Archive for September, 2008

By Seamus Anthony

We all face plenty of problems in life, but most of them can be overcome if we take to them like a Samurai takes to battle with his sword.

Be Objective

If you let your emotions over ride you, then you set yourself up for failure. Use your mind to pierce to the heart of the problem, making sure to recognise any hang-ups you may have that may cloud your judgment. Ask others around you to give you an outsider’s perception into events; it is often amazing how influenced we are by our own preconceived ideas about any situation.

Find Out The Facts

Don’t just accept the facts as you understand them from your own point of view. Go to lengths to understand what other facts may exist that you have missed or that others may have kept from you. Again, ask around, what are others aware of that you are not? This information could be the decisive element that wins the battle for you.

Have Fortitude

By Seamus Anthony

Once a young man called Snoozer sat dozing in his favourite spot at the bottom of a great mountain.

All of a sudden he was rudely awakened by a foot poking him in the ribs.

“Hey man! What’s up?! Snoozer demanded. He looked up through sleepy eyes to see an older man grinning down at him as if he had just thought of an extremely funny joke.

“I’ll tell you what’s up – the answer to all of your prayers, that’s what!”, chuckled the old man.

“What are you talking about, Old Dude?” Snoozer asked, not really wanting to know. Just what he needed, some old crackpot getting in his face. Snoozer scrambled to his feet and started making moves to leave.

“Not so fast! First you listen to me.” Old Dude said “I live at the top of the mountain, and from up there I can see everything very clearly. Each day I look down to see you wasting away your youth sleeping all the time, so I thought I’d walk down and let you know that if you venture up to the top of the mountain with me, there you’ll find the answer to all your prayers!”

By Steve Mills

For most of our daily life, we are completely saturated with ideas and messages that do not originate from ourselves. Walk down the street and you are bombarded with advertisements, sit down on the internet and you are quickly mind boggled by the sheer amount of content available. The modern world has provided us with access to information that would be beyond the wildest dreams of someone even 20 years ago.

The paradox is with access to so much information about other things; we have become detached from a large amount of knowledge and wisdom about ourselves. There are so many distractions available, and so many different types of media to consume. The very fact that we may have to sit alone, with our own thoughts for even 30 minutes fills most people with a small sense of dread.

I am sure that this is not the natural state of human consciousness. In the past, you would assume that there were vast stretches of time, once food and shelter had been looked after, that men and women would be able to sit around and think. In this time they would have the power to consciously address the contents of their minds, rather than let themselves run on autopilot, never really exploring the depths of their inner life.

Here’s three great personal development articles that are worth a look:

How to Climb Up the Ladder of Healing and Growth

Ari Koinuma gives us a short and a long version of this post. Having the attention span of a gnat, I went for the shorter version first but in fact the full essay makes more sense (although if I were Ari, I’d steer clear of calling something an essay, makes the schoolboy in me want to run a mile).

The concept he is exploring is that we are at any one time set to a default state-of-mind that appears on a scale of what he terms a “healing/growth spectrum”. This idea will be great for systematic minds that like classifications, numbers and graphs. That’s the complete opposite of how my brain works, but still I really enjoyed this post. Ari has good storytelling skills and the guts to reveal information about his personal journeys. And as a new father, I was especially interested in the idea of young children starting out at a fairly positive level, then moving up or down according to what cards life deals them. Definitely worth a look.

By Seamus Anthony

You will never, ever achieve enlightenment.

I will never, ever achieve enlightenment.

The Buddha did not achieve it.

Nor did Jesus.

Nor did Mohamed.

Nor did Lao Tzu.

Nor did Osho.

Nor did Alan Watts, Thomas Merton, Krishnamurti, Chogyam Trungpa, The Maharashi, Rudolf Steiner, Douglas Harding, Mother Theresa, Brad Warner, Deepack Chopra or Eckhart Tolle.

In fact nobody in the history of the world has ever achieved enlightenment.

And nobody ever will.

How can I say this?

Because enlightenment is not something you achieve, it’s something that you realise.

That might just be a little nit-picky matter of one word, but I believe it makes a lot of difference. Why? Because it changes your whole focus. My advice (not that you asked for it) is stop trying to achieve enlightenment (whatever that means to you anyway) and just let that shit go.

