the degree that you associate your internal processing system with safety, anything that looks like it might change it may trigger resistance in you—even if you consciously want the change. So, part of the price you have to pay to create an internal processing system that allows you to create whatever you want in life is to deal with that part of you that associates your old way of thinking and acting with safety.
That part of you, in trying to protect you from potential danger, pulls your focus, your attention, to avoiding that danger. Since your mind creates or attracts more of whatever you focus on, placing your attention on what you want to avoid is not resourceful. Instead, it causes you to create or attract more of it. In all probability, you don’t notice when you’re doing this. Your main goal then is to learn how to recognize when you’re focusing on what you don’t want, on what you are worried about, on what you’re afraid of, or on what you want to avoid—which are all pretty much the same thing—and at those times to shift your focus, consciously and intentionally, to what you do want.
That ends today’s transmission. Give it a shot. Take a look within and see what you are focusing on. Chances are if you are feeling unhappy or uncomfortable in any way, you are focusing on what you don’t want.
Until next time…
A
A friend of mine was having a bad day which brought to mind this humorous poem by the mystic poet Kabir. I shared it with him and thought since I am short on time and inspiration that I would share it with you. Enjoy and smile!
Friend, please tell me what I can do about the world
I hold on to, and keep spinning out!
I gave up sewn clothes, and wore a robe,
But I noticed one day the cloth was well woven.
So I bought some burlap, but I still
Throw it elegantly over my left shoulder.
I pulled back my sexual longings,
And now I discover that I am angy a lot.
I gave up rage, and now I notice
That I’m greedy all day.
I worked hard at dissolving the greed,
And now I am proud of myself.
While the mind wants to break its link to the world,
it still holds on to one thing!
Today was strange and fruitful day for me. One of those days where the past was mistaken for the present that never was the future it was intended to be.
Sometimes I hold onto things longer than is wise, compassionate or skillful in an attempt to be wise, compassionate and skillful. Sometimes I hold on due to some nebulous fear masquerading as something noble.
It’s in those moments when I wake up to the impermanence of things and let go that I become eternal, ephemeral, become the change itself. It’s in those moments that great joy and gratitude arise and I realize that I am that joy, that I am that gratitude, that I am the universe itself.
Today, joy is being happy because I am grateful not grateful because I am happy. Happiness is different than joy; it has a shorter shelf life. Joy is indestructible; it never leaves. It only vanishes from consciousness when we forget to be grateful.
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.
It turns what we have into enough, and more.
It turns denial ino accecptance, chaos to order,
confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast,
a house into a home and a stranger into a friend.
Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for
today and creates a vision for tomorrow.
-Melodie Beattie
Sleep well everyone,
Anthony
Welcome back everyone. Hope everyone made it a positive and productive weekend. Mine was a little crazy but my problems with the course have been solved and I should be caught up to all of you in a couple days. Kevin and I discovered that I had not received any audio or video beyond week one and that several emails with info from him also did not get through. I was wondering why I was scratching my head and feeling a bit clueless when I would check in at Vox! I was ready to pack it in. Needless to say I feel much better about the whole thing and am off to the races.
Due to the rampant pace of catching up, I will have to keep this short and finish the story tomorrow or some other time. I’d stop where I left off but that would not be how things ended up and would not explain why and how I know what I know and what I would like to do with that knowledge and experience.
So when we left off, I was living an ideal life for an single, childless guy in his twenties. Money, travel, great health, lots of friends, minor artistic success and a dream job. Part of that dream job was the three to four months I had off every winter. That meant I could travel, celebrate, and concentrate on music in the off season.
One winter my girlfriend and I started planning a three month trip to Europe. She had spent quite a bit of time there in the past and had many connections, so there was much excitement and an easy attitude about going. On a friday afternoon we decided to go to the bookstore to research some things pertaining to the trip. On the way back home, while stopped at a light, her car was rear-ended and both our lives changed forever.
One minute I was quietly reading a book and the next I was a human crash test dummy.
I don’t want to go on and on about the specifics of the accident other than the fact that I walked out of the hospital with fairly serious injuries to my wrist, jaw and spine, in addition to what I thought was just a harmless, mild concussion. That was the beginning of a quick downward spiral that lasted a number of years for me.
I learned the hard way just how delicate the human body-mind can be; how easily an imbalance or injury in one area can wreak havoc on the physical, mental and emotional condition of the entire system. I also learned just how dangerous, for all of its amazing and life saving discoveries and breakthroughs, western allopathic medicine can be with its often machine-like view of the human body, which tends to focus on treating the problem and not the person.
I’ve also learned first hand just how powerful and influential an effect the mind can have over the brain and body but more importantly that the body literally has a mind of its own.
At this point I am going to have to stop. I may or may not continue with the rest of the story next time but do hope that these last two posts have been useful to those of you who wanted to learn a little more about me. I probably wrote more than I needed but it’s still not even a fragment. I’ve never written a word about myself other than in a journal so it was an interesting and useful exercise. I suggest you all give it a go sometime if you never have. It is interesting to observe how the ego tries to wedge itself in there and tell it’s version of the story! Funny, actually!
Until next time…
Hello everyone. It is an amazingly beautiful day on the shores of Lake Erie. My heat is turned off and the windows are finally open! I am enjoying the symphony of sound that is reborn in the Spring. Birds chirping, lawn mowers buzzing in the distance, kids running around in the yard. Can’t forget to mention the sunlight. Sweet, sweet sunlight. Natures anti-depressant!
I thought that today, since it was requested, I would talk a little about myself. We are all on this ride together, some of us steering boldly, in full command and some of us…well…not so much!
Okay, back to me. Well, I am forty years old. The father of an amazingly cool, smart, talented, compassionate, humorous, hardworking, hard-playing, skateboarding, non-ADHD (they do exist if you feed them right, make them read, expose them to art and music, turn off the TV and computer and send them out to play) ten year old boy.
I am a working musician (drums, guitar). I play in two bands. One fronted by a semi-famous singer/songwriter getting back into the game and the other a purely artistic endeavor with two close, talented and creatively gifted friends.
I am student and practitioner of Zen but don’t consider myself a Buddhist. I do yoga every morning and follow it with one and a half hours of zazen (zen meditation) and do the same in the evening but only for half an hour. I am a runner and cyclist but due to injuries sustained in an auto accident, no longer do either competitively. I live near the shores of Lake Erie (the clean part) so late spring, summer and early fall are filled with as much swimming and kayaking as the weather permits and my body can handle.
My work background is primarily in promotions. In my twenties I was all about promoting and traveling. Whether I was promoting a band I was in or one I was helping, whether I was promoting my wares at the various music festvals I attended throughout the country, whether I was promoting myself to some beautiful young woman I was smitten with, I was always promoting.
Eventually all that talking and enthusiasm (one could call that being full of shit!), combined with my love of extreme sports and being a musician, landed me a job as a spokesperson for a major soft drink company. I traveled in style to various events and represented the product identity to the targeted demographic and got treated like a rock star while I was doing it. Often, when an event was cancelled or was just plain lame, I would pool my resources and assemble a last minute guerrilla event which usually went well and/or attracted media attention. Eventually, corporate got wind of this and promoted me to supervisor which allowed me to create legitimate events, hiring and collaborating with whomever I wanted.
The whole time this was going on, I was studying alternative medicine, yoga, eastern religion/philosophy, western psychology and meditation. Although I lived hard and partied hard, I also ate an organic vegetarian diet, had a loose (very loose) daily meditation practice and lived a super-healthy, environmentally conscious (before it was cool) life.
I was unstoppable and invincible… So I thought!
Well, I am going to have to stop for now. We can pick back up tomorrow where the plot thickens and the story gets a little ugly for awhile (don’t they all at some point) but segues into the present of why our paths are crossing and what I am trying to accomplish from working with all of you and of course Kevin.
Until then…
Greetings everyone. Welcome back!
Okay, let’s get right down to business.
Yesterday, when we left off we were exploring the idea of how we, based mostly on unconscious programming, are the authors of everything we are experiencing in life. In figuring this out, I suggested that we watch ourselves in action to see HOW we do this.
Personally, I have found meditation to be the most effective means to accomplish this. Over the years I have experimented with many forms but have to say that a mindfulness based approach is most effective for self-observation or taking the witness stance. There are many great books on mindfulness meditation and thousands of studies touting the physical, psychological, emotional and mental benefits one can derive from a solid, daily meditation practice. A daily meditation practice is good mental hygiene. Call it mental floss. I know, not funny but I couldn’t resist.
Now going within to take a look around is a powerful, transformative practice in and of itself but it usually takes time to establish the mindfulness to enact deep changes. Make no mistake, the changes will come and they are often miraculous. But often they are slow to take root. I liken it to a jagged rock whose rough edges are slowly smoothed by the flow of a river over time or since I live on the shores of lake Erie, like the beach glass that is worn smooth by the motion of the water.
However, this is not an article on meditation, so lets get back to business.
When I say that we are the authors of our life experiences and outcomes, I don’t mean it in the New Age sense that if you are sick or if something bad happens it is because you aren’t thinking the right thoughts or that you are putting out the wrong “vibration” to the universe. There are some good things in The Secret but people, for the most part, have “gone to hell with the joke”, as they say. Some have even gotten out their surfboard and ridden the law of attraction wave all the way to the bank. But I digress!
Things happen in life. We get diseases; there are natural disasters; we make unhealthy lifestyle choices that catch up with us when we are finally living right. The universe does what it does. Also, some of us are biologically predisposed to be a certain way physically and mentally. It is important to remove the concept of blame from all of this.