Enlightenment isn’t “out there”. You don’t have to become a ‘seeker’ and go on a ‘spiritual journey’
to find it. Nor do you need to go on some kind of Jules Verne type mission to centre of your being to find it either.

By Seamus Anthony

I have always been a very Lazy Dude, and in fact I come from a long line of them. But the way I see it, laziness is in fact a Godly virtue. Here’s a few reasons why:

1) Lazy People Are Good For the Environment:

Lazy Dudes consume less. It makes sense: if you are too lazy to earn the big bucks, and too lazy to enjoy the (dreadful chore that is) shopping, then you just get by without a lot of stuff and this makes you an eco-warrior.

Put it this way, we need to stop using so much energy if we’re gonna save the planet right? Well, who do you think just opted to kick back and not drive anywhere for a few days? Not Anthony Robbins, that’s for sure.

2) Lazy People Are Safer:

Driving fast takes a lot of effort. It’s way easier to cruise just below the speed limit. Try not to drop the roach though, that can cause complications.

3) Lazy People Cause Less Noise Pollution:

Steve and I have been trying to define what Rebel Zen is all about and one thing we want to convey is that it’s not just meant to be a mega-phone for what we have to say, but rather what we really want is to be part of the conversation.

Ok, that sounds like a bit of a Web 2.0 cliche I admit, but nevertheless it’s true.

Our reason for starting this website was to help others to see that there is so much information out there now that everybody who is seeking what we loosely call “Enlightenment” can truly ‘do it themselves’. Hence the DIY Enlightenment tag.

As for what enlightenment means, well that’s not something that we feel we have the right to define for you either. Defining what enlightenment is (and realising this enlightenment) is a totally personal and subjective thing. You might completely disagree with us, for example, by believing that your guru is the one and only path to true salvation. That’s okay as long as you’re prepared to enter into a discussion about that.

By Seamus Anthony

Have you noticed a shift in the personal development world lately?

I have, and I know I’m not alone. I believe there’s a quiet movement on the rise that straddles both the worldly “success” field and the spiritual “enlightenment” field.

We’re a movement of connected individuals who DO want powerful tools for personal advancement in this life – but aren’t about to buy into the “bleached teeth and power suit” cliche of the “Wow! Transform Your Life and Get Rich Instantly!” variety.

We’re a movement of connected individuals who DO want to find lasting inner peace and happiness (which is – the way I see it anyway – all enlightenment really is) but who scoff at the idea of the “all-knowing” guru. And we’d rather give the “dolphins and rainbows” aesthetic a miss too, thanks very much.

Choose to Cruise

Hey! Seamus Anthony here…

Well the stock market dorks may be freaking out – but it’s an exciting day here at Rebel Zen, with two great items of news!

1) Free, All-Natural, E-Book Goodness

As you can see to the right, we’ve just released a free 9500 word e-book called “Rebel Zen and the Art of Curly’s Law“.

It’s about an important secret to both worldly and spiritual success that is often overlooked in most personal development material.

It contains a three-part series already published here at Rebel Zen PLUS two articles originally published in the popular Australian holistic magazine “LivingNow” (but not available on their website) PLUS one totally new article never published anywhere.

So even if you’re a regular here, that’s three articles you haven’t read yet and all you need to do to read them is join up for our occasional email newsletter.

And look, we don’t just hate spam, we also hate email listers who bombard you day after day with sales pitches – so don’t worry about that. We’ll just email now and then when we actually have something worthwhile to contribute. Anyway, (for now) we don’t even have anything to sell, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

By Steve Mills

Many eastern spiritual texts put forward the idea that you must learn to have a full awareness of your whole self. While our self looks like it is an integrated whole from one level, scratch the surface (via meditation or other methods of self-enquiry) and you will find a whole heap of different parts of your personality, all striving to express themselves. The one that stands out the most initially is the Ego, the self-important, self-centric aspect of our personality . The ego (which is a modern western psychological term I might add) has been given a fairly bad rap in the modern “new age” scene.

image by Swiss Bones

Somewhere along the way, our Western minds have turned this into the ridiculous notion that to be happy you must get rid of, or even completely destroy the ego.

My own personal experience has brought me to a different understanding. I believe that there is no reason to destroy what is essentially a part of yourself. The real power is in learning to integrate this and all of the other interesting and unique parts of your personality into a functioning whole.