Our goal is to wake up, take responsibility, become what we want to become and live the life we want to live as our authentic self and not our habituated, unconscious, fearful self (not that there really is a self – more on that later).
I am talking about what we do with and how we respond to our external and internal experiences of the world and the hand we are dealt. We don’t control the weather or the actions of another. We don’t control the thoughts that randomly pop up in our heads or much of anything else for that matter. To put it bluntly, we don’t control shit! Even though we’d like to think so, and even though it can appear that way on occasion because we can choose how spicey to make our homeade salsa, the truth is we just don’t. Just wanted to get that out of the way.
So let’s get back to the question of how. How are we doing all of this? How are we doing anxiety? How are we doing a dysfunctional relationship? How are we doing being hoplessly single and financially strapped? How are we doing being financially successful, happily married and in shape enough to complete a triathalon for that matter.
WE ARE DOING THIS WITH OUR BELIEFS!
Everything that we have or are experiencing in life is created by our beliefs. What we believe generates how we feel, how we act, what we attract and what we are attracted to. Like I stated in yesterdays blog, most of this is unconscious, so we don’t realize we are doing it. We may know that we engage in certain unskilful behaviors, may know we are an asshole to the guy at the gym for some strange and mysterious reason, may know that we can be selfish or unkind in certain circumstances, may know we drink too much when we go out with certain friends. We are aware intellectually but not consciously, in real time, so we usually can’t do anything about it that is lasting.
Once we learn to look within and see how our beliefs are creating our lives, we will not be able to believe the ones that don’t serve us. Let’s face it, most people don’t even know what they believe or why they believe what they believe or whether or not what they believe is even worth believing. Most people don’t go inside to see how their beliefs generate the results they are getting in life.
Well, that is the end of today’s transmission. Next time, we will look more closely at beliefs and how we can identify and eventually change them to serve us.
Until next time…
Kind Regards,
Anthony
Many people struggle with certain areas of their lives. Even more struggle with life in general. How do they do that?
Notice that I didn’t ask why?
In the midst of our often hectic and seemingly frustrating lives (or for the more self-aware, seemingly hectic and frustrating moments) we often, sometimes habitually, find ourselves asking many “why” questions. We wonder why we do what we do. We wonder why others do what they do. We wonder why things are the way they are. We wonder why we are getting what we are getting. We wonder why we feel the way we feel and think the way we think.
WHY, WHY, WHY!
Please don’t misunderstand. I am not lashing out at or rejecting genuine curiosity. How else would we understand many of the infinite mysteries of the universe. But eventually, if you want to make progress, you must get to the question of HOW. Einstein may have started out asking “why”, but to formulate the Theory of Relativity, and to present it to the world, he eventually had to ask “how” questions.
If we want to get something different or to feel different, if we want to be different, we have to “do” different. That seems like common sense, but how (pun intended) do we do it.
The first thing we must do is realize that we are creating what we are getting and experiencing in life. Don’t misunderstand, this is NOT, I repeat, NOT about blame. IT IS ABOUT RESPONSIBILITY.
If you are broke, lonely, unsatisfied, anxious, in a relationship that doesn’t work or just uncomfortable in general, you have to realize that you are, in some unintentional and other-than-conscious way, creating that. Call it running on auto-pilot. You may not know how you are doing it but there is something going on internally that is making it happen.
You can sit around, wonder why and come up with some insightful and intricate stories and theories that over time can become downright exquisite, even impressive. You could probably write one hell of a book with your brilliant discoveries. However, that in and of itself is not conducive to creating change. At least not expedited, deep and lasting change. It ends up being an ego reinforcing exercise that just distracts you from leaving your comfort zone. It is just that other-than-conscious, dysfunctional part of you buying time until it can figure out another way to hijack your best intentions and keep you in your, and this is the insane part, comfort zone which is giving birth to your discomfort. The Buddhists have a word for it. They call it samsara. It is just a never ending cycle of dissatisfaction that sustains and perpetuates itself. Yikes!
So your job is to see How you are doing this. Watch yourelf. How do you do being broke? How do you do being angry? How do you do being lonely? How do you do being in an abusive relationship when you know you can do better? How do you do overindulging when you know what the after effects are going to be? How do you take the dead end path when you know where it leads? How do you do ____? HOW, HOW, HOW!!! Okay, you get the point!
In order to do this you have to look within. REALLY look within. This is not usually pretty or easy or fun at first, but with the right attitude it can be an exciting adventure. Think of it as a treasure hunt with the REAL you, the AUTHENTIC you being the treasure.
Well that is the end of today’s transmission. Happy hunting and stay tuned for more. Also, please take this to heart because it comes directly from my heart via the hearts of the many amazing teachers I’ve had and have in my life. Until next time…
Kind Regards,
Anthony
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